This paper defines economic slumps as a sequence of structural breaks exhibiting a specific pattern. We identify 58 such episodes between 1950 and 2008 among a large sample of countries, and then examine the phases of decline. In several countries declines last extremely long, and we suggest...

The pace of poverty reduction through growth vs. redistribution is at the heart of current debates on equitable development. In this paper, we argue that empirical poverty decompositions should build in the inherent boundedness of the poverty headcount ratio directly. As a solution, we propose a...

This paper analyzes periods of economic stagnation in a panel of countries. We test if stagnation episodes are predicted by institutional factors and external/internal shocks, as is implied by recent theoretical contributions, and compare the impacts of these variables with those of traditional...

This paper provides an analytic review of selected contributions to the study of institutions and economic growth. We review the contributions to the study of institutional determinants of long-run growth by Engerman and Sokoloff, and Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson. We discuss the work of Rodrik...

Studies of the relationship between FDI and domestic investment levels reach contradictory findings. We revisit this empirical relationship and argue that some of the conflicting evidence may be explained by the use of poor proxies for the true underlying variables and by questionable...

The notion of state capacity has attracted renewed interest over the last few years, in particular in the study of violent conflict. Yet, state capacity is conceived differently depending on whether the interest lies in the state's power to discourage violent conflict, in its ability to...

This article provides a succinct review of the arguments stressing the mutual relationship between institutions and economic performance, and a scholarly account of some of the most popular econometric strategies used to minimize reversed causality problems in impact estimation. Among the...

Using institutional indicators describing 122 countries, we conduct an exploratory study highlighting which institutional characteristics differ across countries with different levels of income and rates of growth. We describe a country's institutions by the degree of formalization of its...

The Institutional Profiles Database (IPD) produced by the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) has been carried out in 2001, 2006 and 2009, and a new wave is planned for 2012. Although the structure of the surveys varies greatly between 2006 and 2009, the similarity of a substantial...

Since 1950, there has been considerable diversity in developing country experiences. Some countries and some regions have experienced rapid growth and catch up, others have fallen behind. At a global level there is an increasing inequality of per capita incomes. However, within the framework of...