I reconsider the primacy of institutions over geography as an explanatory factor of cross-country differences in economic performance, which has recently been postulated by Acemoglu et al. (2001) and others. My estimates show that the reported missing direct performance effects of a measure of...

Some recent empirical studies deny any direct performance effects of measures of geography and conclude that institutions trump all other potential determinants of development. For given effects of institutional quality, our empirical results indicate quantitatively important direct negative...

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...

Long-run development (in income) causes a large fall in the share of agriculture commonly known as the agricultural transition. We confirm that this conventional wisdom is strongly supported by the data. Long-run development (in income) also causes a large increase in democracy known as the...