Showing 1 - 10 of 56
This paper discusses the recent literature on the role of the state in economic development. It concludes that government incentives to enact sound policies are key to economic success. It also discusses the evidence on what happens after episodes of economic and political liberalizations,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011450487
Even before the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis and ongoing European debt crisis, much attention has been given to the re-emergence of the Asian giants, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and India. Both countries have attained unprecedented growth and economic development-PRC and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011444894
Africa's interior-to-coast roads are well suited to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011966676
Formal conceptions of state capacity have mostly focused on indirect measures of state capacity - by, for instance, using the state's fiscal or extractive capacity as a proxy for its overall capacity. Yet, this input or extractive view of state capacity falls short, especially since...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014463568
. Following the decentralization theorem, the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness, since local decision …-makers are better informed about local needs. At the same time, decentralization has reverse effects, e.g., through coordination … consider how both anti-poverty instruments - financial assistance and decentralization - work together. -- foreign aid ; growth …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003887528
While the short-term growth consequences of natural disasters are comparatively well studied, there is little knowledge how disasters affect long-run growth. Based on truly exogenous storm indicators, derived from a meteorological database, we show that the growth effects of tropical storms go...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011521860
Exploiting a novel geo-referenced data set of population diversity across ethnic groups, this research advances the hypothesis and empirically establishes that variation in population diversity across human societies, as determined in the course of the exodus of human from Africa tens of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011645955
Chinese aid comes with few strings attached, allowing recipient country leaders to use it for domestic political purposes. The vulnerability of Chinese aid to political capture has prompted speculation that it may be economically ineffective, or even harmful. We test these claims by estimating...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012033099
We study the implications of two historical institutions, direct British rule, and the heterogeneous land tenure institutions implemented by the British, on disparity in present day development using district level data from India. Using nightlights per capita as a proxy for district level per...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012508730
We present a new aggregation method - called SVM algorithm - and use this technique to produce novel measures of democracy (186 countries, 1960-2014). The method takes its name from a machine learning technique for pattern recognition and has three notable features: it makes functional...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011804191