Do openness to trade and higher levels of human capital promote faster productivity growth? That they do is a key implication of several versions of endogenous growth theory. To answer the question we use panel data on 93 countries spanning the 1970-2000 period. Controlling for fixed effects as...

Do openness to trade and higher levels of human capital growth promote faster growth? To answer that question we use a panel of countries to investigate the role of human capital and two measures of openness in determining both the level of income and its growth rate. We argue that focusing on...

This paper studies the distributional impact of commodity price shocks over the both the short and very long run. Using a GARCH model, we find that Australia experienced more volatility than many commodity exporting developing countries over the periods 1865-1940 and 1960-2007. A single equation...

This paper introduces new data on climatic conditions to empirical tests of growth theories. We find that, since 1960, temperate countries have converged towards high levels of income while tropical nations have converged towards various income levels associated with economic scale and the...

Why do so many African governments consistently impose high tax rates and make little investment in productive public goods when alternative policies could yield greater tax revenues and higher national income? We posit and test an intertemporal political economy model in which the government...

Using data from a randomized control trial in Sri Lanka, this paper explores whether cash and in-kind grants helped microenterprises approach the productivity level of SMEs. The paper first estimates production functions and subsequently treatment effects on TFP levels. Most significantly, more...

When the Tanzanian government formalized over 200,000 informal land claims by granting leasehold titles to residents of unplanned settlements in Dar es Salaam in 2004, a few neighborhoods in the initial plan were excluded due to missing satellite photos. We examine the impact of this low-cost,...

We focus on the management of highly persistent shocks to aid flows, including HIPC or MDG-related increases in net flows, in the presence of currency substitution by the domestic private sector. Such shocks have beneficent long-run effects, but when currency substitution is high they can...

This paper uses a 13-year panel of individuals in Tanzania to assess how adult mortality shocks affect both short and long-run consumption growth of surviving household members. Using unique data which tracks individuals from 1991 to 2004, we examine consumption growth, controlling for a set of...

This paper analyses whether agricultural information flows give rise to social learning effects in banana cultivation in Nyakatoke, a small Tanzanian village. Based on a village census, full information is available on socio-economic characteristics and banana production of farmer kinship...