We use U.S. county-level data to estimate convergence rates for 22 individual states. We find significant heterogeneity. E.g., the California estimate is 19.9 percent and the New York estimate is 3.3 percent. Convergence rates are essentially uncorrelated with income levels

Tsebelis and Nardi (2016) and Tsebelis (2017) report that constitutional length correlates with lower levels of GDP per capita. They argue that this may be the case because longer constitutions lead to greater corruption. However, uncovering a causal relationship between constitutional length...

Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) is a body of hypotheses embodying particularly Austrian insights and assumptions. The canonical variant associated with Mises (1934, 1963) and Hayek (1933, 1935) is particularly well-suited to the Great Depression. However, it is an inadequate account of the...

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...

We examine the empirical relationship between Internet subscriptions and foreign aid flows for 22 Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members for a 15 year time period employing the median voter model. We find that Internet use is positively related to the amount of foreign aid that donor...

We use US county level data (3,058 observations) from 1970 to 1998 to explore the relationship between economic growth and the extent of government employment at three levels: Federal, state and local. We find that increases in federal, state and local government employments are all negatively...

Scholars have argued that the politically fractured landscape of medieval Western Europe was foundational to the evolution of constitutionalism and rule of law. In making this argument, Salter and Young (2019) have recently emphasized that the constellation of political property rights in the...

We examine whether aid affects recipient countries’ economic freedom. The existing empirical literature examining this relationship has found conflicting results. However, all of these existing studies have struggled to employ plausible identification strategies to find a causal relationship...

Conventional wisdom suggests that small businesses are innovative engines of Schumpetarian growth. However, as small businesses, they are likely to face credit rationing in financial markets. If true then policies that promote lending to small businesses may yield substantial economy-wide...