This paper examines whether lax environmental policy and abundant natural resources both attract foreign direct investment (FDI). At first, their potential effects are discussed using arguments from the pollution haven hypothesis and the natural resource curse. Using cross-country Ordinary Least...

Using illustrations from research on inequality, this paper offers evidence on the strengths of 'behavioural synthesis', i.e. the reconciliation between neoclassical and behavioural economics. We compare how theoretical models of absolute and relative inequality have evolved from assumptions of...

This preliminary note investigates perception bias: To what extent do individual opinions confound reality? We estimate the relative gap between self-declared estimates and real data. We asked a sample of Philippine respondents about the incidence of diabetes and smartphone usage in their...

Better understanding of inequality, including its relationship to governance and other key outcomes, is relevant both to academic researchers and to policy-makers. Nevertheless, efforts to establish causal relationships empirically remain hampered by the quality and availability of data,...

The relationship between economic development, inequality, and democratization has long been debated in the literature. Yet empirical analyses of this interplay have been limited and have yielded overall mixed and inconsistent results. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining the impact...

This study proposes a new mechanism for the resource curse: crowding-out of innovation due to the existence of an option to engage in conflict. Using a game theoretical framework, it is argued that an increase in the amount of natural resources (in the informal sector here conflict for a...