Or Paradox Regained? The answer is Paradox Regained. New data confirm that for countries worldwide long-term trends in happiness and real GDP per capita are not significantly positively related. The principal reason that Paradox critics reach a different conclusion, aside from problems of data...

This research explores the long-run effect of industrialization on the process of development. In contrast to conventional wisdom that views industrial development as a catalyst for economic growth, the study establishes that while the adoption of industrial technology was conducive to economic...

This paper reviews the main features of the banking and financial sector in ten new EU members, and then examines the relationship between financial development and economic growth in these countries by estimating a dynamic panel model over the period 1994-2007. The evidence suggests that the...

This paper examines the role of institutions (including civil law origin), financial deepening and degree of regime authority on growth rates in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region using panel data through a fixed effect model. The results reveal that English civil law origin and the...

We review Baumol's typology of productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship. We argue that the typology is relevant for explaining the secular decline in business dynamics. To the existing explanations for this decline, we put forward the thesis that entrepreneurship has become less...

What are the long-term economic effects of a more equal distribution of wealth? We exploit variation in historical inheritance rules for land in Germany. In some German areas, inherited land was to be shared or divided equally among children, while in others land was ruled to be indivisible....

The Easterlin Paradox states that at a point in time happiness varies directly with income, both among and within nations, but over time the long-term growth rates of happiness and income are not significantly related. The principal reason for the contradiction is social comparison. At a point...

This paper studies the interplay between left-handedness and economic development. To explain the decline and subsequent recovery of left-handedness observed over the last few centuries in the Western world, we propose a theory in which economic development influences the prevalence of...