This research advances the hypothesis that reversal of fortunes in the process of economic development can be traced to the effect of natural land productivity on the desirable level of cooperation in the agricultural sector. In early stages of development, unfavorable land endowment enhanced...

We provide empirical support and a theoretical explanation for the vicious circle of political corruption and tax evasion in which countries often fall into. We address this issue in the context of a model with two distinct groups of agents: citizens and politicians. Citizens decide the fraction...

This research establishes that religiosity has a persistent effect on economic outcomes. First we use a sample of migrants in the US to establish that religiosity at the country of origin has a long lasting effect on the religiosity of migrants. Second, exploiting variations in the inherited...

This paper examines the effect of income inequality on the quality of public education in the presence of weak institutions and tax evasion. Our theoretical model predicts that higher level income inequality within a country leads to lower quality of public education and that this effect is...

This research advances the hypothesis that natural land productivity in the past, and its effect on the desirable level of cooperation in the agricultural sector, had a persistent effect on the evolution of social capital, the process of industrialization and comparative economic development...

This research exploits the event of immigration to establish that institutions have a persistent effect on culture. It is argued that immigrants coming from corrupt countries, tend to overtrust the institutions at the host country. This inflated trust of immigrants is documented as the Great...

We investigate and compare the spatial distribution of manufacturing activity and its determinants in Belgium, Ireland, and Portugal using comparable, exhaustive micro-level data sets. We find some similarities between Portugal and Belgium, but little for Ireland. Moreover, there is some...

This paper analyses and compares the dynamics of agglomeration in Portuguese and Irish manufacturing industries between 1985 and 1998 implementing Dumais, Ellison and Glaeser (2002)'s methodology. Using comparable and exhaustive micro-level data sets, we find that industries tend to be subject...

We measure the effect of R&D spillovers on plant productivity by taking account of (i) the national origin of the spillovers, (ii) the mechanism through which spillovers may flow (FDI and/or imports), (iii) the sectoral scope of spillovers, as well as (iv) their geographic scope, in a single...

While there have been some references in the literature to the potential role of the general decline in rainfall in sub-Saharan African nations on their poor growth performance relative to other developing countries, this avenue remains empirically unexplored. In this paper we use a new...