Chile and Mexico experienced severe economic crises in the early 1980s. This paper analyzes four possible explanations for why Chile recovered much faster than did Mexico. Comparing data from the two countries allows us to rule out a monetarist explanation, an explanation based on falls in real...

Recent literature suggests that long-run averages of growth and inflation are only weakly correlated and such correlation is not robust to exclusion of extreme inflation observations; inclusion of time series panel data has improved matters, but an aggregate parametric approach remains...

Soviet growth over 1960-89 was the worst in the world after we control for investment and human capital; the relative performance worsens over time. The declining Soviet growth rate over 1950-87 is explained by the declining marginal product of capital; the rate of TFP growth is roughly constant...

This paper describes the empirical regularities relating fiscal policy variables, the level of development and the rate of growth. We employ historical data, recent cross-section data, and newly constructed public investment series. Our main findings are: (i) there is a strong association...

This paper explores links between policy uncertainty and growth. It provides evidence on the correlation between policy uncertainty and per capita real GDP for 46 developing countries over the 1970-85 period. Cross-section regressions on growth suggest that after accounting for standard...

This paper analyzes the structural relationship between policies that distort resource allocation and long-ten growth. It first reviews briefly the Solow model in which steady-state growth depends only on exogenous technological change. Policy distortions do affect the rate of growth in the...

Economists use micro-based and macro-based approaches to assess the effects of health on economic growth. The micro-based approach tends to find smaller effects than the macro-based approach, thus presenting a micro-macro puzzle regarding the economic return on health. We reconcile these two...

A Growing share of Emerging Markets (EMs) use hybrid versions of inflation targeting (IT) that differ from the IT regimes of OECD countries. Policy interest rates among commodity countries are impacted by real exchange rate and international reserves (IR) changes, aiming at stabilizing their...

This article reviews the global health and economic consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic, with a particular focus on topics that have seen a renewed interest because of COVID-19. We begin by providing an overview of key contextual and epidemiological details as well as the data that are...

The "Easterlin paradox" suggests that there is no link between a society's economic development and its average level of happiness. We re-assess this paradox analyzing multiple rich datasets spanning many decades. Using recent data on a broader array of countries, we establish a clear positive...