Can a negative shock to sovereign ratings invoke a vicious cycle of increasing government bond yields and further downgrades, ultimately pushing a country toward default? The narratives of public and political discussions, as well as of some widely cited papers, suggest this possibility. In this...

Current estimates of global poverty vary substantially across studies. In this paper we undertake a sensitivity analysis to highlight the importance of methodological choices in estimating global poverty. We measure global poverty using different data sources, parametric and nonparametric...

We extend the sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions of Levine and Renelt (1992) by introducing a semi-parametric formulation of their regression function. Our results differ from theirs in how certain policy variables affect growth rates. We find that distortion variables,...

Can a negative shock to sovereign ratings invoke a vicious cycle of increasing government bond yields and further downgrades, ultimately pushing a country toward default? The narratives of public and political discussions, as well as of some widely cited papers, suggest this possibility. In this...

Heckman's (1979) sample selection model has been employed in three decades of applications of linear regression studies. The formal extension of the method to nonlinear models, however, is of more recent vintage. A generic solution for nonlinear models is proposed in Terza (1998). We have...

The paper examines episodes of current account adjustment in individual economies. A central finding is that these episodes are very divergent and can be usefully classified, on the basis of cluster analysis, in three groups. A majority of cases is characterised by internal adjustment,...

The paper examines over seventy episodes of current account adjustment in industrial and major emerging market economies. It argues that these episodes were characterised by strongly divergent economic developments. To reduce this divergence, the paper classifies episodes with similar...

New macro empirical evidence is provided to assess the relative importance of object and idea gaps in explaining the world income distribution dynamics over a benchmark period 1960-1985. Results are then extended through 1995. Formal statistical hypothesis tests allow us to discriminate between...

Protected areas are a popular policy instrument in the global fight against loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, the effectiveness of protected areas in preventing deforestation, and their impacts on poverty, are not well understood. Recent studies have found that Bolivia's...