Simple plots of data show that malaria has a negative correlation with national income per capita, whether looking across countries at a point in time, or looking at a single country over time. Some countries have been able to move from an equilibrium characterized by low income and high...

We analyze the economic impacts of floods using new data on 3,184 large flood events in 118 countries between 1985 and 2008. We use panel vector auto-regressions to trace the dynamic response of output to three types of flood shocks. Our results robustly indicate that flood shocks tend to have a...

This paper presents some evidence of a positive effect of Agriculture R&D investment on economic growth in general dynamic setting using annual data for 57 developing countries for the period 1981-2010. The potential endogeneity of Research and Development Investment is also addressed to...

The bifurcation of Zambia's agricultural land markets prevents smallholder farmers from participating in modern food marketing channels. High transaction costs in terms of time and financial resources make conversion of customary land into commercial land title prohibitively expensive for...

The paper reviews the theoretical and the empirical case for public investment in education in India. Though the theoretical literature provides a backing for such a policy, the empirical literature fails to find a robust relation between education expenditure and growth. Expenditure on...

Satellite-detected luminosity is sometimes used to proxy for economic activity although only recently within the mainstream economics literature (Henderson et al., 2012). If this method works it holds great promise for developing countries with weak statistical systems that face difficulties in...