Political competition between European countries has often been viewed as being a stimulus to the innovation process and part of the reason why Europe was the first region of the world to experience sustained growth. Countries that fell behind their rivals technologically and economically became...

The growth experiences of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Korea over the last several decades have been polar opposites. South Korea has had one of the world's fastest growing economies and the Democratic Republic of the Congo one of the slowest. Despite this divergence in...

Sub-Saharan Africa, in the aggregate, has had the worst growth performance of any major region of the world over the last few decades. It is important to recognize, however, the enormous diversity in growth experiences at the country level. Some countries, like Botswana and Cape Verde, have...

This paper argues that some governments adopt growth-reducing policies due to the rational self-interest of the political elites. The model takes a rent-seeking government that can block innovation, and incorporates it into a Schumpeterian growth model. The quality of a country's institutions is...