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Are markets in developing and transition economies overregulated or under-regulated? This is a perennial question in the development discourse, but one for which answers appear to come more from preset ideology than from context- specific analysis and evidence. These issues become even more pressing when the debate turns to the links between regulation, deregulation and inequality. The recent experience of rising inequality in many countries has also brought to the fore predictable policy positions. A key aspect of labor regulation in developing countries, and one becoming more prominent in the era of rising inequality, is the minimum wage. The range of issues around regulation, minimum wage and informality was addressed by papers presented to a conference held in New Delhi on December 17-18, 2014. The conference was co-sponsored by the World Bank, UK Department for International Development, Cornell University and Columbia University. The organizers of the conference were Kaushik Basu, Stefan Dercon, Ravi Kanbur and Jan Svejnar. A selection of papers from the conference which passed the usual review procedures of the Review of Development Economics, and a further selection of papers from those submitted to the journal, form this symposium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper argues that the relationship between corruption and economic growth is dependent upon the uncertainty involved. Employing data on a cross‐section of countries, this paper uses an interaction between the frequency of bribery payments and the uncertainty regarding the delivery of the service in exchange for these bribes to show that corruption has a negative association with growth unless the uncertainty is minimal. Furthermore, the negative association becomes larger in magnitude with higher levels of uncertainty. At extremely high levels of uncertainty a relatively small increase in corruption, equivalent to moving from Sweden to the United States for example, is associated with economically large decreases in economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy is pivotal for sustainable economic growth. Undoubtedly, the role of the composition of the export basket (measured as economic complexity) is one of the crucial variables influencing energy consumption. Despite its importance, the existing body of literature does not intensively study the relationship between economic complexity and total energy consumption. Therefore, this study's primary aim was to examine the effect of economic complexity on energy consumption in a case study of 21 developed and 44 developing countries for the period 1971–2014. In this context, economic complexity expresses the level of sophistication of a country's export basket. This paper considers energy prices and income as explanatory variables in Durbin‐H panel cointegration analysis and applies a cointegration test with structural breaks to check for the long‐run relationships. For the long‐run estimations, we employ the augmented mean group method and dynamic seemingly unrelated regression. The findings reveal that economic complexity increases energy consumption in developing countries while it decreases energy consumption in developed countries. This is an important insight for countries concerned about their energy dependence. The diversification of their production and export baskets can reduce energy needs. The paper finally presents policy recommendations based on the empirical estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partner country (PC) selection lies in the centre of development policy decision‐making of donor countries and institutions, and plays a significant role in shaping aid patterns. This paper proposes a comprehensive analysis contrasting donor intentions in PC selection with actual aid flows. Having analysed selected members of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, namely, the European Union, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, we suggest that (1) donors might not only be either altruistic or self‐interested but also motivated by an intention to contribute to the provision of global public goods; (2) self‐interest in aid provision can be an explicitly‐stated strategy, contrary to what has been argued in the majority of the literature, which often treats self‐interest as a non‐stated donor intention; and (3) donors' self‐interested intentions do not always lead to a less development‐oriented donor approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether the geographic characteristics of a country can explain cross-country variations in income levels through their ability to explain cross-country variations in cultural traits that enhance economic development. In other words, this paper attempts to determine whether the geographic endowment can serve as an instrument in examining the effect of culture on economic development. The paper conducts two-stage least-squares regressions. The second stage is a regression of the logarithm of real gross domestic product per capita on each of the cultural attributes that are considered in this study. In the first stage, the geographic factors that statistically explain a cultural aspect are used as instrumental variables. The results of the empirical estimation show that the cultural variables, instrumented by the geographic variables, explain cross-country variations in economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ricardian comparative advantage model suggests doing what you are best at. Meanwhile, many development experiences resulted in producing the impossible. Do the two prescriptions lead to an antagonism that the industrial policy must side by one? Or can industrial policy consider the current comparative advantage while aiming for significant changes in the export basket? This paper answers yes by suggesting a path to transformation through the tracks of current comparative advantage. I use the Product Space network to define the two attributes of a product: New products closer to the