Recent studies report that equity market liberalisation positively correlates with total return, which in turn purportedly increases private investment growth. While the finding on reform and performance is generally robust to alternative perspectives on capital account liberalisation that...

This study examines the effects of cross-border flows - FDI, FPI, and FBL - on growth and savings rates using data on 56 countries from 1969 through 1998. Very generally, few flow measures are significant determinants of real variables. However, consideration of the initial level of financial...

Recent literature suggests that stock market liberalisation has positive effects on macroeconomic growth and private investment. However, econometric relations are largely dependent on the inclusion of higher income countries in such samples, which quite conceivably limits the relevance for...

This review examines the empirical literature on financial flows and economic performance, with particular respect to foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign portfolio investment (FPI), and foreign bank lending (FBL). Few studies report unequivocal positive statistical relations between flows...

Econometric studies of income distribution that include institutional determinants suffer from specification bias—economists do not consider a more complete ensemble of factors that possibly influence equality. While there is no “true” specification, panel and time-series regressions...

The absence of continuous regime type measures that focus on institutions rather than outcomes besets studies on whether democratic or authoritarian regimes grow faster. Additional shortcomings include the failure to consider development stages and the erroneous endogenous specification of...

This paper presents the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), a measure of acute poverty, understood as a person's inability to meet simultaneously minimum international standards in indicators related to the Millennium Development Goals and to core functionings. It constitutes the first...

This paper asks where do the world's multidimensionally poor people live? The paper considers how the global distribution of multidimensional poverty differs from the global distribution of income poverty and assesses the sensitivity of findings to widely used (although somewhat arbitrary)...

The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a new survey-based index designed to measure the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector. The WEAI was initially developed as a tool to reflect women's empowerment that may result from the United States...

The long literature on intergenerational transmission of well-being has largerly been driven by concerns for inequality of opportunity and the persistence of low levels of wellbeing among certain social groups.A comparative strand of this literature seeks to compare indicators of these...