We use data from the Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC) database to perform preliminary empirical analysis of the interplay between quality and quantity of finance in accounting for the output growth of ten sectors. We review the existing literature and some salient open questions...

This paper identifies factors associated with takeoff -- a sustained period of high growth following a period of stagnation. We examine a panel of 241 "stagnation episodes" from 146 countries, 54 % of these episodes are followed by takeoffs. Countries that experience takeoffs average 2.3% annual...

Since the early 1980s, wage dispersion and the ratio of skilled to unskilled employment have increased significantly in several industrial countries. A number of economists have attributed these trends to skill-biased technical progress. This paper studies the wage and employment effects of...

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 paper examines the degree to which the learning by doing externality [LBD] calls for an undervalued exchange rate, a policy suggested by recent empirical studies which concluded that mildly undervalued real exchange rate may enhance growth. We obtain mixed results. For an economy where LBD...

This paper identifies factors associated with takeoff -- a sustained period of high growth following a period of stagnation. We examine a panel of 241 "stagnation episodes" from 146 countries, 54 % of these episodes are followed by takeoffs. Countries that experience takeoffs average 2.3% annual...

This paper evaluates optimal public investment and fiscal policy for countries characterized by limited tax and debt capacities. We study a non stochastic CRS endogenous growth model where public expenditure is an input in the production process, in countries where distortions and limited...

The sizable hoarding of international reserves by several East Asian countries has been frequently attributed to a modern version of monetary mercantilism -- hoarding international reserves in order to improve competitiveness. From a long-run perspective, manufacturing exporters in East Asia...

This paper studies the experience of Latin-America [LATAM] with financial liberalization in the 1990s. The rush towards financial liberalizations in the early 1990s was associated with expectations that external financing would alleviate the scarcity of saving in LATAM, thereby increasing...

This paper clarifies one of the puzzling results of the economic growth literature: the impact of military expenditure is frequently found to be non-significant or negative, yet most countries spend a large fraction of their GDP on defense and the military. We start by empirical evaluation of...