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
One Dollar, One Vote
TL;DR: The authors revisited the relationship between inequality and redistribution in a panel of advanced OECD countries and found a non-monotonic relationship between pre-tax and transfer distribution of income and redistribution.
Journal ArticleDOI
State Functioning and State Failure in the South Pacific
TL;DR: This article argued that cross-country variation in ethnic diversity between much of Polynesia and Melanesia is a key factor in explaining differences in state performance across the South Pacific region, and showed how different kinds of ethnic structure are associated with specific political and economic outcomes, including variation in political stability, economic development, and internal conflict from country to country.
Journal ArticleDOI
Discrete Polarisation with an Application to the Determinants of Genocides
TL;DR: The concept of polarisation has been used frequently in political science and eco nomics, although its precise conceptualisation has turned out to be evasive and diffi cult for this reason many authors used it in a very imprecise and sometimes conflicting fashion as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
How Ethnic Diversity Affects Economic Growth
TL;DR: In this paper, the empirical relationship between ethnic diversity, polarization, and economic growth is investigated, and it is shown that ethnic diversity has a strong direct negative impact on economic growth, whereas ethnic polarization has non-negligible indirect economic effects through specified channel variables.
Journal Article
On the cyclicality of Irish fiscal policy
TL;DR: In this article, the authors tackle the important issue of cyclicality in the behaviour of Irish fiscal policy and discuss some institutional reforms that may improve the operation of fiscal policy over the economic cycle.
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.