This exploratory paper estimates the effects on well-being of two very important institutional symbols of 59 countries in 2007: national flags and constitutions. The results indicate that well-being responds positively to investment in material things as well as the existence of flags. However,...

This paper comes in two parts, this being the first. Part 1 is not a research paper in the sense of the Scientific Method; it is rather unsophisticated data mining - a cheap data mining exercise for that matter, because it does not follow any received economic, or other, theory. In the sense of...

Using a simple production function approach I show that conventional factors and forces of production, national identity, and globalization are important to national well-being, but in varying ways. Whereas investment in capital and globalization, especially social globalization, affect national...

I estimate the effects of national symbols and globalization on the well-being of 88 countries. I find that conventional determinants of production affect national well-being, measured as human development index (HDI). The effects on HDI of national symbols like national flag colors are...

This paper uses a simple production function to show that the economic performance of a group of African countries in 2007 depended on three broad sources: domestic resources, governance, and global links. The results reveal that investment plays the most important part. The effects of education...

I estimate and compare the effects of globalization, governance, and conventional factors and forces on the economic performance of Sub-Saharan African countries. The analysis finds that both physical and human capita as well as unexplained technical residuals affect economic performance,...

African countries may have fared poorly compared to some countries in other regions, but relative to their own performance history some African countries have done quite well over the past eight years. In particular 2004 and 2005 were especially good years. How can such performance be made to...

Conventional theory says that innovations first diffuse slowly, then at faster paces, and finally at asymptotically declining rates. Economists and others explain such behavior with a variety of logistic models. Early models like the contagion model derive their predictive power from reliance on...

This note makes general statements about standard models of the diffusion of innovations. Its premise is a familiar idea that innovations are socially-learned changes that spread like wildfires across diverse populations. However, the rate at which innovations spread is subject to the forces of...