Development banks are there for good times as well as bad times. They promote structural changes in economies, addressing longer-term challenges. They complement financial systems, helping to improve the functioning of banking and financial markets and bolstering economic resilience. They...

Förderbanken sind in guten und in schlechten Zeiten nützlich. Sie bringen strukturelle Veränderungen in Volkswirtschaften voran und helfen dabei, langfristige Herausforderungen anzugehen. Sie ergänzen Finanzsysteme, unterstützen die Funktionsfähigkeit von Banken- und Finanzmärkten und...

Conventional arguments suggest that republics ought to grow faster than monarchies and experience lower transitional costs following reforms. We employ a panel of 27 countries observed from 1820 to 2000 to estimate these differences. Results show no significant growth differences between the two...

In this article, we revisit the relationship among institutions, human capital, and development. We argue that empirical models that treat institutions and human capital as exogenous are misspecified, both because of the usual omitted variable bias problems and because of differential...

This paper investigates the extent of vengeful feelings and their determinants using data on more than 116,000 individuals from 66 countries. Country characteristics as well as personal attributes of the individuals influence vengeful feelings. The magnitude of vengeful feelings is greater for...

We examine the effect of oil price fluctuations on democratic institutions over the 1960–2007 period. We also exploit the very persistent response of income to oil price fluctuations to study the effect of persistent (oil-price-driven) income shocks on democracy. Our results indicate that...

This paper investigates the relation between economic growth and democracy for Côte d’Ivoire for the period 1960 to 2012. It analyzes both the long-run relation and the direction of causality. To this end, an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model of cointegration and a Granger causality...

In his recent Mass Flourishings, Edmund Phelps makes a strong and eloquent plea for a more dynamic economy, which he sees not only as a key for economic performance, but also as necessary for what he calls "the good life." This review essay evaluates those claims in the light of economic history.

In this paper we revisit the relationship between democracy, redistribution, and inequality. We first explain the theoretical reasons why democracy is expected to increase redistribution and reduce inequality, and why this expectation may fail to be realized when democracy is captured by the...