This article proposes a simple and fast approach to build simultaneous confi dence bands and perform specification tests for smooth curves in additive models. The method allows for handling of spatially heterogeneous functions and its derivatives as well as heteroscedasticity in the data. It is...

In this paper we construct the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) and its five subindices Family code, Civil liberties, Physical integrity, Son Preference and Ownership rights using variables of the OECD Gender, Institutions and Development database. Instead of measuring gender...

In this article, we critically review the three most common approaches of assessing chronic food insecurity and undernutrition: (i) the FAO indicator of undernourishment, (ii) household food consumption surveys, and (iii) childhood anthropometrics. There is a striking and worrying degree of...

There is a well-known debate about the role of institutions in explaining the long-term development of countries. We believe there is value-added to consider the institutions hypothesis at the micro level within a country to analyze the exact transmission channels linking endogenous...

With the recent appointment of the High‐Level Panel to advise on the post‐2015 development agenda, the preparation of a successor process to the MDGs is (finally) moving into high gear. In this note I provide an input to these discussions by briefly reviewing successes and failures of the...

While it is widely presumed that development progress in so-called fragile states is lagging behind, only very limited empirical analysis exists that investigates to what extent the levels and trends in the MDGs differ significantly between fragile and other developing countries, and between...

We investigate to what extent convergence in production levels per worker has been achieved in Germany since unification. To this end, we model the distribution of GDP per employee across German districts using two-component normal mixtures. While in the first year after unification, the two...

Spurred by international commitments and expanded funding at the national and international level, attendance in education and associated years of schooling have expanded substantially in developing countries in recent years. But has this expansion in enrolments reduced existing inequalities in...

Using changes in the possession of household assets over the past 20 years, several recent papers have argued that economic performance in Arica was substantially better than suggested by national income data and income poverty statistics, who suffer from well-known weaknesses. We scrutinize...

The Human Development Index (HDI) published in the Human Development Report (HDR) of the United Nations Development Program is calculated as a simple average of the Life Expectancy Index (LEI), the Education Index (EI) and the Gross Domestic Product Index (GDPI). This paper provides statistical...