Evidence from a novel measure of democracy (SVMDI) based on Support Vector Machines highlights a robust positive relationship between democracy and economic growth. We argue that the ambiguity in recent studies can be traced back to the neglect of the information in the equation in levels and...

We present a novel approach for measuring democracy based on Support Vector Machines, a mathematical algorithm for pattern recognition. The Support Vector Machines Democracy Index (SVMDI) is continuously on the 0-1-interval and enables a very detailed measurement of democracy for 188 countries...

This Article analyzes institutional choice in preventing and managing financial crises. “Institutional choice” means that different institutions — here, markets, courts and regulators — have different capacities to achieve similar goals. While none is perfect, some may be better than...

Proponents of the income-based approach to poverty rarely contest the fact that poverty is actually a multidimensional phenomenon. What they claim is that economic resources provide a sufficiently precise proxy for whatever dimensions poverty might have. The indirect assumption is that all...