existing comparative advantage are easier to include in the export basket. On the other hand, central products in the core of the product space might be far from the export basket, but once added, they contribute more to the transformation and further diversification. Hence, a trade‐off exists between the proximity of a new product to the current export basket and its contribution to further diversification and transformation. I offer industrial policymakers to use a combination of product nearness and centrality. A policymaker seeking a gradual and secure transformation can prioritize nearness, while centrality can be given greater weight for rapid transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper extends a two‐period overlapping generations model of endogenous growth where the interactions between public infrastructure and human capital with research and development (R&D) activities and growth are studied. The paper makes two important contributions. First, it accounts for the spillover effect of the stock of ideas on learning, which in turn promotes the production of innovative technologies. In doing so, it brings to the fore a two‐way interaction between human capital and innovation. The paper then applies various econometric methods which confirm the above theoretical thesis. Second, the solutions of the model emphasize the important role public spending on infrastructure, human capital and R&D can play in promoting economic growth. However, the findings also show that trade‐offs in the allocation of public spending may inevitably emerge. In particular, investment in public infrastructure at the expense of spending on R&D is less likely to succeed in promoting economic growth, whereas it may be more effective to foster growth through an offsetting cut in another productive component, namely, education. In light of these potential trade‐offs, governments in low‐income countries need to use their limited budgets as part of holistic measures in order to achieve efficient outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans growth framework it is shown that for an optimum a benevolent social planner cannot have an excessive "love of wealth". With a "right" "love of wealth" an optimum exists and implies higher long-run per-capita capital, income, and consumption relative to the standard model. This has important implications for comparative development trajectories. The optimum implies dynamic efficiency with the possibility of getting arbitrarily close to the golden rule where long-run per-capita consumption is maximal. It is shown that the optimal path attains its steady state more slowly. Thus, the beneficial effects of love of wealth materialize later than in the standard model. Furthermore, the economy can be decentralized as a competitive private ownership economy. One can then identify "love of wealth" with the "spirit of capitalism." The paper thus implies that one needs a "right" level of the "spirit of capitalism" to realize any beneficial effects for the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the 2015 version of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) and World Trade Organization (WTO)'s Trade in Value‐added (TiVA) database to estimate China's value‐added exports to gross exports ratio (VAER), and calculate and compare China's bilateral gross trade imbalances and value‐added trade imbalances with its major trading partners at the aggregate and sector level, respectively. During the period from 1995 to 2011, China's value‐added exports were around 35% less than gross exports at the aggregate level, and around 60% and 80% for manufacturing sectors and tech‐intensive sectors, respectively. Compared with those based on conventional gross trade statistics, our estimates based on trade in value‐added cut China's overall trade imbalances substantially. China's value‐added trade surplus for manufacturing sectors, especially for the so‐called tech‐intensive sectors, was around 45% and over 85% less than gross trade surplus, respectively. China–U.S. value‐added trade surplus was 28–45% less than gross trade surplus during the period from 1995 to 2011. On the contrary, China's value‐added trade deficit with East and Southeast Asian economies is 71–99% and 59–93% less than gross trade deficit during the period from 2005 to 2011, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a panel data set of 160 economies from 1950 to 2018, this paper examines the relationship between military expenditures and economic, health‐related, education, environmental, and social indicators of sustainable development. The results generally suggest that the size of the military expenditures is negatively associated with educational attainment, life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality rates, female labor force participation, gender equality, and access to safe drinking water, electricity, basic sanitation, and positively correlated with mortality and poverty rates and air pollution. The findings are generally robust to different specifications and interact with GDP per capita; that is, the association of military spending with the development indicators is stronger (weaker) in less (more) developed economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the effects of government consumption and government debt on economic growth using data from 83 countries, including both developed and developing markets, over the period from 1960 to 2014. Linear regressions reveal that the negative effects of government consumption are relatively higher than the negative effects of government debt. A nonlinear investigation further suggests that the restrictions on government expenditure to prevent negative growth are more important for countries with lower trade openness, lower inflation, or greater financial depth, whereas the restrictions on government debt are shown to be more important for countries with higher trade openness, lower inflation or greater financial depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the effect of corruption on the economic development