Oil discoveries can constitute a major positive and exogenous shock to economic activity, but the resource curse hypothesis would suggest they might also be detrimental to growth over the long run. This paper utilizes a new methodology for estimating growth underperformance to examine the extent...

Nigeria's oil boom has not brought an end to perennial stagnation in the non-oil economy. Is this the unavoidable consequence of the resource boom or have misguided policies contributed? This paper indicates that the extreme volatility of expenditure rather than Dutch Disease effects are behind...

This paper explores the conditions under which public spending could minimize violent conflict related to oil wealth. Previous work suggests that oil can lead to violent conflict because it increases the value of the state as a prize or because it undermines the state's bureaucratic penetration....

Although emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) weathered the global recession a decade ago relatively well, they now appear less well placed to cope with the substantial downside risks facing the global economy. In many EMDEs, the room for monetary and fiscal policies to respond to...

Using firm-level data covering 709 cities in 128 countries, this paper examines the role of a comprehensive list of business environment variables at the subnational level in explaining firm employment and productivity growth. The analysis finds basic protection, access to finance and...

This paper examines the causal relationship between energy efficiency and economic growth based on panel data for 56 high- and middle-income countries from 1978 to 2012. Using a panel vector autoregression approach, the study finds evidence of a long-run Granger causality from economic growth to...