The values, faiths and virtues generate relatively stable attitudes and enduring predispositions of behavior, manifested in relation to a situation or person. The Weberian secularization hypothesis shows that, while the process of economic development is launched, the religious institution plays...

This paper is an attempt to clarify the relationship between ethnic fractionalization, polarization and conflict. In recent years many authors have argued that ethnic fractionalization has a negative effect on growth because it increases the likelihood of conflicts. For this reason many growth...

Relying on data for a panel of 90 advanced and emerging economies spanning the 1970-2015 period and System-GMM dynamic panel estimation, we extend the standard ‘Kuznets-curve' empirical framework to investigate how globalisation, financial sector development and technology influence changes in...

Societies in Western civilisation enforce their rules through formal institutions such as secularism (SES), whereas in less developed civilisations often rely on informal institutions such as religion (RES). The present paper attempts to explain the determinants of societies’ choice between...

Using different hypothesis and empiric demonstrations of some well-known economists in this domain, the period between 1500-1750, in which appeared the recrudescence of the protestant paradigm of capitalism, try to be considered the explanation by which, at least in the analised period of time,...

Though many theories have been advanced to account for global differences in economic prosperity, little attention has been paid to the oldest and most fundamental of human institutions: kin-based institutions---the set of social norms governing descent, marriage, clan membership, post-marital...

We employ a structural threshold regression methodology to investigate the heterogeneous effects of debt on growth using public debt as a threshold variable as well as several other plausible variables. Our methodology allows us to address three sources of model uncertainty that characterize...

In this paper we uncover growth volatility regimes and identify their robust determinants using a large international panel of countries. In doing so we propose a novel empirical methodology that allows us to simultaneously deal with two key elements of model uncertainty, namely theory...

This paper reviews recent economics literature on culture, with an emphasis on its relation to the field of long-run growth and development. It examines the key issues debated in the new cultural economics: causal effects of culture on economic outcomes, the origins and social costs of culture,...

Increase in health and educational expenditure has an immense impact on the socio-economic conditions in any country at large and state at regional level. There is no definite agreement as to whether the rising health and educational expenditure are causally affecting to economic growth. This...