Using cross-country data, we find evidence for a significant interaction effect between democracy and equality in determining the quality of growth-promoting institutions like rule of law. Democracy is associated with better rule of law when inequality is lower.

This note estimates the causal effect of life expectancy on per capita income and tests the hypothesis of a non-monotonic effect using finite mixture models. The results confirm the hypothesis and qualify recent evidence for a negative effect by Acemoglu and Johnson (2007).