Scholars in several social science disciplines scholars have argued from their respective disciplinary perspectives that income inequality has a considerable impact on economic and social performance of a nation. This essay investigates the possible impact of income inequality on 290 values and...

The empirical core of this essay is a set of estimates of the aggregate transaction costs for sixteen European nations. I explore a number of hypothesized determinants of these costs, but only an economic systems variable, defined in terms of the institutional structure of the country, passes a...

Applying a cluster analysis to the results of the World Value Study, this article shows that the OECD nations have five distinct patterns of cultural characteristics. Moreover, these five cultural systems are almost the same as a classification of economic systems that have been derived from a...

Using data on economic values and attitudes for various nations from the World Value Study, I show that the strength of values associated with market success does not appear to have a significant impact on the rate of economic growth in a sample of developing and developed market economies. I...

This essay argues that economic systems should be defined in terms of clusters of complementary institutions. To show how such an approach can be carried out, I use a cluster analysis technique and data on forty different economic institutions in OECD nations to isolate four quite different...

This essay tests a dynamic version of the law-of-one-price for U.S. retail markets. The sample consists of retail price differences for a 43-year period over five U.S. cities for various commodity groups. Since relative transportation costs are declining, the law-of-one-price predicts that the...

We explore the hypothesis that income of the rich increases at the expense of income of the poor. In a simple linear regression model, the relative (to the median) incomes of the poor and the rich are significantly and inversely related. Using standard time-series methods, we demonstrate that...