We discuss the contribution of autocratic tendencies in democratically elected political leaders to the economic growth of developed economies. To this end, we exploit the unique election of Sir Charles Court as state premier of Western Australia in 1975 to estimate the contribution of...

We examine the impact of e-procurement on economic growth. To this end, we exploit an ambitious implementation of large-scale mandatory e-procurement platform in New South Wales and Western Australia. By matching pre-reform growth dynamics and its covariates with the rest of the world, we...

In the European political discourse, the potentially vast economic benefits derived from the European Union are taken for granted. In the academic debate, these economic benefits, even if measured in terms of GDP per capita growth, are much less consensual. There are severe methodological...

This article examines the importance of institutional shocks for long-run development with an application to the Iranian revolution. Our empirical method offers a clear test to distinguish between three models of institutional change. We define gradual institutional change without a major shock,...

This article re-examines the relationship between constitutional monarchy and economic growth in Europe. We suggest that economic growth explains the survival of constitutional monarchy rather than vice versa. The empirical results are consistent with our hypothesis

I examine the contribution of institutional breakdowns to long-run development, drawing on Argentina’s unique departure from a rich country on the eve of World War I to an underdeveloped one today. The empirical strategy is based on building a counterfactual scenario to examine the path of...

Long-term regional convergence hypothesis is examined for 32 Mexican states in a regional growth model with poverty traps using a new dataset on regional income inequality for the period 1940-2011. Although zero-growth poverty trap hypothesis is rejected for 28 out of 32 states, the evidence...