The paper studies if the Maddison set of data for GDP per capita follows a statistical regularity, known as Benford’s Law. It is a simple logarithmic relation on the frequency of the first digit in a data set. These data ought to follow the law as they are Maddison’s calibration of data...

Meta regression analysis is used to extract the best average from a set of N primary studies of one economic parameter. Three averages of the N-set are discussed: The mean, the PET meta-average and the augmented meta-average. They are affected by control variables that are used in some of the...

The essay presents and explains a highly stylized story of the reactions of the structure of a university to a constitutional reform – in the university law – that radically changed the power structure from a bottom-up representative system to a top-down hierarchical system practically...

Our study, Doucouliagos and Paldam (2008), has recently been critically discussed by Mekasha and Tarp (2011). In this paper we show that contrary to what they state, their study validates our basic analysis: Both papers confirm that the literature has shown that aid is of little economic...

The authors have previously surveyed the AEL, aid (empirical) effectiveness literature, using the technique of meta-analysis. We reached the result that the small positive effect of aid on growth found in the average study is mostly a publication selection bias. This present study concentrates...

Economic research typically runs J regressions for each selected for publication – it is often selected as the ‘best’ of the regressions. The paper examines five possible meanings of the word ‘best’: SR0 is ideal selection with no bias; SR1 is polishing: selection by statistical fit;...

During the last 60 years development in Sub-Sahara Africa has had three main phases – P1, P2 and P3 – divided by kinks in 1972 and in 1994. P1 (before 1972) and P3 (after 1994) had fairly satisfactory growth, but P2 (between the kinks) had negative growth. This cyclical growth path has to be...

This paper reports new macro time-series for the number and size of churches in Denmark from year 1300 to 2000. Church densities are defined as the series per capita. The densities are interpreted as a proxy for religiosity. It is falling throughout all 700 years, but two events gave an extra...

Long-run development (in income) causes a large fall in the share of agriculture commonly known as the agricultural transition. We confirm that this conventional wisdom is strongly supported by the data. Long-run development (in income) also causes a large increase in democracy known as the...

Public regulations can increase economic growth by correcting market faults and decrease growth by consuming resources and reducing incentives. A simple theoretical framework is developed to represent commonly held views on the relationship between growth an regulation. The relationship is...