The historical analysis of US regional growth is improved by augmenting existing estimates of state personal income per capita, extending previous studies of convergence across states, and more broadly, offering an improved basis for interpreting other issues in regional development such as the...

In many western democracies, political parties with extreme platforms challenge more moderate incumbents. This paper analyses the impact of economic growth on the support for extreme political platforms. We provide a theoretical argument in favor of growth effects (as opposed to level effects)...

This paper shows that foreign aid has a signicant positive average effect on real per capita GPD growth if, and only if, the quantitatively large negative reverse causal effect of per capita GDP growth on foreign aid is adjusted for in the growth regression. Instrumental variables estimates...

We exploit the large inflow of immigrants to the US during the 1870-1920 period to examine the effects that changes in the cultural composition of the population of US counties had on output growth. We construct measures of fractionalization and polarization to distinguish between the different...

This paper exploits the significant positive response of the share of agricultural value added and GDP per capita growth to variations in the international prices for agricultural commodities and rainfall to construct instrumental variables estimates of the causal effect that changes in the size...

This study identifies the determinants of interstate variation in labor productivity levels at twenty-year intervals between 1880 and 1980. Focusing on fundamental rather than proximate influences, we find that institutional characteristics, physical geography, and resource abundance can account...