This paper investigates Gordon Tullock’s unpublished manuscripts that proposed a public choice interpretation of American slavery. Drafted in response to Conrad and Meyer’s seminal 1959 article on the economics of slavery, Tullock’s writings influenced the early cliometric debate over...

A fundamental problem in the field of the economics of innovation is how to explain the sources of path-breaking innovations that support the human development and socioeconomic progress in complex societies. The study here confronts this problem by developing the theoretical framework of global...

South Asian (SA) countries' growth-dynamics since 1951 is examined and compared using the annual catch-up index. Their growth is more volatile than 89 countries' sample studied earlier. It does not experience a stable phase, is sharply divergent, and the country that grows fastest for two...

In societies where surnames are inherited from parents, we can use these names to estimate rates of intergenerational mobility. This paper explains how to make such estimates, and illustrates their use in pre-industrial England and modern Chile and India. These surname estimates have the...

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,...

A large and growing literature links high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision. Yet while the empirical connection between ethnic heterogeneity and the underprovision of public goods is widely accepted, there is little consensus on the specific mechanisms through...

This paper proposes a theory for the gradual evolution of knowledge diffusion and growth over the very long run. A feedback mechanism between capital accumulation and the ease of knowledge diffusion explains a long epoch of (quasi-) stasis and an epoch of high growth linked by a gradual economic...

This paper proposes a theory for the gradual evolution of knowledge diffusion and growth over the very long run. A feedback mechanism between capital accumulation and the ease of knowledge diffusion explains a long epoch of (quasi-) stasis and an epoch of high growth linked by a gradual economic...

Conventional R&D-based growth theory argues that productivity growth is driven by population growth but the data suggest that the erstwhile positive correlation between population and productivity turned negative during the 20th century. In order to resolve this problem we integrate R&D-based...

We analyze the role of risk-sharing institutions in transitions to modern economies. Transitions requires individual-level risk-taking in pursuing productivity-enhancing activities including using and developing new knowledge. Individual-level, idiosyncratic risk implies that distinct...