Journal ArticleDOI
Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions
William Easterly,Ross Levine +1 more
TLDR
This article showed that ethnic diversity helps explain cross-country differences in public policies and other economic indicators in Sub-Saharan Africa, and that high ethnic fragmentation explains a significant part of most of these characteristics.Abstract:
Explaining cross-country differences in growth rates requires not only an understanding of the link between growth and public policies, but also an understanding of why countries choose different public policies. This paper shows that ethnic diversity helps explain cross-country differences in public policies and other economic indicators. In the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, economic growth is associated with low schooling, political instability, underdeveloped financial systems, distorted foreign exchange markets, high government deficits, and insufficient infrastructure. Africa's high ethnic fragmentation explains a significant part of most of these characteristics.read more
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Explaining African Economic Performance
Jan Willem Gunning,Paul Collier +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review and interpret the aggregate-level and microeconomic literatures to identify the key explanations for Africa's slow growth and a massive exodus of capital, pointing to four factors as being important: lack of openness to international trade, high risk environment, low level of social capital, and poor infrastructure.
Journal ArticleDOI
What Have We Learned About the Causes of Corruption from Ten Years of Cross-National Empirical Research?
TL;DR: This paper reviewed recent efforts by political scientists and economists to explain cross-national variation in corruption using subjective ratings, and examined the robustness of reported findings, concluding that highly developed, long-established liberal democracies, with a free and widely read press, a high share of women in government, and a history of openness to trade, are perceived as less corrupt.
Journal ArticleDOI
Where Did All the Growth Go? External Shocks, Social Conflict, and Growth Collapses
TL;DR: The authors argue that domestic social conflicts are a key to understanding why growth rates lack persistence and why so many countries have experienced a growth collapse since the mid-1970s, emphasizing the manner in which social conflicts interact with external shock and the domestic institutions of conflict-management.
The Well-Being of Nations: The Role of Human and Social Capital. Education and Skills.
Tom Healy,Sylvain Cote +1 more
TL;DR: The role of human capital in the economic and social development of nations is commonly acknowledged although its exact effects are still in dispute as mentioned in this paper, however, increasing attention has been focused on the role of social capital or the role in social relationships and individual abilities in economic activity and social well-being.
Journal ArticleDOI
Political Risk, Institutions and Foreign Direct Investment
Matthias Busse,Carsten Hefeker +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the linkages between political risk, institutions and foreign direct investment inflows using different econometric techniques for a data sample of 83 developing countries and the period 1984 to 2003, identifying those indicators that matter most for the activities of multinational corporations.
References
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The mechanics of economic development
Abstract: This paper considers the prospects for constructing a neoclassical theory of growth and international trade that is consistent with some of the main features of economic development. Three models are considered and compared to evidence: a model emphasizing physical capital accumulation and technological change, a model emphasizing human capital accumulation through schooling, and a model emphasizing specialized human capital accumulation through learning-by-doing.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the mechanics of economic development
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider the prospects for constructing a neoclassical theory of growth and international trade that is consistent with some of the main features of economic development, and compare three models and compared to evidence.
Posted Content
Law and Finance
Rafael La Porta,Rafael La Porta,Florencio Lopez de Silanes,Florencio Lopez de Silanes,Andrei Shleifer,Andrei Shleifer,Robert W. Vishny,Robert W. Vishny +7 more
TL;DR: This paper examined legal rules covering protection of corporate shareholders and creditors, the origin of these rules, and the quality of their enforcement in 49 countries and found that common law countries generally have the best, and French civil law countries the worst, legal protections of investors.
ReportDOI
Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries
TL;DR: For 98 countries in the period 1960-1985, the growth rate of real per capita GDP is positively related to initial human capital (proxied by 1960 school-enrollment rates) and negatively related to the initial (1960) level as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Finance and Growth: Schumpeter Might Be Right
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined a cross-section of about 80 countries for the period 1960-89 and found that various measures of financial development are strongly associated with both current and later rates of economic growth.