In this paper, we argue that the case for universal compulsory education for sub-Saharan Africa might have been overstated. We capture the African situation through a heterogeneous-agent model, in which high costs of education relative to income and the skill premium cause the economy to...

In this paper, we present evidence that policy volatility exerts a strong and direct negative impact on growth. Using data for 93 countries, we construct measures of policy volatility based on the standard deviation of the residuals from country-specific regressions of government consumption on...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the role of macroeconomic policy-mix in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially the goal of poverty reduction. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs descriptive approach and provides an analytical...

Many countries have failed to use natural resource wealth to promote growth and development. They have been damaged by volatility of revenues, have failed to save a sufficiently high proportion of their resource revenues and failed to make high return investments to support diversification of...

In the modern globalized economy there are some concepts which are very important for the current socio-economic system. One of them is competition. A specific field that competition has spread is geography; i.e. competition among territorial units (cities, regions or states). There are scholars...

Many countries have failed to use natural resource wealth to promote growth and development. They have been damaged by the volatility of revenues and have failed to save a sufficiently high proportion of their resource revenues and failed to make high-return investments to support...

The remarkable economic transformations in China and India in recent decades have been accompanied by almost equally remarkable different development patterns. For example, the empirical data during 1985–2004 show that, compared with India, China’s economy has exhibited (i) considerably...

This paper presents evidence that the spread between the marginal product of capital and the return on financial assets is mich higher in poor than in rich countries. A model with costly intermediation is developed. In this economy, individuals choose at each instant whether to work or to...

There is a significant controversy among academics and policy-makers about whether policies matter for economic growth. Recently, Acemoglu et al. (2003) and Easterly (2004) have presented empirical evidence against the commonly held view that policies play an important role in the process of...

A windfall of foreign aid or natural resource revenue faces government with choices of how to manage public borrowing, public asset accumulation, and the distribution of funds to households (across time and household types), particularly when the windfall is both anticipated and temporary. These...