Grand Transition project

Deals with the process of long-run development

Related to democracy project


Main papers

Joint project with Erich Gundlach, GIGA IAS and Hamburg University, Germany


Two Views on Development and Institutions
The Grand Transition vs the Primacy of Institutions

Kyklos 61, 65-100, 2008. {Also under Corruption Project}


Farewell critical junctures
Sorting out the long-run causality of income and democracy

European Journal of Political Economy 25, 340-54, 2009.
The empirical study uses the Polity data set


The transition of corruption:
From poverty to honesty

Economic Letters. 103, 146-48, 2009 {Also under Corruption Project project}
Analyzing causality between income and corruption in the long run.


The Democratic Transition
Short-run and long-run causality between income and the Gastil index

European Journal of Development Research 24 144-68, 2012
The empirical study uses the polity data set


The religious transition. A long-run perspective
Public Choice DOI 10.1007/s11127-012-0034-z, expected 2012 or 2013

An online appendix to the regious transition


An model of the religious transition
A consistent theoretical explanation of the religious transition.
Preliminary March 2012


The agricultural, demographic and democratic transitions
Two estimation models with the reverse results

Working paper Aarhus and Kiel. September 2010.

Spin-off papers

An essay on the Muslim Gap. Religiosity and the political system.
Chapter 10 pp 213-42 in R. Wintrobe and M. Ferrero, eds., 2009.
The Political Economy of Theocracy. Palgrave Macmillan


The spirits of capitalism and socialism. A cross-country study of ideology.
Public Choice 150, 469-98 {Also listed under Democracy papers}
With Christian Bjørnskov, Department of Economics, Faculty of Business, Aarhus University


Background papers

On separate page