Scholars have been active in investigating causes and consequences of austerity policies. We examine how economists use the term "austerity" in scientific studies and measure austerity in empirical analyses. The sample includes around 3,500 journal articles published in the top 400 journals...

We examine how structural reforms relate to income inequality. We employ many indicators of structural reforms and use data for market and net income inequality. The dataset includes up to 135 countries since 1960. The results do not suggest that market-oriented structural reforms were...

Discrimination has been documented against women in Muslim-majority countries. Constitutions differ among Muslim-majority countries. By using women's rights indicators and exploiting cross-country variation, we find that discrimination against women is more pronounced in countries where Islam is...

The nexus between corruption and economic growth has been examined for a long time. Many empirical studies measured corruption by the reversed Transparency International’s Perception of Corruption Index (CPI) and ignored that the CPI was not comparable over time. The CPI is comparable over...

We examine how fiscal rules influence economic growth. The results show that constitutional fiscal rules promoted growth from the Industrial Revolution until World War II (1789-1950) and also increased modern economic growth (1985-2015). To address selection on unobservables, we conduct a...

There has been much study of the consequences of economic freedom but, outside of the role of political institutions, there has been little study of the determinants of economic freedom. We investigate whether religion affects economic freedom. Our cross-sectional dataset includes 137 countries...

How globalisation influences social expenditure has been examined for industrialized countries. Globalisation has often been shown to be positively associated with social expenditure in established industrialized countries, a finding that corroborates the compensation hypothesis. Scholars have...

How globalisation influences social expenditure has been examined for industrialized countries. Globalisation has often been shown to be positively associated with social expenditure in established industrialized countries, a finding that corroborates the compensation hypothesis. Scholars have...

My empirical results in Potrafke (2012) confirm past conclusions that Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be democratic. Hanusch takes issue with my results - and by inference with all past empirical results on the relation between Islam and democracy. In his comment on my study,...

We investigate how protectionist policies influence economic growth. Our empirical strategy exploits an extraordinary tax scandal that gave rise to an unexpected change of government in Sweden. A free-trade majority in parliament was overturned by a protectionist majority in 1887. We employ the...