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...

This is the first paper to use U.S. state-level data to econometrically assess education’s role in an environmental Kuznets curve setting. The empirical analysis involves testing several models to evaluate the impact of education on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and energy consumption and...

A remarkable diversity of indicators shows quality of life across nations to be positively associated with per capita income. At the same time, the changes in quality of life as income grows are surprisingly uneven. Either in levels or changes, moreover, the effect of exogenous shifts over time...

In the present paper an empirical analysis will point out that regarding primary and secondary education, countries with a higher level of income per head enjoy a better education quality. The sample covers all world. Data are taken from World Bank. The elaboration of these panel data is made...

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...

Expectations and information about the growth of GDP per capita have a large influence on decisions made by private and public economic agents. It will be argued here that GDP (per capita) is far from a robust indicator of social welfare, and that its use as such must be regarded as a serious...

Prior studies assessing welfare across countries have utilised measures that combine country-level outcomes in income and life expectancy (or average lifespan). However, this perspective remains blind to the fact that two countries may have the same life expectancy or average income but very...

The list of billionaires and their wealth published by Forbes magazine in the US allows to compute the number of billionaires per unit of GDP and the ratio of their wealth to GDP for various countries. These measures of billionaire intensity vary greatly - sometimes by one or even two orders of...

The answer is that people's evaluations of their income situation are based on different considerations when the economy is expanding and when it is contracting. When, in the course of economic growth, incomes generally are rising, evaluations tend to be dominated by "social comparison" - what...

We exploit the cross-country differences in economic freedom to examine the link between the quality of institutions and subjective well-being. Using Veenhoven's happiness dataset, the evidence suggests countries with better economic institutions and higher level of economic freedom, captured by...