Abstract We find an undiscovered effect of geography on the choices of writing system in ancient civilizations that in turn drive their courses of historical evolution. The history of the ancient civilizations was driven by the causation spirals generated by the writing system chosen by their...

After evening out all the benefits and costs, the overall optimal level of democracy is about 3.2, on a scale of 1 to 7. On average, fully dictatorial countries have a conditioned growth rate of ¨C1.113 percent, fully democratic countries have a conditioned growth rate of 1.146 while countries...

This paper asks an old but still unsettled question: what makes China China? Existing theories rely on either class, or market or cultural causes to explain the economic stagnation of imperial China. While accepting the basic proposition of the class based analysis, this paper adds a new...

Developing and transitional economies usually experience high levels of income polarization during the period of transition and rapid economic growth. Understanding and quantifying its effects on the economy is important to developmental strategies. In this paper, we study the effect of income...

In this paper, we build a simple model to explain the choice of migration method and the root causes of international human trafficking (IHT). Our analyses result in several implications on the problems related to IHT. First, IHT is driven by poverty and international productivity/living quality...