Investment in research and development (R&D) affects a country's total factor productivity. Recently new theories of economic growth have emphasized this link and have also identified a number of channels through which a country's R&D affects total factor productivity of its trade partners....

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...

The majority of microfinance impact studies focus on finding their effect on a specific group of beneficiaries, in contrast we aim to identify the impact on whole economies (economic growth, and financial sector development and reductions in income inequalities), which is an important policy...

Growth and structural transformation of the manufacturing sector in developing countries are generally considered to be the result of the expansion of the `modern' (large-scale) sector relative to the `traditional' (small-scale) sector. Examining the sources of labour productivity growth in...

This is an attempt to derive broad, strategic lessons from the diverse experience with economic growth in last 50 years. The paper revolves around two key arguments. One is that neo-classical economic analysis is a lot more flexible than its practitioners in the policy domain have generally...

Some channels through which increased inflation tends to reduce economic growth, and vice versa, are studied within a simple model incorporating money into an optimal growth framework with constant returns to capital. The model includes the potential impact of inflation on: (a) saving through...

We investigate the impact of within-country spatial concentration of economic activity on country-level growth, using cross-section OLS and dynamic panel GMM estimation. Agglomeration is measured alternatively through measures of urbanization and through indices of spatial concentration based on...

The paper reviews the economic performance of the Republic of Ireland since 1945. Its focus is comparative: Ireland's record is assessed against the evidence in OECD and Penn Mark V datasets for a `convergence club' of European economies, and is found wanting. The comparison confirms that the...

We model technological and financial innovation as reflecting the decisions of profit maximizing agents and explore the implications for economic growth. We start with a Schumpeterian endogenous growth model where entrepreneurs earn monopoly profits by inventing better goods and financiers arise...

We study how barriers to competition - such as, restrictions to business start-up and strict enforcement of covenants or IPR - affect the investment in knowledge capital when contracts are not enforceable. These barriers lower the competition for human capital and reduce the incentive to...