This paper introduces a new index that captures the institutional environment underpinning public investment management across four different stages: project appraisal, selection, implementation, and evaluation. Covering 71 countries, including 40 low-income countries, the index allows for...

This paper investigates the short-run effects of the 2007-09 global financial crisis on growth in (mainly non-fuel exporting) low-income countries (LICs). Four conclusions stand out. First, for many individual LICs, 2009 was not extraordinarily calamitous; however, aggregate LIC output declined...

The capital flows network has changed substantially, bringing new investors and target economies into play. Related, a recent intensification of capital flows to low income countries (LICs) has posed a number of questions. Most importantly, the very nature of those flows and important factors...

This paper sheds light on two problems in the Penn World Table (PWT) GDP estimates. First, we show that these estimates vary substantially across different versions of the PWT despite being derived from very similar underlying data and using almost identical methodologies; that the methodology...

This paper constructs an efficiency-adjusted public capital stock series and re-examines the public capital and growth relationship. The paper also examines the effects of four specific stages of the public investment process—appraisal, selection, implementation and evaluation—on capital...

This paper develops new, far more extensive estimates of export quality, covering 178 countries and hundreds of products over 1962–2010. Quality upgrading is particularly rapid during the early stages of development, with quality convergence largely completed as a country reaches upper...

Why doesn’t capita flow to developing countries as predicted by the neoclassical model? Is the explanation simply that cross-country marginal productivity of capital (MPK) is equalized, and if so, why? We revisit these issues by unpacking MPK into its public and private components, since there...

Versions 6.1 and 6.2 of Penn World Tables (PWT) have essentially the same methodology and the same underlying data, but report significantly different growth numbers. It is not the case that 6.2 is better or worse than 6.1; it is inherent in the PWT approach that some data will vary a great deal...

We propose an economic theory of infectious disease transmission and rational behavior. Diseases are costly due to mortality (infected individuals can die prematurely) and morbidity (lower productivity and quality of life). Our model offers three main insights. First, a greater prevalence of...

We study the dynamics of poverty and health in a model of endogenous growth and rational health behavior. Population health depends on the prevalence of infectious diseases that can be avoided through costly prevention. The incentive to do so comes from the negative effects of ill health on the...