A single equation model is inadequate to capture the various transmission channels linking civil war to per-capita income. Therefore, this paper uses a system of four equations to estimate the economic cost of civil con‡ ict. In the system, con‡ is allowed ict to a¤ect per-capita...

We ask which economic policies can help a country create the most favourable conditions for development. We observe that the dynamics of several development indicators can be grouped into four clusters, each cluster corresponding to a different combination of growth and changes in inequality....

We study the nexus between natural resources and growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and find that SSA is indeed special: resources dependence retards growth in SSA, but not elsewhere. The natural resources curse is thus specific to SSA. We then show that this specificity does not depend on the...

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...

This paper proposes a three-equations empirical representation of the channels linking capital account liberalization (CAL) and economic growth. System estimates indicate that CAL determines growth through financial development and openness to trade. The residual effect of CAL on growth after...

Despite the recent growth resurgence, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains the poorest region in the world. At the same time, it is a region that heavily relies on natural resources. In this paper we investigate the extent to which the second fact helps explain the first one. The distinctive feature...

We investigate the effect of remittances on bank credit in developing countries. Understanding this link is important in view of the growing relevance of remittances as a source of external finance and of the beneficial impact that financial intermediation is likely to have on economic growth....

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...