Although conventional wisdom suggests that reducing military spending may improve a country’s economic growth performance, empirical studies have produced ambiguous results. This paper extends a standard growth model and estimates it using techniques that exploit both cross-section and...

Several recent empirical studies have examined determinants of economic growth using country average (cross-section) data. In contrast, this paper employs a technique for using a panel of both cross-section and time-series data for 98 industrial and developing countries over 1960-85 to determine...

This paper proposes a model of endogenous economic growth and distribution explicitly incorporating social extraction and political competition, with an application to the Philippine historical experience. The major objective is to explain developments in the distribution of national income and...

The model developed here postulates that learning through experience plays a critical role in raising labor productivity over time, with three major consequences. First, the steady-state growth rate (of output) becomes endogenous and is influenced by government policies. Second, the speed of...

This paper provides an analytic overview of independent currency authorities (ICAs), sometimes called currency boards. ICAs issue and redeem domestic currency against an exchange standard on demand and back such operations through a 100 percent marginal foreign reserve cover. They also impose...

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical aspects of the relationship between macroeconomic policies and the long-run rate of growth of GNP. The macroeconomic policies examined include fiscal policies, monetary and interest rate policies, external policies, and policies to reform the...

A robust empirical determinant of long-term economic growth in many developing countries has been the expansion and diversification of the export sector. The latter, in turn, has been influenced by capital accumulation and economic growth. The growth model developed here explores this...

This paper studies the apparent contradictions between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity. On the one hand, the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by, for instance, private domestic credit...

This paper examines the determinants of growth for nine South Pacific countries during the period 1971-93, using the analytical framework of the Solow-Swan neoclassical growth model. Chamberlain’s II-matrix estimator is used to account for unobserved country-specific heterogeneity in the...

This paper analyzes common economic patterns across countries and economic sectors in Latin America, East Asia and Europe for the period 1970–94 by means of an error-components model that decomposes real value added growth in each country into common international effects, sector-specific...