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
Language and foreign trade
TL;DR: The authors proposed separate series for a common language depending upon whether ease of communication facilitates trade through translation or the ability to communicate directly, and examined the effect of two country-specific linguistic influences on trade: literacy and linguistic diversity at home.
Journal ArticleDOI
Reviving Leviathan: Fiscal Federalism and the Growth of Government
TL;DR: In this article, the authors revisited the influential "Leviathan" hypothesis, which pos- its that tax competition limits the growth of government spending in decentralized countries, and they used panel data to examine the effect of fiscal decentralization over time within countries, attempting to distinguish between decentralization that is funded by intergovernmental transfers and local taxation.
Posted ContentDOI
Income Distribution and Development
TL;DR: In this article, a review of the post-war literature on income distribution and development is presented, arguing that the literature has cycled from one consensus to another, responding to emerging policy issues and new analysis.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ethnicity and Conflict: An Empirical Study †
TL;DR: This paper examined the impact of ethnic divisions on conict and showed that ethnic polarization, ethnic fractionalization, and a Greenberg-Gini index are signicant correlates of conict.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya
TL;DR: In this article, the authors quantified the extent of ethnic favoritism using data on road building in Kenyan districts across the 1963-2011 period, and examined whether the transition in and out of democracy under the same president constrains or exacerbates ethnic favouritism, finding that districts that share the ethnicity of the president receive twice as much expenditure on roads and have five times the length of paved roads built.
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.