In the years following the global financial crisis, many low-income countries experienced rapid recovery and strong economic growth. However, many are now facing enormous difficulties because of rapidly rising food and fuel prices, with the threat of millions of people being pushed into poverty...

On June 4-5, 2014, SUERF and Baffi Finlawmetrics jointly organised a Colloquium/Conference "Money, Regulation and Growth: Financing New Growth in Europe" at Bocconi University, Milan. The present SUERF Study includes a selection of papers based on the authors’ contributions to the Milan event....

We criticize existing empirical results on the detrimental effects of natural resource dependence on the rate of economic growth after controlling for institutional quality, openness, and initial income. These results do not survive once we use instrumental variables techniques to correct for...

This paper studies the effect of oil discoveries on economic growth in Brazilian municipalities for the period from 1940 to 2000. It uses a unique identification strategy which exploits data on the drilling of approximately 20,000 oil wells in Brazil since oil explorations began in the country....

This paper provides evidence of the causal impact of oil discoveries on development. Novel data on the drilling of 20,000 oil wells in Brazil allows us to exploit a quasi-experiment: Municipalities where oil was discovered constitute the treatment group, while municipalities with drilling but no...

Only a minority of countries have succeeded in establishing a developed financial system, despite widespread financial liberalization. Confronted with this finding, the political institutions view claims that sustained financial deepening is most likely to take place in institutional...