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
The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation
TL;DR: Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson as discussed by the authors used estimates of potential European settler mortality as an instrument for institutional variation in former European colonies today, and they followed the lead of Curtin who compiled data on the death rates faced by European soldiers in various overseas postings.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War
James D. Fearon,David D. Laitin +1 more
TL;DR: This article showed that the current prevalence of internal war is mainly the result of a steady accumulation of protracted conflicts since the 1950s and 1960s rather than a sudden change associated with a new, post-Cold War international system.
Journal ArticleDOI
The quality of government
TL;DR: The authors investigated empirically the determinants of the quality of governments in a large cross-section of countries and found that countries that are poor, close to the equator, ethnolinguistically heterogeneous, use French or socialist laws, or have high proportions of Catholics or Muslims exhibit inferior government performance.
Posted Content
Greed and Grievance in Civil War
Paul Collier,Anke Hoeffler +1 more
TL;DR: Collier and Hoeffler as discussed by the authors compare two contrasting motivations for rebellion: greed and grievance, and show that many rebellions are linked to the capture of resources (such as diamonds in Angola and Sierra Leone, drugs in Colombia, and timber in Cambodia).
Posted Content
Financial Intermediation and Growth: Causality and Causes
TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluate whether the level of development of financial intermediaries exerts a casual influence on economic growth, and they find that financial intermediary development has a large causal impact on growth.
References
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Capital flight and political risk
TL;DR: In this paper, a two-state Markov switching model is employed to model both recessions and expansions for the United States and Germany, and strong evidence is found that monetary policy is more effective in a recession than during a boom.
BookDOI
Adjustment in Africa : lessons from country case studies
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide an assessment of structural adjustment policies undertaken by seven African countries in the mid-1980s, focusing on the specific economic and social circumstances of each country that led to the adoption of an adjustment program.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sources of stagnation in sub-Saharan Africa
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the sources of economic stagnation in sub-Saharan Africa during the 1970s and identified particular policy variables which seem to have been most significant in determining growth outcomes.