In this paper, I discuss the reasons for Costa Rica's economic performance over the last quarter of a century. Three complementary sets of policies (investments in human capital, careful stabilization, and an intelligent and aggressive integration into the world economy) explain the successful...

Despite the fast catching-up in ICT diffusion experienced by most EU countries in the last few years, information technologies have so far delivered little productivity gains in Europe. In the second half of the past decade, growth contributions from ICT capital rose in six EU countries only...

This paper explores the middle income trap (MIT) concept from the perspective of productivity growth. Through the examination of cross-country historical statistics as well as China¡¯s regional data, it sheds light on the debate about whether the Chinese economy can avoid the middle income...

In the context of rising government debt levels in advanced economies and the ongoing euro zone debt crisis, there has been a revival of academic and policy debate on the impact of growing government debt on economic growth. This data-rich study offers an econometric investigation of the...

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This paper introduces a new and comprehensive Human Development Index (HDI) trends dataset for 135 countries and 40 years of annual data. We apply this dataset to answer several empirical questions related to the evolution of human development over the last 40 years. The data reveal overall...

This paper surveys the literature that attempts to explain what caused the Celtic Tiger boom. The suggested explanations that are covered include fiscal stabilisation, tax cuts, delayed convergence, privatisation and deregulation, strong growth in export markets, supply of labour, education, the...

This paper proposes a new method to measure ethnolinguistic diversity and offers new results linking such diversity with a range of political economy outcomes -- civil conflict, redistribution, economic growth and the provision of public goods. We use linguistic trees, describing the...

This paper empirically examines the causality between crime rates and economic growth using state level data in India. A reduced form equation has been estimated using instrumental variable approach to correct for joint endogeneity between crime and economic growth. Higher crimes may reduce...

Following up on a previous paper by the same author on the contribution of ICT capital to growth and labor productivity in Poland 1995-2000, this paper extends the study to eight transition economies: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Slovenia. The paper shows that...