of the Latin American and Caribbean countries. Using panel data covering the period from 2000 to 2018 and leveraging on two‐way fixed‐effect and system generalized method of moments estimators, we show that a one standard deviation increase in corruption, as measured by the reversed Transparency International's corruption perception index, is associated with a decrease of 12.2% in gross domestic product per capita and a decrease of 3.05% in economic growth. This supports the view that corruption "sands the wheels" of the development of Latin American and Caribbean countries rather than "grease the wheels" perspective that corruption may help compensate for bad governance. We also assess the potential mechanisms through which corruption affects economic performance, providing evidence that corruption is associated with lower investment in physical capital and lower foreign investment flow. Finally, a panel Granger causality test indicates a bidirectional causality between higher corruption and lower economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Official Development Assistance ( ODA) in the aftermath of large natural disasters between 1970 and 2008. Using an event-study approach, the paper finds that while the median increase in ODA is 18% compared with pre-disaster flows, the typical surge is small in relation to the size of the affected economies. Moreover, aid surges typically cover only 3% of the total estimated economic damages caused by the disasters. The main determinants of post-disaster aid surges are found to be the intensity of the event itself and the recipient country's characteristics such as the level of development, country size and the stock of foreign reserves. The paper does not find evidence that political considerations or strategic behavior on the part of donors determine the size of post-disaster aid surges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Fisher's Identity model is established to study Northern Song China's (960-1126) level of velocity of money using money supply and gross domestic product ( GDP) data. Results of the exercise help rationalize what is called the 'bronze coin' puzzle, which is the massive amount of minted coins seemingly incommensurate with price levels. It is shown that the velocity of money was increasing and comparable to pre-industrial England levels. This paper argues that the driving forces of the short supply of money are greater than usual hoarding by the state treasury and coin outflows to Song's trading partners via smuggling. Since velocity of money is an indicator of economic development in ancient societies, this paper provides a realistic validation of the premise of the Needham puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a theoretical method to account for historical episodes of growth disparity. A numerical computation shows that the properties of the local dynamics of the proposed model are consistent with the facts indicated by selected episodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines causal relationships between economic globalization, the three indices for product diversification of exports (Theil index, intensive margin and extensive margin) and economic growth in the unbalanced panel data framework in 139 countries over the period 1970-2010. We also consider the subgroup of the countries related to the income levels and run the panel Granger non-causality tests for heterogeneous panels. The empirical results indicate that there is a bidirectional causal relationship between economic globalization and economic growth. There is also a significant causal relationship that runs from all three indices for the diversification of exports to economic growth. After implementing various robustness checks, we observe that diversification of exports and economic globalization are positively related with economic growth merely in the upper middle economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the convergence clustering in 31 Chinese provinces regarding several important economic indicators over the period 1952 to 2016 was empirically investigated. Several provincial clusters were identified in the per capita (real) gross domestic product (GDP), consumption–income ratio, retail price, and consumer price inflation rates, using a club convergence and clustering procedure. The empirical findings are as follows. First, it was found that all series of the original data contain a significant nonlinear component. Second, it was observed that there are five significant clusters for the per capita income in China. Third, it was found that there are four significant clusters for the consumption–income ratio. Fourth, it was observed that there are four significant clusters for the retail inflation rates and two significant clusters for the consumer inflation rates in China. These results will enable local and central planners to implement economic growth, savings and price adjustment policies for different groups of provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper follows Benhabib and Spiegel ( Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 34, 1994:143–73) in examining the effect of human capital accumulation on economic growth. The paper is innovative in two ways. First, it takes the R&D-based models more seriously. This delivers more structural specifications in which human capital affects growth as an input of final output and as a catalyst of technological innovation and imitation. Second, owing to data availability it is possible to disaggregate human capital and assign different roles to primary and post-primary education. Regression estimates obtained from these alternative specifications suggest that the relative contribution of human capital to technology adoption and final output production vary by country wealth. More importantly, regression estimates suggest that primary education contributes mainly to production of final output, whereas post-primary education contributes mainly to innovation and imitation of technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developed