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
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Fiscal decentralization and deficits: International evidence
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the macroeconomic effects of decentralization and find that the fiscal disciplining effect increases with the population size, and that the benefits of expenditure decentralization decrease with ethnolinguistic fractionalization and quality of governance.
Journal ArticleDOI
Can information and communication technologies be pro-poor? $
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined cross-country evidence to discover if teledensity (the number of telephones per capita) has a pro-poor growth impact and found that, historically, telecommunications rollout has had a positive and significant impact on increasing inequality and little impact on quality of life variables.
Posted Content
How Immigration Affects U.S. Cities
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the effects of immigration on overall population growth and the skill composition of cities, focusing on the connection between immigrant inflows and the relative number of less-skilled workers in the local population.
Journal ArticleDOI
Private capital flows and economic growth in Africa: The role of domestic financial markets
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the relationship between private capital flows and economic growth in Africa during the period 1990-2007 and found that foreign direct investment, foreign equity portfolio investment and private debt flows all have a negative impact on economic growth.
Journal ArticleDOI
Civil War Destruction and the Prospects for Economic Growth
Seonjou Kang,James Meernik +1 more
TL;DR: This article examined the effects of civil wars on economies and found that generally wars exercise negative economic effects and that economic fundamentals, as well as the response by the international community to civil wars, exert powerful effects on economic growth.
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.