Is human capital a robust predictor of good institutions? Using a new institutional quality measure, the International Property Rights Index (IPRI), we find that cognitive skill measures are significant, robust, and large in magnitude. We use two databases of cognitive skills: estimates of...

Existing growth research provides little explanation for the very large differences in long-run growth performance across OECD countries. We show that cognitive skills can account for growth differences within the OECD, whereas a range of economic institutions and quantitative measures of...

Existing growth research provides little explanation for the very large differences in long-run growth performance across OECD countries. We show that cognitive skills can account for growth differences within the OECD, whereas a range of economic institutions and quantitative measures of...

As by product of economic growth, jobs are indeed transformational. In other words, efficiency increases as workers get better at what they do (as more productive jobs appear and less productive ones disappear). In fact societies flourish as jobs bring together people from different ethnic and...

This paper empirically examines the impact of corruption on FDI in European Union countries, including candidate countries. Our aim is to verify whether Efficient Grease Hypothesis does hold in the case of the EU. Contrary to the Hypothesis, we find that corruption has a negative impact on FDI....

Corruption, particularly political or quot;grandquot; corruption, distorts the entire decision-making process connected with public investment projects. The degree of distortions is higher with weaker auditing institutions. The evidence presented shows that higher corruption is associated with...

The main objective of this paper is to contribute to in-depth literature on the relationship between growth and the informal sector in the presence of corruption. The impact of the interaction between growth and corruption on economic performance (increase or decrease of the informal sector)...

This paper investigates the relationship between corruption and development. By a study of the determinants of the phenomenon as well as its implications on growth, this paper address the corruption challenge faced by governments and policymakers. Based on the theoretical framework of the...

We argue that several easily identifiable structural features constitute the key ingredients of effective state bureaucracies and should help to predict ratings of bureaucratic performance: competitive salaries, internal promotion and career stability, and meritocratic recruitment. We collect a...