We study whether higher gender equality facilitates economic growth by enabling better allocation of a valuable resource: female labor. By allocating female labor to its more productive use, we hypothesize that reducing gender inequality should disproportionately benefit industries with...

States' fiscal capacity plays a pivotal role in developing economies, but it is less clear what its determinants are or what explains cross-country differences. We focus on the impact of natural resources. Standard arguments suggest that natural resources rents may reduce incentives to invest in...

A kind of gender revolution is passing through various countries in various continents. By being offered free access to educational infrastructure, women become better educated, improve their skills and capabilities, gain possibilities to enter the labour market and use financial resources to...

The Gender Kuznets Curve (GKC) hypothesis argues that economic development has a non-linear effect on the female share of workers. There is, however, growing debate on the exact shape of this non-linear relationship. The aim of this paper is to test the GKC hypothesis in order to determine...

Some recent empirical studies deny any direct performance effects of measures of geography and conclude that institutions trump all other potential determinants of development. For given effects of institutional quality, our empirical results indicate quantitatively important direct negative...

We use recent immigration data from 195 countries and propose an index of population diversity based on people's birthplaces. This new index is then decomposed into a size (share of foreign born) and a variety (diversity of immigrants) component and is available for 1990 and 2000 disaggregated...

Many scholars have argued that once "basic needs" have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing multiple...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...

This essay reviews the historical and ongoing role played by trade in sustained high growth and human development progress, and makes the case that the post-2015 development agenda should include considerations related to trade rules and supply-side capacity. Given the strong links between...