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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Africa's Silk Road: China and India's New Economic Frontier
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze Africa's intensifying relationships with China and India, and consider the implications of these developments for the economic future of the African continent, concluding that the opportunities engendered by China's trade and investment with Africa will not necessarily be converted into growth and poverty reduction in the region.
Journal ArticleDOI
Local determinants of African civil wars, 1970–2001
Halvard Buhaug,Jan Ketil Rød +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors disaggregate the country and let 100 × 100 km grid cells be the units of observation, and use GIS to identify regions of peace and conflict and as a tool to generate sub-national measures of key explanatory variables.
Journal ArticleDOI
Corruption, Income Distribution, and Growth
TL;DR: This paper used an encompassing framework developed by Murphy et al. (1991, 1993) to study corruption and how it affects in come distribution and growth and found that corruption affects income distribution in an inverted U-shaped way, and that corruption alone also explains a large proportion of the Gini differential in developing and industrial countries.
Posted Content
Democracies Pay Higher Wages
TL;DR: The authors found that there is a robust and statistically significant association between the extent of democratic rights and wages received by workers, both across countries and over time within countries, and that non-negligible wage improvements result from the enhancement of democratic institutions.
Journal ArticleDOI
The political economy of public goods: Some evidence from India
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use data on public goods and social structure from parliamentary constituencies in rural India to understand the allocation of these goods over the 1970s and 1980s, finding evidence of considerable equalization in many of these facilities, reflecting perhaps the importance of these commitments.
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.