The paper considers the transformation of the political system as countries pass through the Grand Transition from a poor developing country to a wealthy developed country. In the process most countries change from an authoritarian to a democratic political system. This is shown by using the...

The Grand Transition (GT) view claims that economic development is causal to institutional development, and that many institutional changes can be understood as transitions occurring at roughly the same level (zones) of development. The Primacy of Institutions (PoI) view claims that economic...

Despite abundant microeconomic level evidence, the role of human capital in economic development has not been well documented at the macroeconomic level. Up to now, many empirical macro studies lack a consistent theoretical foundation. In addition, the wide range of published results seems to...

We estimate the relative roles of factor inputs and productivity in explaining the level of economic development, which is measured as output per worker. For a large sample of countries, we show that alternative identifying productivity assumptions and alternative measures of human capital have...

Countries with the highest labor productivity overwhelmingly lie in the world's temperate climatic zones far away from the equator. The question we address is whether climatic conditions as measured by distance from the equator remain correlated with labor productivity after other variables are...

Based on Baumol’s cost-disease model, we develop two alternative measures of the change in the productivity of schooling. Both productivity measures are based on changes in the relative price of schooling. We find that in most OECD countries the price of schooling has increased faster in...