The term "middle income trap" has been widely used in the literature, without having been clearly dened or formally tested. We propose a statistical denition of a middle income trap and derive a simple time-series test. We nd that the concept survives a rigorous scrutiny of the data, with the...

As a result of the strong desire for sons in India, millions of female foetuses have been aborted over the last three decades alongside an abnormally high mortality rate of infant girls. Given the extent of the problem, a large amount of literature exists on the overall root causes of son...

In India, the mother-in-law is all powerful. At least they are often portrayed as such in Indian popular culture. Similarly, in the socio-economic literature, the influence of the Indian mother-in-law is often taken for granted. However, most of the empirical evidence relies on qualitative data...

This paper investigates the investment-led growth hypothesis for the newly industrialized economies of East Asia. Using numerical simulations and a neoclassical model, it is shown that the revolution in investment rates only explains about 30 per cent of the growth of GDP per worker. In...

An important stylized fact of economic growth is that the rate of return to capital is relatively constant across countries and over time. This paper provides an explanation using a model of growth for a developing economy that has a dualistic structure. Three conditions are derived, each of...

Recent growth theory has focused on the role of human capital as a source of welfare gains in developing economies, rather than traditional sources such as improving resource allocation and physical capital accumulation. This paper examines traditional developing-country labor market problems in...

How has the USA's 'new economy' productivity boom affected Australia? We consider this question using a dynamic multisector growth model of the Australian and US economies. We find that productivity growth in the US durables sector generates small but important gains to Australia. We find that...

Despite its economic success, India has made little progress towards meeting its Millennium Development Goal targets of reducing undernourishment, particularly among children. In this paper, we use nationally representative datasets, the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS II and NFHS III) and...