This paper suggests a theoretical framework and provides empirical evidence for a hump-shaped relationship between the fraction of novelty-seeking traits in society and current levels of per capita income. The hypothesis is that novelty-seeking traits produce two countervailing effects on...

Is tourism an opportunity for lagging countries in the elusive quest for growth (Easterly, 2002)? Recent empirical evidence suggests that the answer is a cautious yes. Aggregate cross-country data show that tourism specialization is likely to be associated with higher per capita GDP growth rates...

This study complements the scarce literature on growth determinants in fast emerging economies of the BRICS and MINT by assessing the determinants throughout the conditional distributions of the growth rate and real GDP output for the period 2001-2011. An instrumenal variable (IV) quantile...

This paper explores the determinants of intelligence by focusing on the role played by barriers to the diffusion of competence and human capital. The results based on cross-sectional data from 167 countries consisting of 1996-2009 averages suggest that, genetic distance to global frontiers has a...

A 2015 World Bank report on attainment of Millennium Development Goals concludes that the number of extremely poor has dropped substantially in all regions with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa. We assess if poverty is in the African gene by revisiting the findings of Ashraf and Galor (2013,...

We construct a new dataset of inequality in educational attainment by age and sex at the global level. The comparison of education inequality measures across age groups allows us to assess the effect of inter-generational education attainment trends on economic growth. Our results indicate that...

Interest in the emergence of a global middle class has resulted in a number of attempts to identify and enumerate who belongs to it . Current research provides wildly different estimates about the size and evolution of the global middle class because of a lack of consensus on appropriate...

We conducted a systematic review to identify policy interventions that improve education quality and student learning in developing countries. Relying on a theory of change typology, we highlight three main drivers of change of education quality: first, supply-side capability interventions that...

The literature that tests for U-shaped relationships using panel data, such as those between pollution and income or inequality and growth, reports widely divergent (parametric and non-parametric) empirical findings. We explain why lack of identification lies at the root of these differences. To...

The topic of convergence is at the heart of a wide-ranging debate in the growth literature. Empirical studies of convergence differ widely in their theoretical backgrounds, empirical specifications and in their treatment of cross-sectional heterogeneity. Despite these differences, a rate of...