Why do banks collapse? Are financial systems more fragile in recent decades? Can policies to fix the banking system do more harm than good? What's the history of banking crises? With dozens of brief, non-technical articles by economists and other researchers, Banking Crises offers answers from...

Is human capital a robust predictor of good institutions? Using a new institutional quality measure, the International Property Rights Index (IPRI), we find that cognitive skill measures are significant, robust, and large in magnitude. We use two databases of cognitive skills: estimates of...

National measures of cognitive skill, including IQ tests, have received attention recently as a possible driver of cross-country productivity differences. In a parallel literature, national measures of entrepreneurial activity and pro-entrepreneurship policies have received similar attention....

Human capital plays an important role in the theory of economic growth, but it has been difficult to measure this abstract concept. We survey the psychological literature on cross-cultural IQ tests and conclude that modern intelligence tests provide one useful measure of human capital. Using a...

Why do banks collapse? Are financial systems more fragile in recent decades? Can policies to fix the banking system do more harm than good? What's the history of banking crises? With dozens of brief, non-technical articles by economists and other researchers, Banking Crises offers answers from...

I investigate empirically the role of religion and political institutions in policies against human trafficking, using the new 3P Anti-trafficking Policy Index. The dataset contains 175 countries. The results show that governments in countries with Christian majorities implement stricter...