We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model of capital accumulation where credit is intermediated by banks operating in a Cournot oligopoly. The number of banks affects capital accumulation through two channels. First, it affects the quantity of credit available to entrepreneurs. Second, it...

This paper examines different explanations--initial conditions, openness to trade and FDI, and institutions--of the Mauritian growth experience since the mid-1970s. We show that arguments based on openness to trade and FDI are either misleading or incomplete, and the transmission mechanism...

Weak institutions ought to deter foreign direction investment (FDI), and mass media stories highlight China's institutional deficiencies, yet China is now one of the world's largest FDI destinations. This incongruity characterizes China's paradoxical growth. Cross-country regressions show that...

Some natural resources - oil and minerals in particular - exert a negative and nonlinear impact on growth via their deleterious impact on institutional quality. We show this result to be very robust. The Nigerian experience provides telling confirmation of this aspect of natural resources. Waste...

This paper presents a theory of underdevelopment. It explains why developing countries may not be able to successfully implement the productive technologies or modes of organization used in developed ones. It also suggests ways around this problem of implementation, and provides an explanation...

Many inquiries into whether and how finance supports economic growth use broad cross-country samples, combine countries at a different development stage, focus on the financial system at large, and rely on older data. Using recent (1995-2005) data, we investigate the finance-growth-nexus in a...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...

Tony Thirlwall's bestselling 'Economics of Development' (formerly ‘Growth and Development’) provides a clear, comprehensive and analytically rigorous introduction to development for students of economics. For the Ninth Edition, the contents have been revised comprehensively and reorganized...

Consider the following facts. In 1950 the richest ten-percent of countries attained an average of 8 years of schooling whereas the poorest ten-percent of countries attained 1.3 years, a 6-fold difference. By 2005, the difference in schooling declined to 2-fold. The fact is that schooling has...