The role of the state in promoting development is well established in the institutional economics literature. Yet, in recent decades the attention has been turned to the opposite side of the spectrum. Facing high levels of poverty and showing a slower progress in achieving development outcomes,...

Recent evidence from an exhaustive political economy study of growth of African economies- the growth project of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) suggests that 'policy syndromes' have substantially contributed to the generally poor growth in sub-Saharan Africa during...

This paper addresses the issue of the impact of aid supply on aid effectiveness. We proceed in two steps. First, we review research works that deal with the problem of governance in donor-recipient relationships and are susceptible of highlighting effects of aggregate aid availability. Second,...

This study revisits the effect of aid on the quality of institutions and examines the effects of a major source of instability, namely terms-of-trade instability, on the quality of democracy. We take advantage of previous empirical findings which explain the role of aid in mitigating the adverse...

There are large volumes of gas offshore Tanzania, which has raised hopes of a boom. But those hopes look set to be disappointed. A boom would depend on there being a sizeable flow of revenue to government from producing and exporting gas. This paper sets out the scale of the gas, and the array...

A significant natural resource discovery creates excited popular expectations of imminent wealth. But the size of a boom is usually overestimated and the delay in receiving revenues is underestimated. This paper takes stock of the sequencing, timing, and scale of the development of a natural...

Corruption is widely believed to negatively affect economic growth. However, many East and Southeast Asia countries either achieved or currently are achieving impressively rapid economic growth despite widespread corruption - the 'East Asian Paradox'. Is this negative relationship equally likely...

This paper re-examines the determinants and consequences of redistribution in light of improved data and methods relative to earlier literature. In particular, we use the latest version of the UNU-WIDER' Income Inequality Database to have the best available estimates of both pre- and...

This paper examines the connections of structural change and economic openness to labour productivity growth using a panel data set of 41 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1991-2015. A dynamic panel model of cross-country productivity growth is estimated using the least squares with...

This paper proposes an empirical framework that relates poverty reduction to production growth. We use the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database to measure the contribution to growth of productivity improvements within sectors and structural change-the reallocation of workers across...