Using a panel of up to 116 countries from 1970 to 2010 we estimate the effects of foreign aid flows on a variety of measures of institutional quality. We find that aid flows are associated with the deterioration of both political and economic institutions. Regarding the latter, aid flows are...

We use US county-level data to estimate convergence rates for 22 individual states. We find significant heterogeneity. E.g., the California estimate is 19.9% and the New York estimate is 3.3%. Convergence rates are essentially uncorrelated with income levels.

We use Mississippi county-level data on (per capita) income and the percentages of populations that are Black (henceforth Black) to examine the relationship between race and economic growth. The analysis is also conditioned on 40 other economic and socio-demographic variables. Given a negative...

We use new US county level data (3,058 observations) from 1970 to 1998 to explore the relationship between economic growth and the size of government at three levels: federal, state and local. Using 3SLS-IV estimation we find that the size of federal, state and local government all either...

We use U.S. county-level data containing 1,921 cross-sectional observations and up to 29 conditioning variables to estimate heterogeneity in convergence rates across 22 individual U.S. states. Applying GMM estimation, we find significant heterogeneity in the state-level convergence rates. For...