BACKGROUND For centuries, thinkers have considered whether and how climatic
conditions influence the nature of societies and the performance of economies. A …

Recent years have seen a remarkable expansion in economists' ability to measure
corruption. This in turn has led to a new generation of well-identified, microeconomic …

There are fewer people living in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. While
that is an achievement, continuing progress for poor people is far from assured. Inequalities …

This paper will discuss eight frequently asked questions about public corruption:(1) What is
corruption?(2) Which countries are the most corrupt?(3) What are the common …

The question of whether state-led expansion of credit and savings facilities can reduce
poverty has long been of interest to economists and policymakers. A large theoretical body …

This paper uses publicly released audit reports to study the effects of disclosing information
about corruption practices on electoral accountability. In 2003, as part of an anticorruption …

This paper provides a survey and synthesis of econometric tools that have been employed
to study economic growth. While these tools range across a variety of statistical methods …

We investigate the market for news under two assumptions: that readers hold beliefs which
they like to see confirmed, and that newspapers can slant stories toward these beliefs. We …

What is good government? Why do some governments fail? How do you implement political
accountability in practice? What incentives do you need to put in place to ensure that …

Using a new data set on annual deaths from disasters in 73 nations from 1980 to 2002, this
paper tests several hypotheses concerning natural-disaster mitigation. Though richer …