Non technical abstract: The recent empirical and theoretical literature on the political economy of development has investigated the impact of institutional quality mostly in terms of growth. Relatively less attention has been devoted to the distributional consequences of institutional...

We study the effect of primary commodities on development indicators in a sample of 86 countries over the period 1965-2005. To this purpose we employ a system of equations. We use interactive terms to estimate separate slope coefficients for Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, Central African...

COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) aims at establishing a currency union by 2025. To this end, a policy harmonisation programme and a set of convergence criteria have been set up. A number of projects to foster trade, economic and financial integration have also been...

We study whether financial openness facilitates the economic integration of formerly centrally planned economies with the EU-15. Two dimensions of economic integration are considered: cross-country convergence of per-capita incomes and bilateral trade in goods and services. We find that more...

The impact of the dependence on primary commodities for economic development is analysed within the framework of growth regressions. While there is no evidence of a generalized primary commodity curse, reliance on primary commodities does retard growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Which factors...

Media attention towards HIV-related issues has increased dramatically over the past two decades. In this paper, we test whether this growing attention is affecting donors’ disbursement of aid for HIV to African countries. We use information available on the number of articles and press...

This paper begins by documenting a significant challenge for macroeconomic policy-makers in China, namely a spatial dimension that sees considerable asynchronization in business cycle fluctuations across the country’s 31 provinces. This asynchronization points to potential benefits from...

We present an empirical model where output growth volatility and government expenditure are jointly endogenous and both are affected by policies and institutions. We ¯nd that output volatility increases government expenditure, but higher expenditure, causes greater out-put volatility. This...