This study examines the critical interplay between institutional and cultural backgrounds and their collective impact on economic development, suggesting that their synchronized evolution-timing, pace, and direction-boosts economic development, while misalignment hinders it. It seeks to...

Natural disasters are a challenge for good governance - this is the result of recent research investigating the effects of natural disasters on one important antagonistic force to good governance, public corruption. However, a specific analysis of droughts is so far neglected in this young...

The economic history of Argentina presents one of the most dramatic examples of divergence in the modern era. What happened and why? This paper reviews the wide range of competing explanations in the literature and argues that, setting aside deeper social and political determinants, the various...