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We analyze the eect of the average level of intelligence on dierent measures of the quality of institutions, using a 2006 cross-sectional sample of 113 countries. The results show that average IQ positively aects all the measures of institutional quality considered in our study, namely government eciency, regulatory quality, rule of law, political stability and voice and accountability. The positive eect of intelligence is robust to controlling for other determinants of institutional quality.

This paper assesses the ability of the Rotterdam model and of three versions of the almost ideal demand system (AIDS) to recover the time-varying elasticities of a true demand system and to satisfy theoretical regularity. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the Rotterdam model performs better than the linear-approximate AIDS at recovering the signs of all the time-varying elasticities. More importantly, the Rotterdam model has the ability to track the paths of time-varying income elasticities, even when the true values are very high. The linear-approximate AIDS, not only performs poorly at recovering the time-varying elasticities but also badly approximates the nonlinear AIDS.

The paper finds that shocks which have no contemporaneous effect on the price level explain almost all the variance of aggregate output in the short run. Similar results are obtained with sectoral and industry-level data. Seasonally adjusted data and not seasonally adjusted data obtain essentially the same results. A second model identifies shocks that don't affect prices for at least two months. These shocks are significantly more important for aggregate output than shocks which affect the price level immediately or with a one-month delay. A third model finds that most of the variance of aggregate output over the business cycle is explained by shocks which have no contemporaneous effect on the price level and no long-run effect on output. This finding is interpreted as evidence to support the hypothesis that sticky price adjustment is an important factor in causing aggregate demand shocks to have real effects. Economic models in which prices adjust rapidly to clear markets will have difficulty explaining all the empirical results found in this paper.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'The politics of group-based inequality-measurement, implications, and possibilities for change', which is part of a larger research project on 'Disadvantaged groups and social mobility'. Abstract:We analyse horizontal inequality in wealth and in years of education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the period 2001-13. We find that the trend in horizontal inequality is similar to the trend in vertical inequality over the period of analysis. In addition, horizontal inequality in years of formal education is higher among geographical, gender and linguistic groups, and lower among religious and ethnic groups. More specifically, horizontal inequality between genders is higher among individuals aged 25 years and over compared with the full sample of individuals aged 15 years and over. Based on a regression analysis, we find that household size, economic status and rural residence have a significant effect on gender-based inequality in years of education. We also find that gender-based horizontal inequality in years of education is higher in conflict-affected zones.