We explore the effect of foreign direct investment on economic growth in developing countries, distinguishing between mergers and acquisitions ("M&As") and "greenfield" investment. A simple model captures the key difference between the two types of FDI: unlike greenfield investment, M&As partly...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is one of the most ambiguous and the least understood concepts in international economics. Common debate on FDI is confounded by several myths regarding its nature and impact on capital accumulation, technological progress, industrialization and growth. It is...

This is a study of 42 developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America in which we first examine the impact of trade liberalisation on economic growth, investment share of GDP, openness, trade balance and current accounts (as percentages of GDP). Both panel data and country by country data...

Of the world's 6.7 billion people (as of 2008), 1.3 billion lived on less than $1.25 Purchasing Power Parity dollars per person per day and another 1.7 billion lived on between $1.25 and $2.50 PPP dollars (Chen and Ravallion, 2012). The scourge of absolute economic misery among billions of the...

Based on point-of-time comparisons of happiness in richer and poorer countries, it is commonly asserted that economic growth will have a significant positive impact on happiness in poorer countries, if not richer. The time trends of subjective well-being (SWB) in 13 developing countries,...

Against the background of a notoriously high macroeconomic instability and the need to raise tax revenues to meet the demands of public spending, this paper analyzes the tradeoff between growth and volatility of tax revenues in Latin America. We use a two-step Engle-Granger-type model to...

This paper investigates the determinants of the growth elasticity of poverty by using the internationally designed poverty line, measured by the share of the population living below USD 1.25 per day. We identify the determinants of changes in the poverty rate of countries using single and...

The costs of import substitution (IS) as a strategy for industrialization, which was deemed synonymous with economic development by many development economists of the fifties and sixties, were shown to be substantial in the influential and nuanced studies of the seventies and eighties under the...

This paper tests the impact of ICT on economic growth for underdeveloped and developing countries by using a panel dataset for the period of 1995-2006. We first develop the theory between ICT and economic growth. We show that ICT-capital has a positive effect both on long-run and transitional...

Various development objectives are worthy, but to my mind, one objective dominates all others: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. In this paper, I focus on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the...