Using Baltagi and Li (2002)’s semi-parametric fixed effects regression estimator, we investigate the existence of an aggregate ‘Kuznets curve’ in a sample of 113 countries over the 1960–2000 period. Our results show that misspecification of the functional form in a panel model with...

This paper shows that improvements in life expectancy (LE) had a non-linear effect on income per capita over the 1940-1980 period as this effect was conditional on each country's initial level of LE. Whereas higher LE had an initial statistically significant negative impact on income per capita...

Alfaro, Kalemli-Ozcan, and Volosovych (2008) argue that accounting for differences in institutional quality makes the Lucas Paradox disappear. We show that their key finding is driven by the presence of outliers. Once we control for them, we find that the Lucas Paradox remains.

Does higher income cause democracy? Accounting for the dynamic nature and high persistence of income and democracy, we find a statistically significant positive relation between income and democracy for a postwar period sample of up to 150 countries. Our results are robust across different...

One consequence of tariff evasion is that a country’s average statutory import tariff rate deviates from the average applied tariff rate. We deliver an approach to estimate the average evasion rate in multi-country general equilibrium. We find evidence of significant average tariff evasion...

This paper estimates the impact of time zone differences between trading locations on trade costs and trade in general equilibrium. Using homogeneous bilateral trade data between US states and Canadian provinces, time zone differences are found to reduce bilateral trade by 11% on average, which...