The news industry in the United States faces a funding crisis because the tech giants, particularly Google and Facebook, have acceded to the advertising monopolies once enjoyed by the newspaper industry itself. Despite the best efforts of the news industry to paint the tech giants as rapacious...

This paper reproduces a chapter from the author’s 2018 PhD thesis ‘The Digital Donga: Universal Access and Service in South Africa (1994 - 2014)’. The author’s subsequent book Regulating Telecommunications in SA: Universal Access & Service was published by Palgrave Press in 2020, and can...

Quality of life challenges, presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, emphasized the importance in achieving progress in making access to voice and broadband data services widespread and affordable. The virus forced nearly everyone to shelter in place, and to rely on wired and wireless technologies...

This paper systematically analyzes media attention devoted to terrorist attacks worldwide between 1998 and 2012. Several aspects are related to predicting media attention. First, suicide missions receive significantly more coverage, which could explain their increased popularity among terrorist...

This paper systematically analyzes media attention devoted to terrorist attacks worldwide between 1998 and 2012. Several aspects are related to predicting media attention. First, suicide missions receive significantly more coverage, which could explain their increased popularity among terrorist...

Internet resources, extended media coverage and international organizations' reports recently witness the increasing interest of western banks in new models of finance, particularly Islamic finance and microfinance. This new trend is not only channeled through the frame of corporate social...

Despite many approaches of neoclassical and endogenous growth theory, economists still face problems in explaining the reasons for income differences between countries. Institutional economics and the deep determinants of growth literature try to depart from pure economic facts to examine...

In medieval times, most people identified with religious values and aggregate income and productivity grew at glacier speed. In the 20th century, religion played a much lesser role in daily life and income and productivity grew at high and unprecedented rates. The present paper develops a simple...

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...

Religious and cultural practices have major implications for a Country's economic performance. However, it is not clear if the institutionalization of these social norms within a country's legal system causes material economic effects. In this study I show this to be the case. By employing the...