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Conflict Diamonds
(2003)
’Conflict diamonds’ refers to the fatal role that diamonds are believed
to have played in several African conflicts. The article analyzes the impact
of diamond abundance on economic growth in light of the broader,
previously ...
The Rise of Neolithic Agriculture
(2001)
The article analyzes the economic reasons behind the rise of Neolithic agriculture some 10,000 years ago in consideration of evidence that agri-culture was not associated with increasing standards of living. On the
basis ...
Reference-Dependent Utility in an Industrial Cluster
(2003)
This article tries to explain the exceptional levels of knowledge creation in certain industrial clusters, levels that are seemingly higher than what is implied by the usual models of atomistic agents who do not internalize ...
Unbundling Ex-Colonies: A Comment on Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001
(2004)
In this comment on AJR (2001), we argue that a bundling of all former colonies into one ‘colonial’ theory of comparative development is problematic for several reasons. During the mercantilist wave of mainly Latin American ...
Country Size and the Rule of Law: Resuscitating Montesquieu
(2006)
The political and economic impact of country size has been a frequently discussed issue in social science. In accordance with the general
hypothesis of Montesquieu, this paper demonstrates that there is a robust negative ...
Geography, Biogeography and Why Some Countries are Rich and Others Poor
(2004)
The most important event in human economic history before the Industrial Revolution was the
Neolithic transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to sedentary agriculture, beginning about
10,000 years ago. The ...
A Microeconomic Analysis of Institutions
(2000)
This survey paper has three themes; a microeconomic analysis of institutions, an institutional analysis of microeconomics, and a discussion on the scope for an "institutional microeconomics" that takes insights ...
Windfall Gains, Political Economy, and Economic Development
(2006)
Natural resource rents and foreign aid have the character of windfall gains that affect economic outcomes both directly and indirectly. Several
studies have shown that the indirect effect typically works via institutions ...
Why Does Technology Advance in Cycles?
(2001)
Long-run technological progress is cyclical because drastic innovations that introduce new technological opportunity are only profitable at times when repeated incremental innovation has nearly exhausted existing technological ...
Congo: The Prize of Predation
(2003)
The article analyzes the war against Mobutu (1996-97) and the more recent war (1998-) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with particular attention to greed and grievance as motivating factors in these two wars. Whereas ...