The purpose of this paper is to reassess the standard Solow growth model,using a dynamic panel data approach. A new methodology is chosen to deal with this problem. First, unit root tests for individual country time series were run. Second, panel data unit root and cointegration tests were...

Sparked by examples from the third world, hundreds of microenterprise programmes have been started in the first world. Will they be successful? This paper reviews the evidence and concludes that microenterprise development is more difficult in the first world. For example, the microenterprise...

Can scoring models help microfinance lenders in poor countries as much as they have helped credit-card lenders in rich countries? I model the probability that loans from a microlender in Bolivia had arrears of 15 days or more. Although arrears in microfinance depend on many factors difficult to...

Institutions either promote or constrain economic performance, but which part of institutions does so, and why do economies sharing similar institutions sometimes perform differently? This paper applies a novel model that is capable of separating infrastructural and superstructural effects of...

This paper decomposes the large regression residuals of income across 84 U.S. Native American economies (USNAEs) into Solow and Solow-like parts. Decomposition is accomplished algebraically. The calculations find a weak to negative correlation between income and Solow residuals, and a strong...

This paper presents a scoring model that predicts the risk of drop-out for borrowers at a microfinance lender in Bolivia. Drop-out risk was greater for women, manufacturers, newer borrowers, and those with more arrears. Out-of-sample tests suggest that scoring may help microfinance lenders to...

In theory, the IMF could influence economic growth via several channels, among them advice to policy makers, money disbursed under its programs, and its conditionality. This paper tries to separate those effects empirically. Using panel data for 98 countries over the period 1970-2000 it analyzes...

We analyse the effect of IMF and World Bank policies on the composite index of economic freedom by Gwartney et al. (2000) as well as its sub- indexes, using a panel of 85 countries observed between 1970 and 1997. With respect to the Bank, we find that the number of projects has a positive impact...

Factor-endowment based trade with the leading economy helps to explain the differing development performances of the Americas and East Asia in the past two centuries. Between 1830 and 1945, labor-abundant Britain, the most advanced country, traded heavily with land-abundant countries in the...