This paper provides a survey and synthesis of econometric tools that have been employed to study economic growth. While these tools range across a variety of statistical methods, they are united in the common goals of first, identifying interesting contemporaneous patterns in growth data and...

Since the early 1990s, there has been a renaissance in the study of regional growth, spurred by new models, methods, and data. We survey a range of modeling traditions, and some formal approaches to the hard problem of regional economics; namely, the joint consideration of agglomeration and...

This chapter examines the conditions under which foreign aid will be effective in raising growth, reducing poverty, and meeting basic needs in areas such as education and health. The primary aim is not to draw policy conclusions, but to highlight the main questions that arise, the contributions...

Five years since the start of the global financial crisis, the world economy continues to face downside risks, while the outlook remains clouded by weak market sentiments. Governments in developed economies are engaging in fiscal consolidation, which is negatively affecting their economic...

The ongoing euro zone debt crisis creates an undesirable scenario for the global economy as well as for the Asia-Pacific region given that the region has close economic linkages. The paper aims to provide quantitative estimates of the potential impact of the euro zone debt crisis on merchandise...

This paper investigates why governments in some developing countries have adopted more liberal policies than others. To construct a composite policy index, the paper applies a robust principal components analysis to Washington Consensus policy variables. The paper shows that income growth is...

We examine the view that high-quality macroeconomic policy is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for economic growth. We first construct a new index of the quality of macroeconomic policy. We then directly compare growth rate distributions across countries with good and bad policies; use...

This paper studies the causes of policy volatility in developing countries during 1970-1999. To construct composite policy volatility indicators, the paper applies a robust principal components analysis to Washington Consensus policy variables. The results suggest three dimensions of policy...

We examine the view that high-quality macroeconomic policy is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for economic growth. We first construct a new index of the quality of macroeconomic policy. We then directly compare growth rate distributions across countries with good and bad policies; use...