The paper aims to examine the role of institutions relative to economic policy and geography in explaining the differential level of development across countries over time. To that end, it attempts to construct a Development Quality Index (DQI) and an Institutional Quality Index (IQI) by using...

Does capital flow from rich to poor countries? We revisit the Lucas paradox and explore the role of capital account restrictions in shaping capital flows at various stages of economic development. We find that, when accounting for the degree of capital account openness, the prediction of the...

The paper uses nonparametric methodology to examine the role of institutions in understanding differential levels of development across countries. This technique estimates first order derivatives for every country allowing a deeper look into the impact of institutions on development. The...

We examine the effect of generalized trust on long-term economic growth. Unlike in previous studies, we use Bayesian model averaging to deal rigorously with model uncertainty and attendant omitted variable bias. In addition, we address endogeneity and assess whether the effect of trust on growth...

The debate over whether political democracy is the least bad regime, as Churchill once said, remains unresolved because history has been ignored or misread, and because recent statistical studies have not chosen the right tests. Using too little historical information, and mistaking formal...

The work of Levine and Renelt (1992) and Sala-i-Martin (1997a, b) which attempted to test the robustness of various determinants of growth rates of per capita GDP among countries using two variants of Edward Leamerâ??s extreme-bounds analysis is reexamined. In a realistic Monte Carlo experiment...

This research argues that variations in the interplay between cultural assimilation and cultural diffusion have played a significant role in giving rise to differential patterns of economic development across the globe. Societies that were geographically less vulnerable to cultural diffusion,...

Early states like China, India, Italy and Greece have been experiencing more rapid economic growth in recent decades than have later-comers to agriculture and statehood like New Guinea, the Congo, and Uruguay. We show that more rapid growth by early starters has been the norm in economic...