Determinants of Economic Growth: A Bayesian Panel Data Approach

Model uncertainty hampers consensus on the key determinants of economic growth. Some recent cross-country cross-sectional analyses have employed Bayesian model averaging to tackle the issue of model uncertainty. This paper extends that approach to panel data models with country-specific fixed effects in order to simultaneously address model uncertainty and endogeneity issues. The empirical findings suggest that in a panel setting, the most robust growth determinants are the price of investment goods, distance to major world cities, and political rights. © 2012 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.