Using various methods estimates about the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing, transition and OECD countries are presented. The average size of the the shadow economy (in percent of GDP) over 1989-93 in developing countries in 39%, in transition countries 23% and in OECD countries 12%....

The recent financial crises, especially the debt crisis in Asia, have led to questions such as: what are their causes, what is an excessive debt and how vulnerable is an economy to external shocks? We develop an economic model of international finance and debt based upon two sources of...

The authors argue that in modelling cross-country growth models one should first identify so-called outlying observations. For the data set of Sali-i-Martin, they use the least median of squares (LMS) estimator to identify outliers. As LMS is not suited for inference, they then use reweighted...

This paper reviews the relationship between natural resources and economic growth, and stresses how natural capital tends to crowd out foreign capital, social capital, human capital, and physical capital, thereby impeding economic growth across countries and presumably also over time....

To examine how human capital accumulation influences both economic growth and income quality, we carefully endogenize the demand and supply of skills. We explicitly introduce the costs and externalities in education, and examine how both relate to learning-by-doing and R&D intensity. In...

Using a new specification, we reanalyze the data on worldwide environmental quality investigated by Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger in a well-known paper on the environmental Kuznets curve (which postulates an inverse U shaped relationship between income level and pollution). The new...

HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa has been closely associated with adverse economic effects, and could thwart the success of poverty reduction initatives. HIV/AIDS is fast eroding the health benefits, which Kenya gained in the first two decades of independence. The paper explores the different...

Education has been one of the key determinants of economic growth around the world since 1965. In this paper, we discuss three different measures of education, and consider their relationship to the distribution of income as measured by the Gini coefficient as well as to economic growth across...

Rational politicians are interested in judicial independence (JI) in order to make their promises credible. But if politicians' preferences deviate from the dicta of the judiciary, they also have incentives to renege on judicial independence. These two conflicting aspects are measured by two...