This paper argues that openness to goods trade in combination with an unequal distribution of political power has been a major determinant of the comparatively slow development of resource- or land-abundant regions like South America and the Caribbean in the nineteenth century. We develop a...

We examine whether democratic societies can escape poverty traps. Unrestricted agenda setting with simple majority rules fail to educate a society, because education-enhancing redistribution will not occur. We show that a combination of suitable constitutional rules overcomes this impossibility...

In examining the effects of the communications revolution on economic performance, the paper makes a distinction between the exchange and policing aspects of transactions costs and shows how they can be mapped into what are distinguished as the material and cosmological beliefs of different...

A wide variety of farm household models have provided a valuable theoretical basis for empirical and conceptual analysis of interactions between production and consumption resource allocations of poor rural people. A weakness of common applications of many such models, and unfortunately of much...

This paper assesses the relationship between public governance and economic competitiveness in a globalized world. The extent of statist reach is often seen as being reduced by the integrated world economy. The present article argues that this is not necessarily so: economic development is not...

R&D-based growth theory suggests that productivity growth is positively correlated with population size or population growth, an implication which is hard to see in the data. Here we integrate micro-founded fertility and schooling into an otherwise standard R&D-based growth model. We then show...

In this sample of 49 Latin American, OECD, and transition economies, it is the ineffective and discretionary administration of tax and regulatory regimes--not higher tax rates alone--as well as corruption, that increases the size of the unofficial economy. And countries with a larger unofficial...

This paper argues that migration could trigger institutional development in the sending country. It is shown that the existence of rent-seeking institutions not only hinders the adoption of a more efficient technology, it also reinforces itself; while the possibility of migrating to a more...