We attempt to explain why standard explanations of the poverty of nations are unsatisfactory. We first argue that human capital is low in poor countries because its production has increasing returns with respect to life expectancy. We then show that the reason why capital does not flow to poor...

If interest rates (country spreads) rise, debt can rapidly be subject to a snowball effect, which becomes self-fulfilling with regard to the fundamentals themselves. This is a market imperfection, because we cannot be confident that the unaided market will choose the ""good"" over the ""bad""...

This paper analyzes an unremunerated reserve requirement on cross-border short term credit inflows, as applied in Chile. The impact of this reserve requirement over the path of the real exchange rate is investigated empirically. The authorities expected t

Empirical studies find that changes in schooling are not correlated with changes in per capita income. Similarly, the estimation in levels also produces minor coefficients for years of schooling. Low social returns and measurement error in educational variables have been invoked as possible...

Empirical studies assume that the macro Mincer return on schooling is con- stant across countries. Using a large sample of countries this paper shows that countries with a better quality of education have on average relatively higher macro Mincer coeficients. As rich countries have on average...

Properties of GMM estimators for panel data, which have become very popular in the empirical economic growth literature, are not well known when the number of individuals is small. This paper analyses through Monte Carlo simulations the properties of various GMM and other estimators when the...

The Millennium Declaration (2000) set as one of its targets a substantial reduction in child mortality. This paper studies whether the massive increase in development aid can account for part of the reduction in child mortality observed in developing countries since the year 2000. To do so, we...