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
Bank Regulation and Supervision: What Works Best?
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors assess two broad and competing theories of government regulation: the helping hand approach, according to which governments regulate to correct market failures, and the grabbing-hand approach according to where government regulates to support political constituency.
Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War
James D. Fearon,David D. Laitin +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used data for the period 1945 to 1999 on the 161 countries that had a population of at least half a million in 1990 and found that civil war has been a far greater scourge than interstate war in this period, though it has been studied far less.
Journal ArticleDOI
Corporate Governance, Economic Entrenchment, and Growth
TL;DR: The economic entrenchment of large corporations is studied in this article, where the authors posit a relationship between the distribution of corporate control and institutional development that generates and preserves economic entropy.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Regulation of Labor
Juan Carlos Botero,Simeon Djankov,Rafael La Porta,Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes,Andrei Shleifer +4 more
TL;DR: Botero et al. as discussed by the authors investigated the regulation of labor markets through employment, collective relations, and social security laws in 85 countries and found that the political power of the left is associated with more stringent labor regulations and more generous social security systems, and that socialist, French and Scandinavian legal origin countries have sharply higher levels of labor regulation than do common law countries.
Journal ArticleDOI
Finance, inequality and the poor
TL;DR: This article found that financial development disproportionately boosts incomes of the poorest quintile and reduces income inequality, and that about 40% of the long-run impact of financial development on the income growth was due to reductions in income inequality.
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.