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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Journal ArticleDOI
Culture and Public Goods: The Case of Religion and the Voluntary Provision of Environmental Quality
Ann L. Owen,Julio Videras +1 more
TL;DR: This article used latent class analysis to characterize individuals into systems of religious beliefs and found that some types of beliefs influence pro-environment behaviors and attitudes, even after controlling for religious affiliation, political views and activism and socio-demographic characteristics.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the Dynamics of Ethnic Fractionalization
TL;DR: In this article, the authors construct a new panel data set with measures of ethnic, linguistic, and religious fractionalization for 26 former communist countries covering the period from 1989 to 2002, and show that transition economies became more ethnically homogeneous over such a short period of time.
Posted Content
Redistributive Public Employment
TL;DR: This article showed that city employment is significantly higher in cities where income inequality and ethnic fragmentation are higher, and that politicians use public employment as a redistributive device in order to circumvent opposition to explicit tax-transfer schemes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Fiscal Decentralization in Rentier Regions: Evidence from Russia
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that governments in regions that rely heavily on intergovernmental transfers and natural resource rents face serious distortions in their incentive structure, and as a result, such regions tend to have more fiscally centralized governments than the regional characteristics would suggest.
Journal ArticleDOI
The influence of capital controls on long run growth: Where and how much?
TL;DR: The authors show that the degree of ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity in a country plays a significant role in explaining the effects of capital controls on economic growth, whereas for countries with high degrees of homogeneity, capital controls actually have a net positive effect on economic development.
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.