One of the main obstacles for successful economic development is the formation of institutional traps, inefficient yet stable norms of behaviour. Domination of barter exchange, arrears, corruption and black market activities are examples of institutional traps that have hampered reforms in...

There are two innovations in the paper as compared to the previous literature on democracy and growth. First, we consider not only the level of democracy, but also changes in this level in the 1970s-1990s as measured by increments of Freedom House political rights indices. Second, the...

This paper analyzes economic policies in resource rich countries and various mechanisms of resource curse leading to a potentially inefficient use of resources. Arguments are provided in favor of "conditional resource curse" hypothesis: resource abundance hampers growth if institutions of a...

This paper summarizes theoretical arguments and provides empirical evidence to support the statement that rational economic policies depend qualitatively on two factors – technological and institutional level of development of a country. We concentrate on the impact of three policies to...

Cross-country regressions, reported in this paper for 1960-99 period, seem to suggest that the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves (FER) contributes to economic growth of a developing economy by increasing both the investment/GDP ratio and capital productivity. We offer the following...

It is suggested a Romer-Barro - type model of endogenous economic growth where producers contest for distribution of a fixed share of the government's tax revenue. The proportional contest mechanism is assumed. We studied conditions under which consumers gain or lose due to existence of the Rent...

Is resource abundance a blessing or a curse? Typically, in resource rich countries, domestic fuel prices are lower, and energy intensity of GDP is higher. But they have higher investment in R&D and fixed capital stock, larger foreign exchange reserves and more inflows of FDI. They also have...

There are two innovations in the paper as compared to the previous literature on democracy and growth. First, we consider not only the level of democracy, but also changes in this level in the 1970s-1990s as measured by increments of Freedom House political rights indices. Second, the...

We suggest a dynamic game theoretic model to explain why resource abundance may lead to instability of democracy. Stationary Markov perfect equilibria of this game with four players – Politician, Oligarch, Autocrat and Public (voters) – are analyzed. Choosing a rate of resource rent tax,...

We propose an evolutionary equation and develop an asymptotic theory that generalize results obtained in Polterovich, Khenkin, 1988. It is shown that, as a result of interaction between innovation and imitation, the shape of the efficiency distribution curve of technologies eventually...