The emerging European economies have been converging rapidly towards the more advanced European economies in recent years. However, large external imbalances in parts of the region have raised questions about sustainability and concerns about vulnerabilities. Empirical evidence in this paper...

This paper studies the potential for the export sector to play a more important role in promoting growth in Central America, Panama, and the Dominican Republic (CAPDR) through deeper intra-regional and global trade integration. CAPDR countries have enacted many free trade agreements and other...

The “middle-income trap” is the phenomenon of hitherto rapidly growing economies stagnating at middle-income levels and failing to graduate into the ranks of high-income countries. In this study we examine the middle-income trap as a special case of growth slowdowns, which are identified as...

Economic stagnation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has led several economists to question the region’s ability to attain sustained economic growth, some of them arguing for the need to shift away from natural resource - based exports. Yet, we find that low growth has not been common to all...

We analyze the growth impact of official development assistance to developing countries. Our approach is different from that of previous studies in two major ways. First, we disentangle the effects of two kinds of aid: developmental and non-developmental. Second, our specifications allow for the...

This paper presents empirical evidence on convergence of per capita output for regions within six large middle-income Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. It explores the role played by several exogenous sectoral shocks and differences in steady states...

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between trade and income. While most economists agree that increased trade leads to an increase in average income, economic theory is ambiguous about the possible effects on the long-run growth rate of the economy. Using a dynamic panel data model,...

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the impact of NAFTA on growth and business cycles in Mexico. The effect of the agreement in spurring a dramatic increase in trade and financial flows between Mexico and its NAFTA partners, and its impact on Mexican economic growth and business...

During 2001-07, increases in mature market volatility were associated with declines in forex returns for East Asian countries, consistent with an overall ""flight to safety"" effect. Estimates from GARCH models suggest that a 5 percentage point increase in mature market equity volatility...

There is world-wide convergence in life expectancy, despite little convergence in GDP per capita. If one values longer life much more than material happiness, the world living standards may this have already converged substantially. This paper introduces the concept of the dynastic general...