"Prevailing measures of relative poverty put an implausibly high weight on relative deprivation, such that measured poverty does not fall when all incomes grow at the same rate. This stems from the (implicit) assumption in past measures that very poor people incur a negligible cost of social...

Not surprisingly, extreme negative export price shocks reduce growth. But these adverse effects can be mitigated through offsetting increases in aid. Indeed, targeting aid to countries experiencing negative shocks appears to be even more important for aid effectiveness than targeting aid to...

Analysis of a panel data set for 1976-98 shows that on balance stock markets and banks positively influence economic growth; findings that do not result from biases induced by simultaneity, omitted variables, or unobserved country-specific effects

New tools allow one to study the incidence of economic growth by initial level of income, and to measure the rate of pro-poor growth in an economy. An application is provided using data for China in the 1990s

The authors analyze sectoral growth in Ecuador using multivariate cointegration analysis. They find significant long-run relationships between the agricultural industrial and service sectors. Moreover, they are able to derive dynamic sector models that combine the short-run links between the...

Focusing mainly on industry has not been optimal policy in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Zimbabwe. For maximum economywide growth, it would have been better to balance policies to facilitate growth in all three sectors: agriculture, industry, and services