The majority of macroeconomists who have studied inflation dynamics in Europe argue that the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) provides a good way to describe changes in the price level from the 1970s on. However the vast majority of these articles estimate the NKPC using the labor income...

Economic freedom indicators have become quite popular recently as a useful tool to quantify the relationship between a country's institutions and its prosperity. In a recent article, Hanson (2003) criticizes these types of studies for: (i) failing to adequately distinguish between different...

In the quarter century since the publication of Mancur Olson's Rise and Decline of Nations, a large literature has evolved testing the central hypothesis regarding Olson's thesis on institutional sclerosis. These tests have taken the form of both econometric regression analysis involving a...