This paper offers an evaluation of the output contribution of infrastructure. Drawing from a large data set of infrastructure stocks covering 88 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000, and using a panel time-series approach, the paper estimates a long-run aggregate production function...

The literature has argued that developing countries are unable to adopt counter-cyclical monetary and fiscal policies due to financial imperfections and unfavorable political-economy conditions. Using a world sample of 115 industrial and developing countries for 1984-2008 we find that the level...

One strand of the empirical growth literature has cast doubt on the ability of the policy recommendations from Washington Consensus in enhancing growth. They argue that not only the design but also the policy mix has an important country-specific component (e.g.Hausmann, Rodrik, & Velasco, 2005;...

Our main goal is to characterize the determinants of sudden stops caused by domestic vis-à-vis foreign residents. Are the decisions of domestic investors to invest abroad or of foreign investors to cut off funds from the domestic economy governed by the same set of determinants? Given the...

The literature has argued that developing countries are unable to adopt counter-cyclical monetary and fiscal policies due to financial imperfections and unfavorable politicaleconomy conditions. Using a world sample of 115 industrial and developing countries for 1984-2008, we find that the level...

We document the properties of business cycles of 71 countries (23 industrial countries and 48 emerging market economies, or EMEs), from 1970q1 to 2012q4 using the Harding and Pagan dating algorithm. First, recessions are deeper, steeper and costlier among EMEs (especially in East Asia and Latin...

We provide cross-country empirical evidence on the link between measures of institutional development and of poverty over the period 1960-1990. We find that the more efficient the institutions, the lower the degree, severity, and incidence of poverty. We provide both ordinary least squares and...