The authors evaluate whether the level of development in the banking sector exerts a causal impact on economic growth and its sources-total factor productivity growth, physical capital accumulation, and private saving. They use (1) a pure cross-country instrumental variable estimator to extract...

Joining the European Union (EU) is perhaps the key political and economic objective of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as they approach the 21st century. But how successful the CEE countries are in achieving this goal depends not only on how well and quickly they adapt their legal...

How rich would resource-abundant countries be if they had actually followed the Hartwick Rule (invest resource rents in other assets) over the past 30 years? The authors use time series data on investments and rents onexhaustible resource extraction for 70 countries to answer this question. The...

Using panel data for a cross-section of countries, the author estimates an aggregate production function that includes infrastructure capital. He finds that: 1) The productivity of physical and human capital is close to the levels suggested by microeconomic evidence on their private returns. 2)...