Output collapses, and crises are a fact of life. Severe economic downturns occur periodically, and have grave consequences on the poor. The authors propose a new measurement for economic downside risk, and severity: Growth at risk. Similar to the concept of Value at Risk in finance, Growth at...

The authors investigate the relationship between weak growth performance and low investment rates in Africa. The cross-country evidence suggests no direct relationship. The positive and significant coefficient on private investment appears to be driven by Botswana's presence in the sample....

A look at the data reveals that in OECD countries, economic fluctuations exhibit a high degree of synchronization. In 1965-90, cross-country contemporaneous GDP growth correlations averaged 45 percent. This suggests that a central element of any theory of economic fluctuations should be an...

World Bank economists routinely undertake projections of national accounts and balance of payments for their countries. These appear as part of the Bank's Country Strategy Papers. This note examines projections done during the 1983 - 85 period, and compares the projected levels of GDP, imports,...

This paper assesses the effects of knowledge on economic growth. By using an array of indicators, each of which represents an aspect of knowledge, as independent variables in cross-section regressions that span 92 countries for the period 1960 to 2000, they show that knowledge is a significant...

This paper is an effort to bring together diverse literatures on the measurement of productivity and its relation to trade regime, focussing on recently developed techniques and their applications. It provides a brief review of the theoretical arguments linking trade policy and productivity....

This paper compares the association between many popular proxies for openness and the rate of GDP growth, as well as the results from cross-section and panel estimation, controlling for country effects. The results suggest that using period averages versus annual data critically affects the...

Analysis of decade-long growth rates in all countries shows a striking regularity: episodes of rapid growth are limited largely to a middle range of initial income; neither very poor nor very rich countries experienced rapid growth. Episodes of negative growth are limited to low and middle-income...

In developing countries, industrialization for successful export-led growth has been associated with rapid structural change and growth in productivity. Standard neoclassical growth models have difficulty explaining this change in performance. This paper has developed a simple analytical model...

The author presents a simple endogenous growth model (with two types of capital) that shows the sizable long-run effects on growth of distortionary policies. The model applies to many different types of distortions of relative prices common in developing countries - for example, price controls,...