How rich would resource-abundant countries be if they had actually followed the Hartwick Rule (invest resource rents in other assets) over the past 30 years? The authors use time series data on investments and rents onexhaustible resource extraction for 70 countries to answer this question. The...

The author presents theory and calculations to show that part of the explanation of slow growth in many poor countries is not that governments did not spend on investment, but that these investments did not create productive capital. For a variety of reasons governments take resources from...

In a sample of fourteen source countries making bilateral investments in forty five countries, the author finds that taxes, capital controls, and corruption, all have large, statistically significant negative effects on foreign investment. Moreover, there is no robust support in the data for...

Using panel data for a cross-section of countries, the author estimates an aggregate production function that includes infrastructure capital. He finds that: 1) The productivity of physical and human capital is close to the levels suggested by microeconomic evidence on their private returns. 2)...

A recent but rapidly growing empirical literature focuses on the relationship between public and private capital. But for the most part, it ignores the heterogeneity of public investment. In many countries, especially in the developing world, public investment includes not only basic...

Joining the European Union (EU) is perhaps the key political and economic objective of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as they approach the 21st century. But how successful the CEE countries are in achieving this goal depends not only on how well and quickly they adapt their legal...

Are natural resources a blessing or a curse? The authors present a model in which natural resources have a positive effect on the level of income and a negative effect on its growth rate. The positive and permanent effect on income implies a welfare gain. There is a growth effect stemming from a...

A recent (but rapidly growing) literature has focused on how uncertainty and instability affect the adoption of fixed investment projects. That literature shows that if fixed investment projects are costly or impossible to reverse, uncertainty can become a powerful deterrent to investment. The...

The authors'study of aid, investment, and policies in Africa leads them to four principal conclusions: 1) The traditional links between aid, investment, and growth are not robust. Aid does not necessarily finance investment and investment does not necessarily promote growth. 2) Differences in...

Rsearch on the sources of growth shows several factors to be relevant to all countries, rich or poor. Whether developing countries can substantially raise per capita incomes depends on policies that address these variables: labor, human capital, capital investment in research and development,...