There is empirical evidence of a cross-country positive association between the number of lawyers per capita and the extent of litigation. For instance, Spain has more litigation and more lawyers per capita than most OECD countries. How should this association be interpreted? In this paper we...

We examine the impact of bilateral and multilateral tax treaties on bilateral FDI stocks. First, we present panel regressions of the effects of treaties on FDI based on an extensive database of all OECD countries from 1985 onwards. We use geographic instruments to correct for the endogeneity of...

This paper examines two dimensions of the software piracy-development nexus to complement existing formal literature. It empirically assesses the incidence of piracy on the Human Development Index (HDI) and its constituents and then the instrumentality of Intellectual Property Right (IPR)...

In Mexico, the combined prevalence of overweight and obesity among Mexican women increased from 64% in 2000 to 72% in 2006. In this paper, we report our findings on the relation of women’s body mass index (BMI) with income and lifestyles choices using data from a cross-sectional survey...

Past research on the associations between area-level/contextual social capital and health has produced conflicting evidence. However, interpreting this rapidly growing literature is difficult because estimates using conventional regression are prone to major sources of bias including residual...

Sweden experienced a decline in inter-county real wage differentials for agricultural workers between 1860 and 1940, historical evidence of early labor market integration well before widespread unionization in agriculture occurred. By means of dynamic panel data analysis, this paper examines...

By changing the level of competition and/or affecting the allocation of resources, institutions can play a very important role on innovation activity. In this paper we investigate the relative importance of institutional variation across European countries in explaining differences in their...

College students are taking longer to earn baccalaureate degrees now than ever before, but little is known about institutional factors that may contribute to this trend. In this paper we investigate an important institutional constraint—course scarcity—that we hypothesize may be associated...

The debate over private versus public provision of schooling remains contentious. A large literature has developed focusing on the relative educational performance of different school types. Beyond these important outcomes, variations in schooling may have direct effects on students’...

There have been serious questions about whether lower-yielding farmers in developing countries, who are typically poor smallholders, benefit from genetically-modified crops like Bacillus thuringensis (Bt) corn. This article examines this issue by estimating the heterogeneous impacts of Bt corn...