In this paper, an alternative skew Student-<italic>t</italic> family of distributions is studied. It is obtained as an extension of the generalized Student-<italic>t</italic> (GS-<italic>t</italic>) family introduced by McDonald and Newey [10]. The extension that is obtained can be seen as a reparametrization of the skewed GS-<italic>t</italic> distribution...

Existing work in growth empirics either assumes linearity of the growth function or attempts to capture non-linearities by the addition of a small number of quadratic or multiplicative interaction terms. Under a more generalized failure of linearity or if the functional form taken by the...

This paper introduces a new and comprehensive Human Development Index (HDI) trends dataset for 135 countries and 40 years of annual data. We apply this dataset to answer several empirical questions related to the evolution of human development over the last 40 years. The data reveal overall...

Since its introduction in the first Human Development Report in 1990, the Human Development Index (HDI) has attracted great interest in policy and academic circles, as well as in the media and national audiences around the world. Its popularity can be attributed to the simplicity of its...

This paper presents empirical estimates of a gravity model of bilateral migration that properly accounts for non-linearities and tackles causality issues through an instrumental variables approach. In contrast to the existing literature, which is limited to OECD data, we have estimated our model...

Measuring banking competition using the HHI, Lerner index, or H-statistic can give conflicting results. Borrowing from frontier analysis, the authors provide an alternative approach and apply it to Spain over 1992-2005. Controlling for differences in asset composition, productivity, scale...

We evaluate the success of the Venezuelan government's latest nationwide literacy program, Misión Robinson, using official Venezuelan government survey data. Controlling for existing trends in literacy rates by age groups over the period 1975-2005, we find at most a small positive effect of...

This paper presents an empirical test of a subclass of poverty traps hypotheses. The test is based on the observation that the nonconvexities in the production function necessary to generate multiple equilibria need only be present in the region between the equilibria. Increasing returns should...