National economic policies’ effects on growth were over-emphasized in the early literature on endogenous economic growth. Most of the early theoretical models of the new growth literature (and even their new neoclassical counterparts) predicted large policy effects, which was followed by...

Explaining cross-country differences in growth rates requires not only an understanding of the link between growth and public policies, but also an understanding of why countries choose different public policies. This paper shows that ethnic diversity helps explain cross-country differences in...

Ethnic divisions explain a significant part of Africa's slow growth and Africa's choice of growth-reducing policies. Africa's poor growth is associated with Africa's low schooling, political instability, underdeveloped financial systems, distorted foreign exchange markets, high government...

The negative growth-inflation association in the existing literature is usually interpreted as a long-run relationship. But the existing literature on inflation and growth has a puzzling anomaly: there is little evidence of a relationship with low-frequency (30-year) data, but inflation and...

The Burnside and Dollar (2000) finding that aid raises growth in a good policy environment has had an important influence on policy and academic debates. We conduct a data gathering exercise that updates their data from 1970-93 to 1970-97, as well as filling in missing data for the original...

The Burnside and Dollar (2000) finding that aid raises growth in a good policy environment has had an important influence on policy and academic debates. We conduct a data gathering exercise that updates their data from 1970-93 to 1970-97, as well as filling in missing data for the original...

The Burnside and Dollar (2000) finding that aid raises growth in a good policy environment has had an important influence on policy and academic debates. We conduct a data gathering exercise that updates their data from 1970–93 to 1970–97, as well as filling in missing data for the original...

This is our reply to Brendan Beare’s comment on our paper. While we find his criticism to be both valid and helpful, a modified version of our original model still confirms that a low elasticity of substitution between capital and labor doomed the Soviet strategy of extensive growth...

In the new millennium, the Western aid effort towards Africa has surged due to writings by well-known economists, a celebrity mass advocacy campaign, and decisions by Western leaders to make Africa a major foreign policy priority. This survey contrasts the predominant "transformational" approach...