Various papers demonstrate the importance of inequality, poverty and the size of the middle class for economic growth. When explaining why these measures of the income distribution are added to the growth regression, it is often mentioned that poor people behave different which may translate to...

The Africa-Dummy has been identfied and different explanations for its appearance have been published. In this paper, the issue of the empirical identifcation of the Africa-Dummy is addressed. We introduce a fixed eff ects regression model to identify the Africa-Dummy in one regression step so...

This paper takes a fresh look at the impact of financial development on economic growth by using recently developed kernel methods that allow for heterogeneity in partial effects, nonlinearities and endogenous regressors. Our results suggest that while the positive impact of financial...

This paper employs a production frontier approach that allows distinguishing technological progress from efficiency development. Data on 35 African countries in 1970-2007 show that efficiency losses have constrained growth in Africa while technology progress has played a marginal growth...

Empirical growth regressions typically include mean years of schooling as a proxy for human capital. However, empirical research often finds that the sign and significance of schooling depends on the sample of observations or the specification of the model. We use a nonparametric local-linear...

Empirical growth regressions typically include mean years of schooling as a proxy for human capital. However, empirical research often finds that the sign and significance of schooling depends on the sample of observations or the specification of the model. We use a nonparametric local-linear...