Recent cross-section studies have demonstrated a strong link between measures of corruption, bureaucratic quality, property rights, and other institutional variables, and economic growth. In this paper we build on previous research and present some empirical evidence on the direction of...

The main goal of this paper is to tackle the empirical issues of the real exchange rate literature by applying recently developed panel cointegration techniques to a structural long-run real exchange rate equation. Using annual data for 67 countries over 1966-97, we find evidence of...

The empirical literature on long-run real exchange rate behavior has shown mixed evidence due to problems involving the lack of long time series data and the low power of time-series unit root tests in small samples. The main objective of the present paper is to tackle these empirical issues by...

The economic successes of China and India are viewed with admiration but also with concern because of the effects that the growth of these Asian economies may have on the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. The evidence in 'China's and India's Challenge to Latin America' indicates that...

Workers' remittances have become a major source of financing for developing countries and are especially important in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is at the top of the ranking of remittance receiving regions in the world. While there has been a recent surge in analytical work on the...

Drawing on previously unused objective institutional data, we provide evidence for the causal link between rent-seeking behavior and democracy in Uruguay, a country where both rent-seeking behavior and political shifts have varied widely in the last 80 years, but where ethnolinguistic...

The growth prospects of a nation are stymied by the burden of government debt. This study has two goals: first, it tests whether public debt hinders growth; and, second, it explores whether economic policy ameliorates this effect. A large panel data of countries for 1970-2010 reveal a negative...