The seminal and controversial work of Burnside and Dollar (2000) has been the basis for many subsequent empirical works on the growth effects of overseas development aid. This paper argues that the specifications used in these works are not consistent with the data and techniques used. We...

This paper examines the role that institutions have played in the performance of African economies over the past decades. It discusses the institutional changes needed to enable African countries to reach inclusive development in the near future. The paper starts from the premise that growth and...

The paper highlights that economics of education formally evolved in the last century, but its conceptualization was articulated centuries ago. The most prominent economists to address issues of human capital were A. Smith, J. S. Mill and A. Marshall. The residual portion of economic growth...

This essay analyzes the long-run economic effects of HIV/AIDS in Kenya, with emphasis on fertility, education and child labor. Human capital, which is built up through formal education and parental child-rearing, is the only input in production. Two aspects are central to the analysis: First, a...

This article outlines work in progress on a study of technological choice in the context of North-South development. Its main purpose is to describe the methodology being developed in the pilot phase of the study. This is of interest because it links together a number of analytic...

What is the impact of modern transportation technology on long-run economic change in poor countries with high trade costs?  Rail construction in colonial Sub-Saharan Africa provides a natural experiment: 90% of African rail-road lines were built before independence, in a context where...

Recent literature has debated possible adverse impacts of aid volatility on a country's economic performance. Our paper adds to this literature in three ways: First it tests the validity of the aid volatility and growth relationship from various aspects: across time horizons, by sources of aid,...

We study the relationship between geography and growth. To do so, we first develop a dynamic spatial growth theory with realistic geography. We characterize the model and its balanced growth path and propose a methodology to analyze equilibria with different levels of migration frictions. We...

Utopian socialists believed that socialism is inevitable because it is a more rational system to organize production and life, a system more in line with the “good” nature of human beings. Marxism rejected this reasoning replacing it with what is known as historical materialism: social...