A number of recent papers have found that certain measures of pollution worsen and later improve as income per head increases. It is widely believed that the downhill portion of this inverted-U curve reflects an induced policy response; that, as incomes rise, citizens demand improvements in...

This study investigates the pro-poorness of income growth in Nigeria. Using nationally representative data for 1996 and 2004, overall income growth in Nigeria was found not to be pro-poor. The richer segments of the population appropriate greater share of benefits from economic growth. Household...

We consider the relationship between tourism and economic growth for Latin American countries since 1985 until 1998. The analysis proposed is based on a panel data approach and the Arellano-Bond estimator for dynamic panels. We obtain estimates of the relationship between economic growth and...

Specializing in tourism is an option available to a number of less developed countries and regions. But is it a good option? To answer this question, we have compared the relative growth performance of 14 "tourism countries" within a sample of 143 countries, observed during the period 1980-95....

This paper questions the three standard propositions used by politico-economic models of growth and distribution according to which (1) rising inequality induces more government redistribution; (2) more government redistribution is financed by higher distortionary taxation; and (3) higher...

We evaluate explanations for why Germany grew so quickly in the 1950s. The recent literature has emphasized convergence, structural change and institutional shake-up while minimizing the importance of the postwar shock. We show that this shock and its consequences were more important than...

Germany has had an extremely low growth performance since 1995. The paper looks at the long-run reasons for this loss of economic dynamics besides German unification: These include leaving labor idle, a declining share of investment in GDP, a weaker innovative activity, an ineffective system for...

This paper argues that an increase in the inequality of wealth prompts a stronger quest for status that in turn fosters the accumulation of wealth. It proposes a measure for an individual's want of social status. For a given level of a population?s wealth, the corresponding aggregate measure of...

The environmental discussion is increasingly extended to the question of how to preserve biodiversity. As sensible regulation of biodiversity utilization uses politically set incentive schemes, it is required to discus the monetary value of biodiversity. Consequently, the relation between...