Policymakers in oil-exporting countries confront the question of how to allocate oil revenues among consumption, saving, and investment in the face of high income volatility. We study this allocation problem in a precautionary saving and investment model under uncertainty. Consistent with data...

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the critical need for detailed, timely information on its evolving economic impacts, particularly for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where data availability and lack of generalizable nowcasting methodologies limit efforts for coordinated policy responses. This paper...

Only a few European economies and Korea and Taiwan Province of China reached high-income status during 1970-2010. Malaysia’s real income per capita increased to 26 percent of the U.S. level in 2010 from 20 percent in 1970. Despite relatively strong growth and a substantial improvement in...

The present paper investigates whether tourism specialization is a viable strategy for development. We estimate standard growth equations augmented with a variable measuring tourism specialization using instrumental variables techniques for a large cross-section of countries for the period...

The paper presents evidence that the contribution of differences in total factor productivity (TFP) to income differences across countries steadily increased between 1970 and 2000. We verify that our finding is neither imputable to measurement errors in input factors nor dependent on the...

The present paper investigates whether tourism specialization is a viable strategy for development. We estimate standard growth equations augmented with a variable measuring tourism specialization using instrumental variables techniques for a large cross-section of countries for the period...

Policymakers in oil-exporting countries confront the question of how to allocate oil revenues among consumption, saving, and investment in the face of high income volatility. We study this allocation problem in a precautionary saving and investment model under uncertainty. Consistent with data...

The more a country saves, the less it invests as a share of saving. We build a “store-or-sow” model of growth with precautionary saving and investment to study the nonlinear relationship between investment and saving. We contend that income volatility is an important variable for explaining...

I present a theory explaining why less technologically advanced countries could be more vulnerable to the Dutch disease. In a bilateral trade model with monopolistic competition and increasing returns to scale, the extent of the crowding-out in the tradable sector depends positively on an...

We study the effects of permanent and temporary income shocks on precautionary saving and investment in a "store-or-sow" model of growth. High volatility of permanent shocks results in high precautionary saving in the safe asset and low investment, or a "volatility trap." Namely, big savers...