This paper provides the first systematic attempt to measure cultural diversity at national and subnational levels. Our measure reflects the degree to which values and beliefs are shared in society and captures a dimension of diversity not previously discussed. We assess the importance of...

We compare absolute, relative and intermediate views on the evolution of global inequality between 1980 and 2009. According to the relative view, inequality remains invariant after a uniform proportional change of all incomes whereas the absolute view requires invariance to a uniform change of...

Estimations of the shadow economies for 145 countries, including developing, transition and highly developed OECD economies over 1999 to 2003 are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of "official" GDP) in 2002/03 in 96 developing countries is 38.7%, in 28 transition...

The paper proposes a measure of countries' welfare based on individuals' lifetime utility and applies it to a large sample of countries in the period 1960-2000. Even though welfare inequality across countries appeared stable, the distribution dynamics points out the emergence of three clusters....

This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity, when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy. Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative...

The increasing interdependence of world economies influenced largely by the cross-border flow of trade have enormous impacts on climate change. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of globalization on international trade as well as examine the ways in which trade between countries...

The ongoing debate regarding the significance of religion and language on economic performance (GDP) is inconclusive and non-exhaustive. We present a non-parametric partial least square – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis of within-country diversity and GDP. With a sample of 46...

This paper presents a framework to understand and measure the effects of political borders on economic growth and per capita income levels. We present a model providing a theoretical foundation to estimate empirically the effects of political borders on growth. In our model, political...