This paper documents the steady increase in intraregional trade in sub-Saharan Africa since 1980, links this rise to important growth spillovers in the region, and identifies the main source countries and those most vulnerable to the economic conditions of others. Estimates show that in the...

We discuss regional disparities in economic performance and living standards. We first set out some key facts, and provide a conceptual framework to help analyze whether such disparities are efficient, or instead reflect market and/or policy failures. We examine whether policy attempts to reduce...

The global boom in hydrocarbon, metal and mineral prices since the year 2000 created huge economic rents - rents which, once invested, were widely expected to promote productivity growth in other parts of the booming economies, creating a lasting legacy of the boom years. This paper asks whether...

China's rapid overall growth since 1978 masks significant differences in relative economic performance across its provinces. This paper finds that, while per capita income of poor provinces are catching up with those in the rich, the relative income distribution appears to be stratifying into a...

We look at a part of the spatial angle of economic growth. We introduce a new measure Spatial Population Concentration (SPC) that captures the weighted average population surrounding every person within a geographic area. The weights are a function of the distance between the person in question...

Since the 1980s inflationary pressures seem to materialize overproportionately outside of the sectors of consumer goods and services. We combine the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices with indices for asset prices, such as stocks and real estate, as well as the costs of public goods to develop...

This paper examines the impact of financial depth on macroeconomic volatility using a dynamic panel analysis for 110 advanced and developing countries. We find that financial depth plays a significant role in dampening the volatility of output, consumption, and investment growth, but only up to...

Using a newly constructed dataset on trade in services for 192 countries from 1970 to 2014, this paper shows that services currently constitute one-fourth of world trade and an increasingly important component of global production. A detailed analysis of patterns and stylized facts reveals that...

The importance of the prehistoric migration of anatomically modern humans from Africa for comparative economic development has been the focus of a vibrant research agenda in the past decade. This influential literature has attracted the attention of some scholars from other disciplines, and in...