The empirical relation between happiness and religiosity is considered from the perspective of basic utility theory. An unbalanced cross-country panel data set is used to study whether religiosity can be considered as a substitute in the happiness function, which itself is held to be a proxy for...

Despite abundant microeconomic level evidence, the role of human capital in economic development has not been well documented at the macroeconomic level. Up to now, many empirical macro studies lack a consistent theoretical foundation. In addition, the wide range of published results seems to...

Globalization improves the prospects for developing countries (DCs) to catch up economically with industrialized countries. Depending on economic policies with respect to openness and factor accumulation, globalization may increase capital and technology flows to DCs, thereby generating a higher...

Openness appears to have a strong impact on economic growth especially in DCs, which typically exhibit a high share of physical capital in factor income and a low share of labor. In the neoclassical growth model with partial capital mobility, physical capital's share in factor income determines...

While it is largely uncontroversial that human capital can be considered as one of the shaping factors of economic growth, no agreement exists on the specific role of human capital formation. Competing theories all stressing different aspects of human capital formation are not in short supply,...

Countries with the highest labor productivity overwhelmingly lie in the world's temperate climatic zones far away from the equator. The question we address is whether climatic conditions as measured by distance from the equator remain correlated with labor productivity after other variables are...