The authors reexamine the role of financial market development in the intersectoral allocation of resources. First, they characterize the assumptions underlying previous work in this area, in particular, that of Rajan and Zingales (1998). The authors argue that Rajan and Zingales (1998)...

The results of this paper challenge the conventional wisdom in the literature that productivity plays no role in the economic development of Singapore. Properly accounting for market power and returns to scale technology, the estimated average productivity growth is twice as large as the...

Since Vietnam's adoption of the doi moi or renovation policy in 1986, the country has been undergoing the transition from central planning to a socialist market-oriented economy. This has translated into strong economic growth, led by the industrial sector, which expanded more than 13 percent a...

Africa's economic history since 1960 fits the classical definition of tragedy: potential unfulfilled with disastrous consequences. The authors use one mehthodology - cross-country regressions - to account for sub-Saharan Africa's growth performance over the past 30 years and to suggest policies...

Lederman and Maloney examine the empirical relationships between trade structure and economic growth, particularly the influence of natural resource abundance, export concentration, and intra-industry trade. They test the robustness of these relationships across proxies, control variables, and...

The Harrod-Domar growth model supposedly died long ago. But for more than 40 years, economists working on developing countries have applied -and still apply- the Harrod-Domar model to calculate short-run investment requirements for a target growth rate. They then calculate a financing gap...

Output collapses, and crises are a fact of life. Severe economic downturns occur periodically, and have grave consequences on the poor. The authors propose a new measurement for economic downside risk, and severity: Growth at risk. Similar to the concept of Value at Risk in finance, Growth at...

The authors rely on a series of growth accounting exercises to determine whether the growth rate of total factor productivity (TFP) or the unexplained portion of GDP growth (after controlling for the accumulation of capital per worker) in 18 Latin American and Caribbean economies has benefited...

This paper assesses the effects of knowledge on economic growth. By using an array of indicators, each of which represents an aspect of knowledge, as independent variables in cross-section regressions that span 92 countries for the period 1960 to 2000, they show that knowledge is a significant...

Dracunculiasis (or Guinea worm disease) was endemic in several African countries as well as in India, Pakistan, and Yemen. The past decade, however, has seen a remarkable decline in the incidence of dracunculiasis as a result of the Global Dracunculiasis Eradication Campaign. The authors compare...