This paper uses a historical setting to study when religion can be a barrier to the diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I focus on 19th-century Catholicism and analyze a crucial phase of modern economic growth, the Second Industrial Revolution...

This study investigates the impact of openness on human capital in 112 countries worldwide in 2000-2019. An two-stage least square fixed-effect model with instrumental variables is used to unravel the complicated relationship between human capital and its key determinants. The empirical results...