According to the Washington Consensus, developing countries’ growth would benefit from reductions in barriers to trade. However, the empirical basis for judging trade reforms is weak. Econometrics are mostly ad hoc; results are typically not judged against models; policies are poorly measured;...

Is tourism an opportunity for lagging countries in the elusive quest for growth (Easterly, 2002)? Recent empirical evidence suggests that the answer is a cautious yes. Aggregate cross-country data show that tourism specialization is likely to be associated with higher per capita GDP growth rates...

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of debt on economic growth through two alternative methodological approaches. On the one hand, by using a panel error correction model with a sample of 130 countries between 1980 and 2020, we found evidence of the existence of a range of debt-to-GDP...

The positive association between the service sector share of output and per capita income is one of the best-known regularities in all of growth and development economics. Yet there is less than complete agreement on the nature of that association. Here we identify two waves of service sector...

This study is a first contribution to prioritization across productivity determinant capabilities that attempts to obtain the equivalent of a "shadow price" for each of these capabilities by estimating their impact on the success a country may have in reaching higher income per capita groups....

This report constitutes the first deliverable of the project ENGIME Economic Growth and Innovation in Multicultural Environments, financed by the European Commission FP5 Key Action: Improving socio-economic knowledge base. Contract HPSE-CT2001-50007