Several recent papers suggest that the negative association between natural resource intensity and economic growth can be reversed if institutional quality is high enough. We try to understand this result in more detail by decomposing the resource measure, using alternative measures of both...

This paper identifies factors associated with takeoff - a sustained period of high growth following a period of stagnation. We examine a panel of 241 stagnation episodes" from 146 countries, 54 % of these episodes are followed by takeoffs. Countries that experience takeoffs average 2.3% annual...

The article provides a broad-based overview on competing development strategies and the economic performance of developing countries, mainly since the year 2000. Four traditional mainstream development strategies are discussed (Washington Consensus, neo-liberalism, "good governance" and MDGs)...

This article assesses the recent performance of the Turkish economy, questioning whether the currently observed unusual boom conditions will lead to a process of sustainable growth. The latest phase of Turkish neo-liberal transformation in the post-2001 era is placed in a broader historical and...

This study uses heterogeneous panel Granger causality tests to investigate the causal relationships between quality of governance and economic growth at the provincial level in China during the reform era. I find a significant and positive effect of economic growth on subsequent quality of...

We use two types of cross-country growth regression models to revisit explanations of slow growth in Africa looking at growth rate variation among African countries only. Both sets of models produce results that are surprising given conclusions based on global sample: within Africa, we .nd...

We analyze how adding the shadow economy to official output figures affects technical efficiency. We find that this only slightly affects the ranking of efficiency scores, but increases average efficiency. Our results are robust to the functional form of the production technology and the...

To study whether foreign aid fuels personal, regional and ethnic favoritism, we use satellite data on nighttime light for any region in any aid-recipient country, and we determine for each year and each country the region in which the current political leader was born. Having a panel with 22,850...

This paper analyses how tax morale and countries’ institutional quality affect the shadow economy, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a variety of potential factors. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these factors to understand the level and changes of...

This paper analyses how governance or institutional quality and tax morale affect the shadow economy, using an international country panel and also within country data. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these factors to understand the level and changes of shadow...