"The author assesses empirically the relationship between natural disaster risk and investment in education. Although the results in the empirical literature tend to be inconclusive, using model averaging methods in the framework of cross-country and panel regressions, this paper finds an...

"This paper asks whether new technological capacity for producing and exporting additional products provides incentives for greater capital accumulation, without being fully reflected in a higher rate of total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Using a highly disaggregated data set of each...

"The author presents evidence that balance sheet effects are critical determinants of both the likelihood of a crisis and of income losses following a crisis. She tests the validity of "insurance" and "liquidity" models of currency crisis. Both models predict that the occurrence of a balance of...

"Are natural resources a blessing or a curse? Bravo-Ortega and De Gregorio present a model in which natural resources have a positive effect on the level of income and a negative effect on its growth rate. The positive and permanent effect on income implies a welfare gain. There is a growth...

"How rich would resource-abundant countries be if they had actually followed the Hartwick Rule (invest resource rents in other assets) over the past 30 years? Hamilton, Ruta, and Tajibaeva use time series data on investments and rents on exhaustible resource extraction for 70 countries to answer...

"Lopez-de-Silanes examines the theoretical and empirical literature pertaining to securities laws and their enforcement by regulators and courts to establish what is known and what is yet unclear. Recent empirical research in the field has established that law matters. Mandatory disclosure...