Social instability is a concept that economists rarely analyse, and yet it can lurk behind much economic policy-making.  China’s leadership has often publicly expressed its concerns to avoid ‘social instability’.  It is viewed as a threat both to the political order and to...

The current paper demonstrates a dochotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade (TOT), employing as case studies the following two African countries: Botswana and Nigeria.  Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of TOT on output is positive and...

The paper examines the notion of a 'developmental state' and shows that China possesses the characteristics of a developmental state.  It explains the political economy which generated such a state in China and in some other economies.  It analyses the methods and mechanisms that were...

This paper uses the pooled mean group estimator and an extended annual dataset to examine the effectiveness of aid on growth. The results indicate a significant long-run impact of aid on growth, but conditioning aid on `good` policy reduces the long-run growth rate.

This paper provides micro-level evidence that drug advertising regulations and inspections in China are used by local governments to discriminate against firms from outside the province.  Furthermore, the degree of discrimination varies across firms in that drug manufacturers which have closer...

This paper surveys the experience of economic growth in the 20th century with a focus on technological change at the frontier together with issues related to success and failure in catch-up growth.  A detailed account of growth performance based on historical national accounts data is given and...

The spatial distribution of oil is determined by natural geography alone. However, we show that the distribution of oil exploration is affected by the quality of countries’ institutions. A global data set on the precise location of oil wells and national borders allows for a regression...

Recent decades have seen a considerable expansion of global trade and a simultaneous decline in inflation volatility. This paper investigates whether greater openness to trade helps achieve inflation stability. Using panel data for a sample of developing and industrial countries over the period...

Millennium development goal (MDG) of poverty reduction aims for halving of the head-count ratio over the period 1990-2015. Available studies draw attention to the gap between observed and required growth rates, the difficulties of sustaining the latter over time, and whether the policy stance of...

This paper examines the impact of mass media and information and communications technologies (ICT) as knowledge-based infrastructures on economic development. The results strongly suggest that both mass media and ICT penetration are negatively associated with corruption. This result holds across...