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.

/pdf/corruption-and-growth-2z9d0x0u16.pdf

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

Does Foreign Aid Add Up

The Harrod--Domar growth model supposedly died long ago. Still today, economists in the international financial institutions (IFIs) apply the Harrod--Domar model to calculate short-run investment requirements for a target growth rate. They then calculate a "financing gap" between the required investment and available resources and often fill the "financing gap" with foreign aid. The financing gap model has two simple predictions: (1) aid will go into investment one for one, and (2) there will be a fixed linear relationship between growth and investment in the short run. The data soundly reject these two predictions of the financing gap model.

The Ghost of Financing Gap: Testing the Growth Model Used in the International Financial Institutions

The Lamentable Return of the Big Push in Economic Development

The ruble exchange rate has undergone wide gyrations over the last few years, culminating in a period of rapid appreciation in early 1995. We examine this period, distinguishing between two alternative views, an overshooting view with backward looking expectations, and a portfolio model based on demand for ruble assets. We show that sturdy lag structures between inflation and monetary growth imply that the two models are observationally equivalent in the short run. Using indirect information from other asset markets, however, allows us to differentiate between the two explanations. We find fairly sturdy evidence that expectations regarding future inflation shifted downward in early 1995, suggesting that the subsequent increase in monetary growth to a significant extent satisfied increased real ruble demand, with limited inflation impact. Copyright @ 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. All rights reserved.

William Easterly

Papers

Does Foreign Aid Add Up

The Ghost of Financing Gap: Testing the Growth Model Used in the International Financial Institutions

The Lamentable Return of the Big Push in Economic Development

The wild ride of the ruble

The war on terror vs. the war on poverty