Even before the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis and ongoing European debt crisis, much attention has been given to the re-emergence of the Asian giants, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and India. Both countries have attained unprecedented growth and economic development-PRC and...

In this study, we assess the inclusiveness of growth by tracking the yearly percentage change in the household consumption of individuals over different growth spells in Cameroon, Senegal, and Tanzania. With cross-sectional data, we track the consumption of groups of individuals that share...

Does democracy increase economic growth? Previous literature tends to find a positive effect but does also suffer from possible endogeneity problems: democratization is typically not random and might be affected by factors that also have an impact on economic growth. This paper narrows down the...

We present cross-country evidence that a country's macroeconomic volatility, measured either by the standard deviation of output growth or the occurrence of trend-growth breaks, is significantly affected by the country's historical variables. In particular, countries with longer histories of...

We analyze the role of risk-sharing institutions in transitions to modern economies. Transitions requires individual-level risk-taking in pursuing productivity-enhancing activities including using and developing new knowledge. Individual-level, idiosyncratic risk implies that distinct...

The problem faced by many of the economies making up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is whether they can avoid the middle-income trap and advance to the high-income level. What is needed for them to avoid the middle-income trap? This paper attempts to answer this question by...

We study the long-term economic legacy of highly-skilled minorities a century after their wholesale expulsion. Using mass expulsions of Armenian and Greek communities of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century as a unique natural experiment of history, we show that districts with greater...

A growing body of theoretical and empirical literature analyses the relationship between finance and economic growth. The relationship has been strongly supported by many empirical analyses. However, Global Financial Crisis, 2008 and significantly improved econometric techniques made scholars to...

The author has recently, defining a catch-up index, growth as catching-up, and deriving an equation for years for absolute convergence, shown Sub-Saharan Africa has fallen behind sharply and, even considering India's population-weight, South Asia has barely shown any growth since 1951 (growing...

Mass deportations and killings of Ottoman Armenians during WWI and the Greek-Turkish population exchange after the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 were the two major events of the early 20th century that permanently changed the ethno-religious landscape of Anatolia. These events marked the end of...