This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels of income per capita, they have performed poorly when going beyond the assessment based on...

Existing indices of ethnic diversity are generally based on pre-defined groups, disregarding the (dis)similarities between them. This paper proposes an index that includes the dissimilarity in language, ethno-racial characteristcs and religion between groups. The resulting distance-adjusted...

This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels of income per capita, they have performed poorly when going beyond the assessment based on...

This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels of income per capita, they have performed poorly when going beyond the assessment based on...

We use a new dataset on non-resource GDP to examine the impact of commodity price volatility on economic growth in a panel of up to 158 countries during the period 1970-2007. Our main finding is that commodity price volatility leads to a significant increase in non-resource GDP growth in...

This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels of income per capita, they have performed poorly when going beyond the assessment based on...

We use a new dataset on non-resource GDP to examine the impact of commodity price volatility on economic growth in a panel of up to 158 countries during the period 1970-2007. Our main finding is that commodity price volatility leads to a significant increase in non-resource GDP growth in...

Africa: A continent is waking up. Not through aid or wealth from the exploitation of natural resources, but through a technological revolution. The access to affordable mobile telecommunication. Inspired by deregulation and pioneered by local champions who have taken a lead in what is today's...

We perform an empirical investigation of the macroeconomic consequences of international terrorism and interactions with alternative forms of collective violence. Our analysis is based on a rich unbalanced panel data set with annual observations on 177 countries from 1968 to 2000, which brings...

We present a growth model where agents divide time between rent seeking in the form of resource competition; and working in a human capital sector, interpreted as trade or manufacturing. Rent seeking exerts negative externalities on the productivity of human capital, generating multiple steady...