Is tourism an opportunity for lagging countries in the elusive quest for growth (Easterly, 2002)? Recent empirical evidence suggests that the answer is a cautious yes. Aggregate cross-country data show that tourism specialization is likely to be associated with higher per capita GDP growth rates...

Specializing in tourism is an option available to a number of less developed countries and regions. But is it a good option? To answer this question, we have compared the relative growth performance of 14 tourism countries within a sample of 143 countries, observed during the period 1980-95....

This paper presents an integrated overview of the literature linking institutions, financial development and economic growth. From the large body of research on institutional development, the paper first selects those contributions that make it possible to study the role of institutional...

We investigate whether the degree of energy dependency of countries influences their macroeconomic performance in terms of long-run growth. Specifically, we study whether the impact of energy price changes on economic growth differs depending on a country's degree of energy dependency. There are...

The positive association between the service sector share of output and per capita income is one of the best-known regularities in all of growth and development economics. Yet there is less than complete agreement on the nature of that association. Here we identify two waves of service sector...

This paper provides new evidence on the convergence process of energy, water and food per capita consumption levels for 108 countries from 1971 to 2018, using a common data set, with VAR and panel data approach. We establish a new notion of multivariate sigma and beta-convergence. The results...

Exploiting a unique empirical setting, 1,000 vendors in 90 traditional food markets in Lima, we document that historic social ties among market founders are associated, decades later, with stricter formal (third party) enforcement of market rules, more collective action, and the greater...