Many economists believe that legal and institutional arrangements are the decisive factor influencing economic development. In this view, nations with secure property rights and contract laws enforced by a judiciary free of government interference will benefit from substantial private investment and experience long-term economic growth and prosperity.
A new paper by Peter Blair Henry [...]

In 2002-2004, almost 5 million Venezuelans signed one or more in a series of three petitions calling for an election to remove President Hugo Chavez from office. After Chavez survived the recall vote of August 2004, the names of those who had signed the final petition were compiled into a database using software called [...]

Stewardship, a Christian financial support charity in the UK, finds that giving has increased three percent during the last six months.
Since October last year, some 30,000 Sovereign Account holders with the ministry have donated more than £24 million in support to charities, churches and mission workers.
Stewardship Chief Executive, David Jones, said: “Our clients tend to [...]

As widely expected when Newfoundland and Labrador suddenly stole expropriated almost all of AbitibiBowater’s assets in the province, the natural resource multinational has launched a challenge under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Premier Danny Williams expropriated AbitibiBowater’s (TSX:ABH) resource rights and assets in central Newfoundland as a punitive measure for the company’s decision to close [...]

Based on media reports, I would have assumed that bombings killed more civilians in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 than any other cause. According to a study published earlier this week in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), however, that assumption would be wrong.
Utilising the detailed database assembled by Iraq Body Count, a [...]

An epidemiological study published in the April 2009 issue of the European Journal of Public Health concludes that 1957 honour killings of women occurred in Pakistan between January 2004 and December 2007—about 20 percent of all homicides.
The study was led by Dr. Muazzam Nasrullah of the Aga Khan University in Pakistan. An excerpt is [...]

The headline at Discover Magazine’s Discoblog says “Growing Numbers of People Marrying Inanimate Objects”, but only two such people are named in the post. I’m not sure that qualifies as “growing”, but it definitely qualifies as barmy.
Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer is married to the Berlin Wall.
[…]
Berliner-Mauer (the German name for the Berlin Wall, which she has [...]

I know it’s Easter Monday but, even so, this “news item” has no business on the front page of today’s Halifax Chronicle-Herald.
Superstore change is in bag
Grocer to alter checkout routine, charge for plastic bags, offer array of reusable sacks
Shoppers may notice a slight change to the bagging procedure in Superstores as of April 22.
Rather than [...]

From today’s Labour Force Survey release by Statistics Canada.

Read the whole thing.

Barack Obama and the rest of the G20 leaders got the money to do the job.
Barack Hussein Obama has now unveiled a plan to save the world.
Yes, the entire planet earth.
How?
By buying up to one trillion of toxic bank loans.
Well, maybe not a full trillion—more like one-tenth that amount.
When all the sums are added together, [...]

A wrong-headed column in The Times of London contends that the G20 nations need to get beyond the “false dichotomy” of “free trade versus protectionism”.  Noreena Hertz of Judge Business School, Cambridge, notes rightly that Western leaders are hypocritically extolling free trade while implementing protectionist measures on the sly.  Then, however, she insists that protectionism [...]

Instead of spending oodles of money it doesn’t have, the province of New Brunswick is stimulating the economy by simplifying personal income taxes and cutting corporate taxes. The government hopes that will make N.B. a more attractive place to live and to do business.
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy says the province has “a [...]

Historian J. Wesley Bush, who blogs at Russian Policy Daily, translates portions of an interview with the head of Russia’s Family and Childhood Foundation.  Note the bit on forced abortions (emphasis added).
Chastnyi Korrespondent has an interview with Sveta Rudneva, head of the “Family and Childhood” foundation of Russia. Like many Russians, she’s worried about the [...]

Scientists at the Université de Montréal have discovered that impulsive young men are more likely to drive under the influence of cannabis (DUIC) and more likely to be involved in motor vehicle accidents.
“We observed that dangerous driving behaviours are interrelated. Individuals scoring high on impulsivity or sensation-seeking scales demonstrated an elevated risk of driving under [...]

Shades of the fight over Kennewick Man. Scientists at the University of California, San Diego, are outraged because administration officials have moved to give two 10,000-year-old skeletons to a Native American tribe. The local Kumeyaay tribe has asked for the skeletons, which were discovered in 1976. University of California president Mark Yudof [...]