Sri Lanka allocates considerable resources to maintaining universities each year; however, there has not been any empirical investigation of the impact of university education on national output. The paper covers the period 1959-2008, a period that includes substantial changes in economic...

This paper investigates the financial and housing wealth effects on aggregate private consumption in Turkey for the period 1987-2007. Given the lack of data, the study proposes an innovative method to construct a proxy for the housing wealth series. A long-run equilibrium relationship between...

The paper studies the effect of resource abundance on human development. A simple theory is presented to show that resource abundance negatively affects human development through its effect on inequality. The prediction of the theory is then tested using a system of three equations. Estimates...

A system of three endogenous equations is used to estimate the determinants of poverty eduction. The system incorporates: (i) the direct effect of growth and income inequality on poverty, (ii) the feedback effect of poverty on inequality and growth, and (iii) different channels through which...

In global context, as human capital embodies technology, international student flows may play an important role as a channel of R&D spillovers from developed countries to less developed ones. Empirical study on a data set of 76 developing countries during 1998-2005 lends strong support to this...

Life-cycle theory predicts ageing exerting long-term macroeconomic impacts through the reduction of private savings. Ageing can be brought either through a fall in fertility rates or a rise in longevity. However, empirical research studying macroeconomic determinants of savings generally regard...

This article re-examines the relationship between fiscal decentralisation and economic growth by employing Bayesian model averaging (BMA). BMA enables the consideration of a range of measures of fiscal decentralisation and allows the incorporation of model uncertainty into the empirical...

Africa is a case of structural change without industrialization and without diversification. Agriculture�s decline was matched by an increase in services and non-manufacturing industry, with manufacturing remaining low and stagnant throughout the post-colonial period. To what extent do...

This paper investigates the determinants of fiscal decentralisation, focusing in particular on the impact of the level of income on the level of fiscal decentralisation. Various measures of fiscal decentralisation, several of them novel in this context, are employed in a cross-country...

On the question of whether natural resources kill growth, the jury is still out. While waiting for a decision, we provide evidence that Mother Nature is responsible for slowing down social development over and above any effect it might have on income or growth. We define social development by a...