This lecture revisits the evidence on the incidence and severity of different varieties of financial crises within the context of globalization then (pre-1914) and now (1980 to the present). I then discuss the determinants of emerging market crises from the perspective of the recent balance...

This lecture revisits the evidence on the incidence and severity of different varieties of financial crises within the context of globalization then (pre-1914) and now (1980 to the present). I then discuss the determinants of emerging market crises from the perspective of the recent balance...

Does economic development depend on geographic endowments like temperate instead of tropical location, the ecological conditions shaping diseases, or an environment good for grains or certain cash crops? Or do these endowments of tropics, germs, and crops affect economic development only through...

This paper attempts to provide a coherent general equilibrium explanation for the joint U.S-British evolution during the last thousand years. We typified this period by initial Malthusian stagnation (before 1500); discovery and colonization (between 1500 and 1750); independence of the colony and...

A number of recent papers study the impact of institutions, trade and geography known as “deep determinants” of economic development using cross-section data. This paper instead employs a panel data approach to examine the impact of these three determinants on per capita income. Our approach...

This paper investigates the consequences of religion for economic development. In particular, we examine whether religious attitudes, beliefs, participation and preference contribute to differences in per capita income across countries. Using a large scale international survey on values and...

While China shared many systemic, initial conditions with the transition economies of Central-East Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), it had a more agricultural economy and a more stable political-economic system than many CEE and CIS countries. Unlike most of the CEE...

Much of Argentina's decline in relative economic performance can be attributed to deleterious conditions for capital accumulation after 1913. In the first phase (pre-1913), the success of the Belle ?poque was due to spectacular rates of accumulation. In the second phase (1913-1930s), low...

This paper demonstrates the time-varying NAIRU approach for estimation of the potential rate of growth, where the latter is defined as the growth rate at which the inflation rate would be neither accelerating nor decelerating. We show theoretically that this inflation-neutral potential rate of...