With all the talk in Europe about Islam and Muslim culture it is surprising how little hard-core empirical evidence exists on the compatibility of Muslim culture with positive patterns of political, social, and ecological development in the world system in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond. This...

This paper examines the impact of workforce demographics on aggregate productivity. The age structure of the workforce is found to have a significant impact on aggregate productivity. A large cohort of workers aged 40 to 49 is found to have a large positive impact on productivity. Out of sample...

Empirical studies show that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is larger than one in developed countries but smaller in developing countries. This paper develops a production function which allows for this structure in the elasticity of substitution. The case of a falling...

A general equilibrium model featuring multiple realistic sources of financial frictions is developed to study how different constraints interact in equilibrium. We highlight, distinguish, and evaluate their differential impacts and rich interactions. The economic impact of financial inclusion...

Rodrik (2016) pointed out that late industrializing countries are experiencing a lower peak at lower income levels in the manufacturing employment share hump-shaped path. The present study develops a theoretical model to analyze the dynamics of industrialization and deindustrialization in...

We study business uncertainty in high- versus low-volatility environments by surveying over 31,000 managers across 41 countries. We elicit subjective probability distributions for future own-firm sales and measure firm-level uncertainty with their mean absolute deviations. Analogously, we...

We study the properties of business expectations and uncertainty in 39 developing and emerging economies. Our evidence comes from 31,000 businesses responding to the World Bank Group Business Pulse and Enterprise Surveys. The surveys elicit three-point subjective probability distributions about...

This paper asks whether increasing productivity in the electricity sector can yield larger long-run GDP gains than suggested by electricity's small share of aggregate economic activity. We answer this question using a dynamic multi-sector model in which electricity is a strong complement to...

Purpose - The present study aimed to examine the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICT) diffusion, financial development and economic growth in the panel of developing countries for 2005-2019. Design/methodology/approach - The study employed the principal component...

We construct and estimate a unified model combining three of the main sources of cross-country income disparities: differences in factor endowments, barriers to technology adoption and the inappropriateness of frontier technologies to local conditions. The key components are different types of...