Differences in key features of the development process across rich and poor countries can provide clues to the sources of the large variation of cross-country income. Kuznets included structural transformation as one of six stylized facts of economic development, nding that developed countries...

The measurement of gender inequalities has become an important topic in the academic literature. First, appropriate indicators are needed to compare the relative situation of women in developing countries. Second, there is renewed attention given to the relationship between gender inequality and...

This paper interprets economic growth as a sequence of transitions between four growth regimes: crisis, stagnation, stable growth, and miracle growth. Countries experience distinct patterns of growth because they switch between the growth regimes with different frequencies. The aim of this paper...

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 continuous on the 0-1-interval and enables very detailed and sensitive measurement of democracy for 185...

This paper presents a two-sector small semi-open economy Ramsey growth model involving foreign aid as an input in the production function. An activist government allocates this input endogenously across sectors and optimizes policies in a non-standard way. Once calibrated, mainly on countries...

Does financial sector foreign direct investment (FSFDI) trigger general capital inflows and foreign trade? Do these inflows to New EU Member States (NMS) provide positive signals (Spence, 1973) towards economic development or 'crowd out' investment and trade? While the direct impact of financial...

The empirical U-shaped pattern between product diversification and economic development has been widely examined, but here we analyze the determinants of diversification. We find that a high level of rent-seeking activities has a large impact on the diversification of nations: in countries where...

Is tourism an opportunity for lagging countries in the elusive quest for growth (Easterly, 2002)? Recent empirical evidence suggests that the answer is a cautious yes. Aggregate cross-country data show that tourism specialization is likely to be associated with higher per capita GDP growth rates...

The aim of the study is to analyze the representative variables of the stock of social capital available in the São Paulo State's counties, Brazil, according to the theory and methodology proposed by Robert Putnam. It describes some representative elements of social capital in the counties of...

There are two prominent methods to assess the effects of health on economic growth. The first is based on the estimated returns on health by means of Mincer wage regressions that are aggregated to derive the macroeconomic effects of population health. The second approach is based on the...