This paper studies the impact of growth fluctuation on human development indicators using country level panel data between 1980 and 2009. The evidence from mean comparison and regression analysis suggests that, globally and on average, periods of decelerating economic growth are correlated with...

In the 1830s the British and American economies were hit by a series of shared macroeconomic shocks. This paper investigates the role of markets for Americas State bonds in Britain and the U.S. during and between the crises in 1837, 1839, and 1842. There is strong evidence that the crises in...

This paper reviews conflict as one of potential factors that could be incorporated in the identification of least developed countries (LDCs). It is not clear whether conflict can be considered as a structurally predetermined handicap as those identified in LDC criteria. More importantly, even if...

Roughly a little under half of the world's population is mired in poverty, most in the developing world--about 3 billion people constitute the global base of the economic pyramid. Building on earlier work by Banerjee and Duflo (2007), this paper uses survey data from three countries in order to...

Measures of job creation and destruction are now produced regularly by the U.S. statistical agencies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases via the Business Employment Dynamics (BED) on a quarterly basis measures of job creation and destruction for the U.S. nonfarm business sector and related...

Studies of the volatility of the U.S. economy suggest a noticeable change in mid 1980s. There is some empirical evidence that the aggregate volatility of the U.S. economy has been decreasing over time. The response of firms to the change of economic volatility and economic fluctuation has been...

Is a dramatic slowdown in global economic growth going to erase much for the progress in the last decade in terms of human development in the developing world? How might the crisis affect progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals? To address these questions, this paper...

We study the impact of growth fluctuation on education and health indicators in Jamaica. Using household surveys between 1989 and 2007, we study the impact by using pseudo-panel regressions at the parish level, instrumenting growth fluctuations with variations in major Jamaican export...

In order to better understand the potential impact of the current global economic crisis on human development, we explore how human development indicators have been affected in past economic shocks. The literature on the human development impacts of short-term economic fluctuations suggest some...