We examine how the introduction of smallpox vaccination affected early-life mortality and fertility in Sweden during the first half of the 19th century. We demonstrate that parishes in counties with higher levels of smallpox mortality prior to the introduction of vaccination experienced a...

This Working Document provides an estimate of China’s impact on the growth rate of resource-rich countries since its WTO accession in December 2001. The authors’ empirical approach follows the logic of the differences-in-differences estimator. In addition to temporal variation arising from...

A problem encountered in, for instance, growth empirics is that the number of explanatory variables is large compared to the number of observations. This makes it infeasible to condition on all variables in order to determine the importance of a variable of interest. We prove identifying...

The recent literature on the aid-growth relation discusses two competing models: The Good Policy Model, where the key feature is policy times aid, and the Medicine Model, where the key feature is aid squared. Both have been reached on a sample of about 1/3 of the available data. We present a...

<title>Abstract</title> We examine three tests of cross-sectional dependence and apply them to a Danish regional panel dataset with few time periods and a large cross-section: the CD <italic>test due to Pesaran (</italic>2004<italic>), the Schott test and the Liu--Lin--Shao test. We show that the</italic> CD <italic>test and the Schott test have good...</italic>

This research tests the long-standing hypothesis put forth by Lynn White, Jr. (1962) that the adoption of the heavy plough in Northern Europe was an important cause of economic development. White argued that it was impossible to take proper advantage of the fertile clay soils of Northern Europe...

This research evaluates the impact of the introduction of clover and potatoes on urbanization using a panel of Danish market towns from 1672 to 1901. We find evidence that both clover and potatoes contributed to urbanization using a difference-in-difference type estimation strategy which...

This timely and important volume addresses the serious challenges faced by democracy in contemporary society. With contributions from some of the world’s most prestigious scholars of public choice and political science, this comprehensive collection presents a complete overview of the...

In this paper we argue that the answer is yes. Our optimism rests on the finding that differences in the level of institutional quality predict cross-country variation in African economic growth during the period 1995-2011. This finding is quite robust. It holds in OLS, LAD and 2SLS settings; it...

In this paper we argue that the answer, to the question of whether Africa's recent growth is sustainable, is yes. Our optimism rests on the finding that differences in the level of institutional quality predict cross-country variation in African economic growth during the period 1995-2011. This...