Why it is so hard to find a robust effect of aid on the long-term growth of poor countries, even those with good policies. A possible offset to the beneficial effects of aid is examined using a methodology that exploits both cross-country and within-country variation.

The authors examine the effects of aid on the growth of manufacturing using a methodology that exploits the variation within countries and across manufacturing sectors and that corrects for possible reverse causality. They find that aid inflows have systematic adverse effects on a...

This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: the export of skills, embodied in goods, services or capital from poorer to richer countries. A set of stylized facts is presented. Using a measure which combines the sophistication of a country’s exports with the...

The current perspective on the flow of people is almost exclusively focused on permanent migration from poorer to richer countries and on immigration policies in industrial countries. This perspective needs to cede to a broader one that challenges the basic conception of physical rootedness in...

The contemporary approach to political economy is built around vested interests -- elites,  lobbies, and rent-seeking groups which get their way at the expense of the general public. The ...

Much more than comparative advantage and free markets have been at play in shaping China's export success. Government policies have helped nurture domestic capabilities in consumer electronics and other advanced areas that would most likely not have developed in their absence. As a result, China...

South Africa has undergone a remarkable transformation since its democratic transition in 1994, but economic growth and employment generation have been disappointing. Most worryingly, unemployment is currently among the highest in the world. While the proximate cause of high unemployment is that...

There has been a very rapid rise since the early 1990s in foreign reserves held by developing countries. These reserves have climbed to almost 30 percent of developing countries' GDP and 8 months of imports. Assuming reasonable spreads between the yield on reserve assets and the cost of foreign...