The paper provides quantitative estimates of the productive capacities of the countries in the Asia- Pacific region and their evolution in the past 25 years. It updates the results for 2009 presented in the ESCAP’s Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2011 and details the...

With data of over a century, 1833-1938, this paper attempts, for the first time, to analyze the causal relationship between income and government spending in the Greek economy for such a long period; that is, to gain some insight into Wagner and Keynesian Hypotheses. The time period of the...

Sub-Saharan Africa is concurrently characterised by low institutional quality and large-sized government sectors and both may keep the cost of doing business high. This paper revitalises the political economy literature on growth of governments in highlighting the essence of upgrading...

This paper analyzes endogenous ï¬scal policy and public decision in an endogenous growth model where agents care about social status and environmental quality. The quest for a higher status is assimilated to a preference for capital wealth. The government uses income tax to ï¬nance...

This study examines whether government spending in the Nigerian Agricultural sector has been consistent with Wagner' Law. To test the validity of Wagner's law, six alternative functional forms were adopted, using annual data from the Nigerian agricultural sector over the time period 1961 - 2012....

The estimation of the costs of conflict is currently receiving a lot of attention in the literature. This paper aims to give a thorough overview of the existing literature, first by addressing the history of case studies that address conflict costs and second by looking at the existing body of...

We investigate the persistence of levels of self-employment and new business formation in different time periods and under different framework conditions. The analysis shows that high levels of regional self-employment and new business formation tend to be persistent for periods as long as 80...

The 40 years of socialist regime in East Germany were characterized by a massive anti-entrepreneurship policy. We investigate the reemergence of entrepreneurship in East Germany during its transformation to a market economy following the collapse of the East German state in 1989. It took about...

In this paper we investigate the effectiveness of development aid in recipient countries. Specifically, we analyze the relationship between per-capita income and foreign aid for a maximum of 131 recipient countries over the 1960 to 2006 period. We employ annual data and 5-year averages and,...

This paper develops a model to assess the quantitative effect of entry cost and financial friction on cross-country income and total factor productivity (TFP) differences. The main focus is on the interaction between entry cost and financial friction. The model is calibrated to match...