世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

Output per worker varies enormously across countries. Why? On an accounting basis, our analysis shows that differences in physical capital and educational attainment can only partially explain the variation in output per worker--we find a large amount of variation in the level of the Solow residual across countries. At a deeper level, we document that the differences in capital accumulation, productivity, and therefore output per worker are driven by differences in institutions and government policies, which we call social infrastructure. We treat social infrastructure as endogenous, determined historically by location and other factors captured in part by language.

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Why Do Some Countries Produce so Much More Output Per Worker than Others

This paper analyzes a newly assembled data set consisting of subjective indices of corruption, the amount of red tape, the efficiency of the judicial system, and various categories of political stability for a cross section of countries. Corruption is found to lower investment, thereby lowering economic growth. The results are robust to controlling for endogeneity by using an index of ethnolinguistic fractionalization as an instrument.

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Corruption and Growth

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

Does finance affect economic growth? A number of studies have identified a positive correlation between the level of development of a country's financial sector and the rate of growth of its per capita income. As has been noted elsewhere, the observed correlation does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. This paper examines whether financial development facilitates economic growth by scrutinizing one rationale for such a relationship; that financial development reduces the costs of external finance to firms. Specifically, we ask whether industrial sectors that are relatively more in need of external finance develop disproportionately faster in countries with more developed financial markets. We find this to be true in a large sample of countries over the 1980s. We show this result is unlikely to be driven by omitted variables, outliers, or reverse causality.

/pdf/financial-dependence-and-growth-2meheeba1z.pdf

Financial Dependence and Growth

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was formally implemented on 1 January 1994 by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This treaty instantly gained global notoriety following the initiation of formal negotiations in 1991, not only because the initiative represented one of the most comprehensive trade agreements in history, but also because it seemed to be a breakthrough in establishing free trade in goods and services among developed and developing countries. The high expectations were that trade liberalization would help Mexico catch up with its northern neighbors. The ratio of Mexican GDP per capita to that of the United States did increase after unilateral trade reforms were implemented in 1986 and also after the implementation of NAFTA in the aftermath of the so-called tequila crisis. However, other Latin American economies also grew faster than the U.S. economy after the mid-1980s, especially Chile and, to a lesser extent, Costa Rica. Thus it is not obvious that NAFTA was particularly important in helping Mexico catch up with the United States.

NAFTA and Convergence in North America: High Expectations, Big Events, Little Time

Much of the new growth literature stresses country characteristics, such as education levels or political stability, as the dominant determinant of growth. However, growth rates are highly unstable over time, with a correlation across decades of .1 to .3, while country characteristics are stable, with cross-decade correlations of .6 to .9. Shocks, especially those to terms of trade, play a large role in explaining variance in growth. These findings suggest either that shocks are important relative to country characteristics in determining long-run growth, or that worldwide technological change determines long-run growth while country characteristics determine relative income levels.

/pdf/good-policy-or-good-luck-country-growth-performance-and-505dbxrs5d.pdf

Good Policy or Good Luck? Country Growth Performance and Temporary Shocks

The worldwide growth slowdown after 1975 was a major negative fiscal shock; lower growth lowers the present value of tax revenues and primary surpluses and thus makes a given level of debt more burdensome. Most countries failed to adjust to the negative fiscal consequences of the growth implosion and so public debt to GDP ratios exploded. The growth slowdown therefore played an important role in the debt crisis of the middle income countries in the 1980s, the crisis of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) in the 1980s and 1990s, and the increased public debt burden of industrial countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Econometric tests and fiscal solvency accounting confirm the important role of growth in debt crises. In addition, the HIPCs’ debt problems were worse because they grew more slowly after 1975 than other low income countries due to worse policies.

/pdf/growth-implosions-and-debt-explosions-do-growth-slowdowns-2toipxg6kr.pdf

Growth Implosions and Debt Explosions: Do Growth Slowdowns Cause Public Debt Crises?

The Schelling model of a “tipping point” in racial segregation, in which whites flee a neighborhood once a threshold of nonwhites is reached, is a canonical model of strategic interdependence. The idea of “tipping” explaining segregation is widely accepted in the academic literature and popular media. I use census tract data for metropolitan areas of the US from 1970 to 2000 to test the predictions of the Schelling model and find that this particular model of strategic interaction largely fails the tests. There is more “white flight” out of neighborhoods with a high initial share of whites than out of more racially mixed neighborhoods.

/pdf/empirics-of-strategic-interdependence-the-case-of-the-racial-2f0oqrwecg.pdf

Empirics of Strategic Interdependence: The Case of the Racial Tipping Point

The authorexamines a range of cross-sectional variation in performance and policies for evidence on what distinguishes successes from failures. At about 6 percent, the growth rate of the Four Tigers - Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (China) - are among the largest outliners in any study of growth. This is not surprising, says the author. The Four Tigers are Tigers because their growth rate was high. The Four generally have large positive residuals in growth regressions, but the author argues that this is not surprising for observations that were known in advance to be at the top of the sample. But growth regressions and, more generally, quantitative measures of"policies"are not very successful at picking out the Gang of Four as"most likely to succeed."Most observers before the"miracle"were pessimistic about East Asia. The Four are not nearly as superlative in policies and other country characteristics as they are in per capita growth rates. Large positive residuals such as those associated with the Four's high performance have historically been transitory. The stratospheric trajectory of the Four should be heading back toward earth soon, says the author. What may be unusual about the Four's success is that they were all in one region. At least casually, the Asian successes look a lot like growth radiating from poles, with Japan followed by the Gang of Four, followed by China, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The great success of the Gang of Four does not imply a blanket endorsement of all their policies - they may have made mistakes that were more than offset by other good policies and, probably at least in part, by good luck. It is disturbing how large and transitory the unexplained element is in economic success. Perhaps the best way to think about good policies is that they make success likely sooner or later. When all is said and done, the story of the East Asian successes is consistent with the prosaic fundamentals: investment, education, financial depth, and low budget deficits. In these areas, the Four were above average.

William Easterly

Papers

NAFTA and Convergence in North America: High Expectations, Big Events, Little Time

Good Policy or Good Luck? Country Growth Performance and Temporary Shocks

Growth Implosions and Debt Explosions: Do Growth Slowdowns Cause Public Debt Crises?

Empirics of Strategic Interdependence: The Case of the Racial Tipping Point

Explaining Miracles: Growth Regressions Meet the Gang of Four