On the basis of a large (new) dataset of cities in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East in the millennium between 800 and 1800, we try to provide an answer to the question why, during this millennium, the urban center of gravity moved from Iraq (or more generally the Arab world) to Western...

This article analyses the long-term development of the skill premium in western Europe in a global perspective, on the basis of data on wages of skilled and unskilled construction workers in more than a dozen European countries and regions, and in a number of non-European countries such as...

Can the development of the world economy – the growth of global gross domestic product and the increase in global inequality – in the period from 1820 to 2003 be understood as the result of the spread of one fundamental ‘innovation’, the Industrial Revolution? This...

This paper contributes to the growing literature on the links between political regimes and economic development by studying the effects of years in office on economic development. The hypothesis is that dictators who stay in office for a long time period will become increasingly corrupt, and...