After two decades of academic debate on the social capital-growth nexus, discussion still remains open. Most of the literature so far, however, has followed the one-size-its-all approach, neglecting that the great disparities across geographical units might have implications in this...

This paper takes a fresh look at the impact of financial development on economic growth by using recently developed kernel methods that allow for heterogeneity in partial effects, nonlinearities and endogenous regressors. Our results suggest that while the positive impact of financial...

Issues of taxation and development, which have long been a central concern of the IMF, have attracted wider and renewed interest in the last few years. This paper reflects on three broad lessons of experience: that developing countries differ vastly in tax matters, and in ways that are less than...

In pre-industrial Europe, the pace of economic development and growth varied across territories and over time. Much of this variation was due to the changing impact of government on the economies in question. Government affected the economy principally through its command of violence. We...

Revenue reforms can contribute to more inclusive, green, and sustainable growth in China. Relative to OECD economies, fiscal policy in China is less redistributive. Options for promoting more inclusive growth include improving the progressivity of labor taxes (individual income tax and social...

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...

Does economic freedom lead to more or less conflict? Numerous authors argue that markets create conflict, whereas many advocates of economic freedom from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman argued the opposite. This topic has not yet been investigated empirically. This article examines the various...

The bursting of crude oil prices in the international market since mid-2014 has resulted in dwindling oil revenue, which has led to economic recession in Nigeria. The recession has further exacerbated existing socioeconomic problems bedeviling the country. In the light of this, we examined the...

We employ a balanced panel dataset representative of the entire Chilean productive structure in order to investigate the relation between the introduction of innovation and subsequent firm growth in terms of sales. Recent contributions examining the returns to innovation on firm performance have...