This article investigates the determination of 14 indicators of development in 109 countries with complete data. The empirical record, presented in this essay, speaks a clear language in favor of Islamic democracy and against those in the West that attempt to treat Islamic cultural heritage as a...

This thought-provoking monograph analyzes long- medium- and short-term global cycles of prosperity, recession, and depression, plotting them against centuries of important world events. Major research on economic and political cycles is integrated to clarify evolving relationships between the...

In this qualitative sociological and quantitative economic policy paper, we start out from the assumption of a very recent European Commission Background paper on the "Efficiency and effectiveness of social spending", which says the effectiveness of social spending can be defined by the degree...

This article analyses IMF estimates of economic growth in 180 countries (IMF, 2009), and inks the results to the "Re-orient" approach, put forward by Frank, 1998. With global economic gravitation shifting to the Indian Ocean/Pacific region, the article also analyses the role of MNC (foreign...

In this article, we present a first empirical reflection on 'smart development', its measurement, possible 'drivers' and 'bottlenecks'. We first provide cross-national data on how much ecological footprint is used in the nations of the world system to 'deliver' a given amount of democracy,...

The present article is based on a 175 nations, 26 standard predictor variables study on the determinants of seven important indicators of social conditions on a global scale. The standard predictors cover all major development accounting theories today, including a) Demographic factors, b)...