This paper empirically investigates the biogeographic determinants of the human DRD4 exon III locus, a particular gene variant associated with the human personality trait of novelty-seeking behavior. Providing a novel compilation of worldwide DRD4 exon III allele frequencies in a large sample of...

This paper suggests a theoretical framework and provides empirical evidence for a hump-shaped relationship between the fraction of novelty-seeking traits in society and current levels of per capita income. The hypothesis is that novelty-seeking traits produce two countervailing effects on...

This paper investigates the empirical relationship between the two concepts of ethnicity and economic growth. Ethnicity is assumed to affect economic growth through a number of possible transmission channels that are generally included in cross-country growth regressions by proposing an extended...

This paper investigates the economic growth impact of cultural diversity, both domestically and in neighbouring countries, in a balanced panel of 94 countries covering the period 1970 to 2004. The measures of cultural diversity used in this article were derived from a recently developed computer...

This paper hypothesizes and empirically establishes the persistent effects of novelty-seeking traits on crosscountry differences in scientific knowledge creation. I use data on the prevalence of specific allele variants of the human DRD4 exon III gene, which population geneticists have linked to...

This paper examines the effect of desert locust infestations on school enrollment of children and young adults between 3 and 24 years of age. We combine individual and household survey data from the 2005-2019 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program with data on the spatial distribution of...

Previous literature has identified income, poor health and social relationships as the most important predictors of subjective well-being (SWB). In addition, the literature has identified a non-linear relationship between age and SWB, with a dip in SWB in mid-life. Explanations of the non-linear...

Entrepreneurship is a cornerstone of technological innovation and economic development. We posit that the genetic make-up of countries (populations) will affect the extent of their engagement in entrepreneurial activities, in addition to the factors showcased by prior literature (e.g.,...

From an engineering perspective, a capital good's service is energy conversion - e.g., the physical 'work' done by a machine - and can thus be measured directly by the energy consumed in production. We show important empirical advantages of our concept over traditional measures. The empirical...

This paper investigates the economic growth impact of cultural diversity, both domestically and in neighbouring countries, in a balanced panel of 94 countries covering the period 1970 to 2004. The measures of cultural diversity used in this article were derived from a recently developed computer...