The comparison of China's and India's economic trajectories over the last 40 years reveals the massive potential of targeted policies for economic development (in general) and economic growth (in particular). In the early 1980s India and China had a roughly similar GDP and up until 1990 India...

This paper uses cointegration and vector error-correction models to analyse the causal relationship between education and development across select Indian states using annual data from 1980-81 to 2008-09. Expenditure on education per capita is used as the proxy for education, while State...

In this paper we examined the impact of the liberalization of financial sector on growth in small open economy of Ghana using time series data from 1970 to 2007. Using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modelling approach we find long-run positive and significant impact of financial...

This chapter reviews the literature that tries to explain the disparity and variation of GDP per worker and GDP per capita across countries and across time. There are many potential explanations for the different patterns of development across countries, including differences in luck, raw...

The end of convertibility and a subsequent default, confiscation of deposits and devaluation is the path that Paul Krugman proposes for several countries as a solution to the European crisis. We show that Krugman's reference to Argentine experience is misleading and dangerous. He underestimates...

As governments around the world contemplate slashing budget deficits, the 'expansionary fiscal consolidation hypothesis' is back in vogue. I argue that, as a statement about the short run, it should be taken with caution. Alesina and Perotti (1995) and Alesina and Ardagna (2010) (AAP) have...

This paper compares Denmark's growth performance to that of the other 18 non-Eurozone OECD economies during 2008-12. Denmark is the only country with a fixed exchange rate regime; the other 18 countries all have flexible exchange rates, mostly as part of an inflation-targeting framework. At the...

Paths into the Asian Crisis of 1997-98 and the recent global financial crisis were similar, but the roads out could not be more different. Common wisdom has it that on impact Asia endured fiscal austerity imposed by the IMF whereas the IMF recommended stimulus in the case of the advanced nations...

In the present paper we question the mainstream diagnosis of Germany's post-2000 stagnation as well as the prescribed remedies. We show that the "institutional sclerosis" view of Germany's stagnation is unfounded and that therefore the political measures proposed and actually taken are...

Recent analyses relate increases in the growth rate of countries to anticipation effects caused by bidding for the Olympic Games, so called news shocks. We argue that these findings should be interpreted cautiously. First, these analyses may suffer from an omitted variable bias because they...