Economic freedom and economic growth can be connected in most countries, but it is often necessary to specify those aspects of economic freedom that can foster economic growth. This paper examines the nexus between economic freedom and economic growth in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs)...

While the short-term growth consequences of natural disasters are comparatively well studied, there is little knowledge how disasters affect long-run growth. Based on truly exogenous storm indicators, derived from a meteorological database, we show that the growth effects of tropical storms go...

We use an excludable instrument to test the effect of foreign aid on economic growth in a sample of 96 recipient countries over the 1974-2009 period. We interact donor government fractionalization with a recipient country's probability of receiving aid. The results show that fractionalization...

We revisit the relationship between financial development and economic growth in a panel of 52 middle income countries over the 1980-2008 period, using pooled mean group estimator in a dynamic heterogeneous panel setting. We show that financial development does not have a linear positive...

We assess empirically the role of the World Bank’s Country Policy so-called fiscal policy rating variables (fiscal rating, debt rating and revenue rating) on economic growth in the 46 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the world, during the period 1990-2022. We also investigate the role of...

We provide evidence that political instability deteriorates economic growth. We establish this result based on panel difference-in-differences strategies and dynamic panel data models using a large sample of 180 countries, a novel geocoded dataset for 2,660 regions, and micro data for about...

In this empirical study we assess both linear and nonlinear relationship between total taxation and several tax items with real per capita GDP growth rates for 43 developing countries between 1990 and 2019. We use panel data techniques to evaluate the effects of taxation on economic growth for...

Are natural resources a "curse" or a "blessing"? The empirical evidence suggests either outcome is possible. The paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natural resources. These include that a resource...

Against the background of a notoriously high macroeconomic instability and the need to raise tax revenues to meet the demands of public spending, this paper analyzes the tradeoff between growth and volatility of tax revenues in Latin America. We use a two-step Engle-Granger-type model to...

We explore the impact of large banks and of financial openness for aggregate growth. Large banks matter because of granular effects: if markets are very concentrated in terms of the size distribution of banks, idiosyncratic shocks at the bank-level do not cancel out in the aggregate but can...