Utilizing panel data for 19 OECD countries we find suppor t for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the US helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from 6-digit OECD export...

Natural resource discoveries, even when fairly modest in terms of the revenues they are expected to generate, can have significant macroeconomic effects and implications for the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy. In this respect, Uganda is no different from other oil-rich countries. In five...

This work shows the asymmetric effect of the reduction in transportation costs across different sectors in the process of the Great Divergence. Specifically, the analysis indicates that reductions in transportation costs of industrial goods enhance convergence of the growth rates of trading...

This work focuses on a temporary guest-worker-type migration of individuals from the middle class of the wealth distribution. The article demonstrates that the possibility of a low-skilled guest-worker employment in a higher wage foreign country lowers the relative attractiveness of the skilled...

In their famous paper on the “Big Push”, Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny (1989) show how the combination of increasing returns to scale at the firm level and pecuniary externalities can give rise to a poverty trap, thereby formalising an old idea due to Rosenstein-Rodan (1943). We develop in...

Natural resource discoveries, even when fairly modest in terms of the revenues they are expected to generate, can have significant macroeconomic effects and implications for the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy. In this respect, Uganda is no different from other oil-rich countries. In five...

This paper develops a long run growth model for a major oil exporting economy and derives conditions under which oil revenues are likely to have a lasting impact. This approach contrasts with the standard literature on the "Dutch disease" and the "resource curse", which primarily focus on short...

This work shows the asymmetric effect of the reduction in transportation costs across different sectors in the process of the Great Divergence. Specifically, the analysis indicates that reductions in transportation costs of industrial goods enhance convergence of the growth rates of trading...

Cross-country regressions suggest that urbanization and FDI are important drivers of growth. However, it is not clear that primacy eventually hurts growth performance. Since it is tough to interpret cross-country growth regressions, we provide detailed evidence on the determinants of outward FDI...

The volatility of unanticipated output growth in income per capita is detrimental to long-run development, controlling for initial income per capita, population growth, human capital, investment, openness and natural resource dependence. This effect is significant and robust over a wide range of...