This paper surveys 50 years of empirical research on the macroeconomic impact of aid, looking mainly at studies examining the link between aid and growth. It argues that studies dating until the late 1990s produced either contradictory or inconclusive results. Aid either worked, or it didn’t,...

We construct and estimate a unified model combining three of the main sources of cross-country income disparities: differences in factor endowments, barriers to technology adoption and the inappropriateness of frontier technologies to local conditions. The key components are different types of...

Many developing countries have attempted to pursue the East Asian growth model in recent decades. This model is widely perceived to have been based on export-led growth. Given that developed countries are likely to grow at a slower rate and be less willing to run trade deficits in the...

This paper offers a concise survey on the literature of growth empirics applying to DCs. It is argued that there is a number of important stylised facts of economic growth relevant to DCs which are not included in the corresponding lists of Kaldor and Romer. In contrary to the usual procedure,...

The paper investigates the relationship between external debt and economic growth, focusing on the role played by the policy and institutional framework. Results for a panel of 114 developing countries show that the debt-growth nexus depends on institutions and policies. The Debt-Laffer curve...

The paper examines empirically the proposition that aid to poor countries is detrimental for external competitiveness, giving rise to Dutch disease type effects. At the aggregate level, aid is found to have a positive effect on growth of labour productivity. A sectoral decomposition shows that...

While developing Asia has recovered strongly from the global crisis, the region faces the medium- and long-term challenge of sustaining growth beyond the crisis. The central objective of this paper is to empirically investigate the sources of economic growth in 12 developing Asian economies...

The author shows with pooled OLS estimations based on transport margins from international social accounting data that investments in improved road infrastructure have the potential to significantly reduce transport costs. However, this result can only be clearly confirmed for industrial...

Why is GDP so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones? To answer this question, we propose a theory of technological diversification. Production makes use of different input varieties, which are subject to imperfectly correlated shocks. As in endogenous growth models,...

This paper discusses the recent literature on the role of the state in economic development. It concludes that government incentives to enact sound policies are key to economic success. It also discusses the evidence on what happens after episodes of economic and political liberalizations,...