The paper discusses conditions and prospects for fast and durable growth in emerging market economies. In the course of history less than 30 countries have become rich and still more than 80 percent of the world population is lagging behind. In many cases a lot indeed. It is true not only for...

Using a panel data set covering 139 countries over the 1970-2009 period, we empirically investigate the role of foreign direct investment on growth through diffusion of technology and innovation. Using an otherwise standard growth regression and regressions on productivity growth, we introduce a...

Using a panel data set covering the period 1970-2004 and 96 countries, we provide empirical evidence that the composition of foreign capital, measured by the ratio FDI over total liabilities, has a positive effect on growth, directly and through convergence. Developing countries benefit...

Regional integration of Pacific Island countries (PICs) with Australia, New Zealand, and emerging Asia has increased over the last two decades. PICs have become more exposed to the region's business cycles, and spillovers from regional economies are more important for PICs than from advanced...

The global economy of the past century was dominated by the United States and Western Europe. When they sneezed, the old joke goes, the rest of the world caught a cold. But that dominance is now being challenged by the rise of rapidly growing emerging market economies. And the shift is changing...

The income convergence literature suggests that poor countries or regions can catch-up to rich ones conditional on sharing certain characteristics with rich countries or regions. Good institutions such as strong property rights and rule-of-law are key among those characteristics. Globalization...

The income convergence literature suggests that poor countries can catch-up to rich ones conditional on sharing certain characteristics with rich countries. Good institutions such as strong property rights and rule-of-law are key amongst those characteristics. From a policy perspective this is...

This paper examines the impact of terrorism on economic growth and capital formation using data for 152 countries from 1970 to 2003.During the past thirty-five years, the world has witnessed nearly twenty thousand terrorist incidents. The increasingly global scope of terrorism has raised...

We discuss a unified theory of directed technological change and technology adoption that can shed light on the causes of persistent productivity differences across countries. In our model, new technologies are designed in advanced countries and diffuse endogenously to less developed countries....