This article analyzes empirically the main existing theories on income and population city growth: increasing returns to scale, locational fundamentals and random growth. To do this we implement a threshold nonlinearity test that extends standard linear growth regression models to a dataset on...

Standard parametric tests of convergence cannot capture whether the increased dispersion among state incomes is due to a steepening gradient between north and south, a few hot states randomly distributed, or as an intermediate position, the emergence of convergence clubs. This paper tests for...

Some recent papers by Dell et al. (2009) and Dell et al. (2012) (DJO) relating weather and economic outcomes, have delivered meaningful messages with clear implications to the effects of a changing climate. In a nutshell, the authors claim that a 1°C increase in global average temperatures...

The ability to adjust to structural change is vital to economic development, and entries can be active participants in this process. This paper aims to shed some light on the relation between entrepreneurship and growth by arguing that entrepreneurial activity relates to growth via reallocation...

We examine the factors behind Afghanistan's persistent underdevelopment. Drawing on various theories of development traps operating at the demographic, economic and institutional levels, we seek to assess whether and to what extent their functioning affects Afghanistan's development. To capture...

Albert Hirschman’s unbalanced growth hypothesis suggests that a developing economy can promote economic growth by initially investing in industries with high backward and forward linkages. In the case of Chinese economic policy today, one application would be the continued presence of the...

Current empirical growth models limit the determinants of country growth to geographic, economic, and institutional variables. This study draws on conflict variables from the Correlates of War (COW) project to ask a critical question: How do different types of conflict affect country growth...

In an influential paper Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) argue that the evidence on the international disparity in levels of per capita income and rates of growth is consistent with a standard Solow model, once it has been augmented to include human capital as an accumulable factor. In a study on...

The literature on aid effectiveness has focused more on recipient policies than the determinants of aid allocation yet a consistent result is that political allies obtain more aid from donors than non-allies. This paper shows that aid allocated to political allies is ineffective for growth,...

This paper aims to determine and analyse the typology and intensity of the economic growth through an approach to the structure of the allometric models, previously developed by biologists. It could be important for political decision-takers to know the type of growth since it allows the...