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
Political capabilities, policy risk, and international investment strategy: evidence from the global electric power generation industry †
TL;DR: This article found that firms from home countries characterized by weaker institutional constraints on policy makers or greater redistributive pressures associated with political rent seeking will be less sensitive to host-country policy risk in their international expansion strategies.
Book ChapterDOI
Chapter 8 Growth Econometrics
TL;DR: A survey and synthesis of econometric tools that have been employed to study economic growth can be found in this article, where the main stylized facts that have motivated the development of growth econometrics, the major statistical tools used to provide structural explanations for these facts, and the primary statistical issues that arise in the study of growth data.
Journal ArticleDOI
Trade liberalisation and growth in developing countries
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that problems with mis-specification and the diversity of liberalisation indices used are in part responsible for the inconclusiveness of the evidence on its growth enhancing effects.
Journal ArticleDOI
Human Capital and Regional Development
TL;DR: This paper investigated the determinants of regional development using a newly constructed database of 1569 sub-national regions from 110 countries covering 74 percent of the world surface and 97 percent of its GDP.
ReportDOI
The size and scope of government: Comparative politics with rational politicians ¤
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors try to demonstrate how economists may engage in research on comparative politics, relating the size and composition of government spending to the political system, and find strong and robust support for the prediction that the size of government is smaller under presidential regimes, and weaker support that majoritarian elections are associated with less public goods.
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.