One of the most serious weaknesses of the human development index (HDI) is that it considers only average achievements and does not take into account the distribution of human development within a country or by population subgroups. All previous attempts to capture inequality in the HDI have...

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...

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,...

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...

Total factor productivity of twenty OECD countries for a recent period (1971-2002) is explained using six different models based on the established literature. Traditionally, entrepreneurship is not dealt with in these models. In the present paper it is shown that – when this variable is added...

In this paper, we construct a new index that measures the strength of intellectual property (IP) protection for plant varieties for 69 countries over the period 1961-2011. We examine the statistical properties of the index and we compare it with other measures of IP protection. We conclude that...

The purpose of this papers is confined to illuminating the aspect: Has Sewedish economic growth been slow relative to other industrialised countries in recent decades, i.e. is Sweden lagging behind

The on-going ‘Make in India’ campaign aims at manufacturing revival. Its characteristics resemble East Asian industrial reform and growth policies based on the flying-geese model which highlights ‘step-by-step’ changes in a country’s specialisation pattern and global competitiveness...

European metals end engineering industry has managed to keep its position in global competition. Germany has become the leading manufacturer of machines and equipment. Metals and engineering products are used in nearly all industries and businesses, and especially due to emerging economy growth...

We replicate Ashraf and Galor (2013) and find that its conclusions concerning the association between human genetic diversity and economic development depend substantially on coding errors and sample selection. We correct the coding errors and add or update data on genetic diversity and...