’s conjecture that today marked differences in social capital between the North and South of Italy were due to the culture of …

waves of the World Values Survey (1980 to 2005). We thus relate eleven indicators of individual openness to innovation … individual level, examining the relationship between religiosity and a broad set of pro- or anti-innovation attitudes in all five … innovation. …

We investigate the role of national institutions on regional development in a novel framework. We exploit the fact that … correlation between formal national institutions and economic development has to be carefully interpreted. … institutions. Using both a matching-type and a regression discontinuity approach we show that differences in countrywide …

We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development … association between pre-colonial ethnic political centralization and regional development. This pattern is not driven by … positive association between pre-colonial political complexity and contemporary development also holds within pairs of adjacent …

We examine the link between pre-colonial statehood and contemporary regional African development, as reflected in …-country analysis reveals a strong positive correlation between pre-colonial political centralization and contemporary development (and …

shaping African development. First, using recent surveys from Sub-Saharan African countries, we document that individuals … a strong association between pre-colonial centralization and contemporary comparative development both across and within … countries. We also document that the strong link between pre-colonial political centralization and regional development -as …

Botswana has had the highest rate of per capita growth of any country in the world in the last 35 years. This occurred … achieved this rapid development by following orthodox economic policies. How Botswana sustained these policies is a puzzle … policies were chosen in Botswana because good institutions, which we refer to as institutions of private property, were in …

colonial rule was to create financial incentives to adopt development policies that encouraged government spending. …

world, using recently developed instruments for institutions and trade. Our results indicate that the quality of …We estimate the respective contributions of institutions, geography, and trade in determining income levels around the … institutions 'trumps' everything else. Once institutions are controlled for, measures of geography have at best weak direct effects …