This paper contributes to the literature comparing the relative performance of financial intermediaries and markets by studying an environment in which a trade-off between risk sharing and growth arises endogenously. Financial intermediaries provide insurance to households against a liquidity...

Existing evidence for unconditional convergence in the OECD is mixed, and depends largely on whether time series or cross sectional methods are used. In this paper we reconsider the evidence for unconditional convergence by dividing the long run data into several subperiods. We use a two stage...

Most Latin American countries experienced their last peak in output per capita relative to the United States’ between 1971 and 1982. Prior to this peak per capita output was rapidly catching up to the developed world. Twenty years after the peak the average country’s relative per...

This article analyzes the effects of financial liberalization on economic growth, focusing mainly the empirical aspects of this line of research. The text aims to answer fundamental questions put forward by recent literature: What effects has capital account liberalization had on economic...

This paper presents a simple Cass-Koopmans-Ramsey AK growth model with heterogeneity that explains how policies that increase income inequality may temporarily boost a country’s income growth rate. Briefly put, a change in policy that reduces redistributive transfers will free up...

The relationship between income distribution and economic growth has been found to depend on several factors such as capital markets imperfections, moral hazard, indivisibility in investments, and existence of dual economic characteristics. In recent literature the importance of geography has...

Extant estimates of the welfare cost of business cycles suggest that this cost is quite low and might well be minuscule. Those estimates are based on consumption data for the United States as a whole. The volatility of aggregate consumption, however, is much stronger at the state level. We argue...

This paper presents a simple Cass-Koopmans-Ramsey AK growth model with heterogeneity that explains how policies that increase income inequality may temporarily boost a country's income growth rate. Briefly put, a change in policy that reduces redistributive transfers will free up resources to...

This paper analyzes the development and effects of intra-provincial regional disparities in China between 1989 and 2001. A decomposition analysis shows that intraprovincial disparities contribute significantly to total regional inequality. In the second part of the paper, the impact of the...

This paper provides an empirical evaluation of the impact of infrastructure development on economic growth and income distribution using a large panel data set encompassing over 100 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000. The empirical strategy involves the estimation of simple equations for...