This article questions current empirical practice in the study of growth. It argues that much of the modern empirical growth literature is based on assumptions about regressors, residuals, and parameters that are implausible from the perspective of both economic theory and the historical...

Since 1980, the aggregate income of oil-exporting countries relative to that of oil-poor countries has been remarkably constant despite structural gaps in productivity growth rates. This stylized fact is analyzed in a two-country model where resource-poor (Home) and resource-rich (Foreign)...