Barro and McCleary (2003) is a key research contribution in the new literature exploring the macroeconomic effects of religious beliefs. This paper represents an effort to evaluate the strength of their claims. We evaluate their results in terms of replicability and robustness. While we find...

This paper extends the simple threshold regression framework of Hansen (2000) and Caner and Hansen (2004) to allow for endogeneity of the threshold variable. We develop a concentrated least squares estimator of the threshold parameter based on an inverse Mills ratio bias correction. We show that...

Do variations in the degree of religiosity across countries translate into predictable differences in cross-country growth experiences? We apply a model averaging procedure to investigate the empirical robustness of linkages between religiosity and growth when other fundamental growth...

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between foreign aid and growth using recently developed sample splitting methods that allow us to uncover evidence for the existence of heterogeneity and nonlinearity simultaneously. We also implement a new methodology that allows us to deal with...

The recent growth literature has seen an explosion of work exploring the role of new and fundamental theories of growth such as geography, institutions, ethnic fractionalization, and religion. Nevertheless, claims about the empirical validity of these new growth theories are typically made...

We study the effects of two measures of information dissemination on the determination of systemic risk. One measure is print-media consumer sentiment based while the other is volatility based. We find evidence that while the volatility measure (VIX) of future expectations has a more significant...

Particular demographic groups are often associated with distinct points of view across various dimensions of redistribution policy. In this paper, we investigate which demographic groups account for heterogeneity in views on welfare policy and views on appropriate levels of overall...

Nonlinearities in growth have important implications for cross-country income inequality. In particular, they imply that countries may spend long periods of time in a low-growth poverty trap. However, finding evidence of such nonlinearities in the data and accounting for their emergence pose...

Do institutions “rule” when explaining cross-country divergence? This paper finds that to a large extent they do. However, the role of ethno-linguistic fractionalization cannot be ignored. Sufficiently high-quality institutions are necessary if the negative impact on development from high...