We draw on a newly collected historical dataset of fiscal variables for a large panel of countries — to our knowledge, the most comprehensive database currently available — to gauge the degree of fiscal prudence or profligacy for each country over the past several decades. Specifically, our...

A literature search shows that robust regression techniques are rarely used in applied econometrics. We present a technique based on Rousseeuw and Van Zomeren (Journal of the American Statistical Association, 85 (1990) 633–639) that removes many of the difficulties in applying such techniques...

The core economic functions of production and distribution of goods can be handled by many different methods. After the fall of communism, the market mechanism has become nearly universal. Conventional economic theories argue that this is natural, because it is the best and the most efficient...

An earlier & longer version of a draft of this paper, with title “Islamic Approaches to Fundamental Economic Problems,” is available from http://ssrn.com/abstract=2231398 Because Islam focuses on success in the hereafter, while economics focuses on maximizing pleasures of this world, the two...

Economic Theory suggest that central problem of economics is scarcity, thus the remedy for economic problems is growth -- accumulation of greater wealth to remove scarcity. Islamic teachings differentiate strongly between needs and wants. Needs are limited, and there is no scarcity of wealth...

While the strategy of measuring and quantifying has been extremely successful, and valuable in the progress of science, it does not follow that it is universally useful. We argue that attempts to measure corruption can be counterproductive in several different ways. Qualitative and action...