We investigate the partial effects of institutions and human capital on growth. We find that cross-country regressions of the log-level of per capita GDP on instrumented measures of institutions and schooling are uninformative about the relative importance of institutions and human capital in...

Recent research shows that the majority of cross-national variation in institutions is related to history. The within variation however is somewhat less explored. We find that the within variation in economic institutions can be explained by trade liberalization. This relationship is robust with...

What are the root causes of Africa's current state of under-development? Is it the long history of slave trade, or the legacy of extractive colonial institutions, or the fallout of malaria? We investigate the relative contributions of these factors using an instrumental variable approach. The...

Using pooled household level data for the Indian states of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh we find that the size of landholdings is a negative predictor of participation in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Program (NREGP). In state level analysis this pattern survives in Rajasthan but...

Using pooled household level data for the Indian states of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh we find that the size of landholdings is a negative predictor of participation in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Program (NREGP). In state level analysis this pattern survives in Rajasthan but...

The sharp division between the 'institutions view' and the 'disease view' has been one of the distinctive features of the 'root causes of economic progress' literature. Based on evidence from cross-national data, the 'institutions school' claims that institutions are the only root cause of...

In this paper we contribute to the debate over the empirical relationship between trade openness and economic development. Unlike previous studies which treat trade openness and institutions as competitors in economic development, we find evidence that they are in fact complements. We also find...

What is the root cause of Africa’s current state of under-development? Is it the long history of slave trade, or the legacy of extractive colonial institutions, or the fallout of malaria? A precise answer still eludes us. This paper investigates the relative contribution of these historical...

We study how natural resources can feed corruption and how this effect depends on the quality of the democratic institutions. Our game-theoretic model predicts that natural resources lead to an increase in corruption if the quality of the democratic institutions is relatively poor, but not...