History has shown that hurricanes can cause catastrophic destruction and impede economic growth in the Caribbean. Nevertheless, there is essentially as of date no comprehensive quantitative risk and anticipated loss assessment for the region. In this paper we use synthetic hurricane tracks and...

The literature on growth theory has pointed to the importance of human capital in order to explain the process of economic development. In the present study, we highlight the role played by cities in fostering human capital accumulation. More particularly, building on a simple urban economics...

We study the relationship between economic development and consumption of natural resources using a vintage capital model. Consumption of natural resources is assumed to generate pollution, part of which will be absorbed by nature's self-regeneration capacity. We find that during the transition...

While there have been some references in the literature to the potential role of the general decline in rainfall in sub-Saharan African nations on their poor growth performance relative to other developing countries, this avenue remains empirically unexplored. In this paper we use a new...