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
Keeping up with the Vaishyas? Caste and relative standing in India
TL;DR: In this article, the importance of relative income within and between castes in the Indian caste system, using a choice experimental approach, was investigated, and it was shown that slightly more than half of the marginal utility of income comes from some kind of relative consumption effects, on average.
Journal ArticleDOI
Low Investment Is Not the Constraint on African Development
TL;DR: This article found no evidence that private and public investment are productive, either in Africa as a whole (unless Botswana is included in the sample), or in the manufacturing sector in Tanzania, and this restricted sense, inadequate investment is not the major obstacle to African economic development.
Journal ArticleDOI
Growth and Institutions
TL;DR: This paper explored alternative conceptions of the link between social and political institutions and economic growth, including the possibility of low-income steady state institutional traps, and found that there is considerable heterogeneity between countries in the nature of the relationship between institutions and growth, throwing doubt on the validity of standard cross-sectional growth equations.
Journal ArticleDOI
Does Economic Globalization affect Regional Inequality? A Cross-country Analysis
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between economic globalization and regional inequality in a panel of 47 countries over the period 1990-2007, using a measure of globalization that distinguishes the different dimensions of economic integration.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Modern Impact of Precolonial Centralization in Africa
Nicola Gennaioli,Ilia Rainer +1 more
TL;DR: The authors found that precolonial centralization shaped the success of modernization policies in Africa by reducing policy capture by local elites, and stressed the desirability of centralization when local capture undermines socioeconomic reforms.
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.