The income convergence literature suggests that poor countries can catch-up to rich ones conditional on sharing certain characteristics with rich countries. Good institutions such as strong property rights and rule-of-law are key amongst those characteristics. From a policy perspective this is...

Evidence of relationships between religious affiliation and the African AIDS pandemic is found in the medical, religion, and sociology literatures. In particular, studies have shown that predominantly Christian countries tend to have higher HIV rates than predominantly Muslim countries. These...

We examine a balanced panel of globalization indices for 129 countries over the years 1991-2010. We report evidence of cross-country sigma convergence in the overall globalization index. Sigma convergence also holds for each of the economic, political, and social globalization indices, as well...

A country's political and economic institutions are critical for economic prosperity. The literature abounds with institutional measures, precisely because institutions are multi dimensional. We use panel-unit-root and cointegration tests to examine the time-series properties of several...

This paper provides an exploratory analysis into factors contributing to differences across states in recidivism rates. We provide the first such examination that incorporates differences in economic freedom. Using a panel data set from 1998-2010, we find that higher levels of economic freedom...

Through what channel and to what extent does the inflow of remittances affect the quality of governance in the recipient countries? Recent studies suggest that a rise in remittances reduces public goods provision. Scholars generally agree that remittances increase consumption expenditure of the...