and well regulated financial markets are usually seen as a precondition for an efficient allocation of resources and can foster long term economic growth. This paper explores the institutional determinants for financial development in the countries of the Middle East and North African ( MENA) region. Institutional conditions are from the International Country Risk Guide. Panel-econometric techniques are applied to assess the development in the banking sector and the stock market. As a main finding, institutional conditions are important in both financial segments, even after controlling for standard macroeconomic determinants and fixed effects. For the banking sector, corruption seems to be most decisive. For the stock market, the impact of corruption and law and order appear to be relevant. While per capita income and inflation do not seem to play a vital role, openness to foreign trade is quite important for all areas of financial development. Hence, overall, faster real economic integration is of key policy priority to improve financial development as a condition for higher GDP growth. Better law and enforcement practices and anti-corruption policies are strategies to accompany this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before 2007/08, the European Monetary Union (EMU) was expected to be enlarged on schedule, but the European sovereign debt problem, triggered by the exogenous US sub-prime crisis, not only has revealed the EMU's fiscal coordination failure, but also has weakened regional financial integration. The stagnation of financial integration will therefore increase the cost of sustaining a monetary union, which in turn slows EMU enlargement and ruins the reputation of the euro. This paper aims to measure the damage to financial integration and to provide a more precise answer on real interest rate parity (RIP) convergence. Our estimation indicates that RIP between the EMU and some accession candidates is still valid after the interruptions of the financial crises. However, convergence of real interest rates cannot be achieved until 2030. This implies the EMU authority must strengthen regional financial integration to solidify the EMU and then be able to re-start enlargement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets up a vertically related market model in which imitation and innovation are endogenously determined to study the impact of intellectual property rights ( IPR) protection on less-developed countries. It shows how a less-developed country switches from imitation to innovation as it develops. It is also found that the relationship between IPR protection and economic development is U-shaped. The IPR protection tends to go down and then go up as income rises. This finding also conforms with that in the empirical literature on IPR protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many authors have estimated and found that the productivity growth in agriculture is higher than that in non-agriculture in today's richest countries. Several papers suggested that growth in agricultural productivity was essential for today's richest countries to take off early. However, few articles noticed that growth in agricultural productivity is critical in driving structural change in today's richest countries. This paper studies a two-sector neoclassical growth model with subsistence agricultural consumption and shows that growth in agricultural productivity plays a more important role than growth in non-agricultural productivity in governing massive structural change in today's richest countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, 152 million children are involved in economic activities. Poverty is the main cause of child labor, and the lack of social norms and inadequate legal systems are contributing factors. In order to understand the cause of child labor and provide appropriate assistance, this paper focuses on the accumulation of human capital and social capital. The first part of the paper shows that, historically, child labor has been highly dependent on the initial endowments of human capital and social capital. We also show that the condition of bifurcation from an identical initial condition depends on the productivity derived from social capital. The second part of the paper examines the effect of development aid in recipient countries, particularly the effect of two types of programs that attempt to eliminate child labor and provide support to strengthen social capital. We show that both programs are effective at making the economy better off. However, large amounts of development aid for the program that strengthens social capital can make the economy of middle‐income countries worse off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, I formulate a simple North–South R&D‐based growth model where final goods firms in the North endogenously determine the range of international outsourcing of intermediate goods to the South. I show that a fall in the trade cost (through trade liberalization) of intermediate goods in the North: (i) reduces the wage of the North relative to that of the South; (ii) increases the outsourced variety of intermediate goods in the North; and (iii) stimulates Northern R&D activity and economic growth in both countries. By conducting welfare analysis, I also show that a decline in the trade cost of intermediate goods in the North improves welfare in the South more than in the North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper uses the theoretical framework developed by Feder (1983) and Ram (1986) to examine interactions (i.e. externalities and intersectoral factor productivity differentials) between the official and unofficial sectors of the economy. Results from the empirical analysis, using data on over 100 countries from 1970 to 2008, suggest that the marginal externality effect of growth in the unofficial sector on the official sector is positive. Further, input productivities are higher in the unofficial sector relative to the official sector. These results are robust using alternate measures of the (unobserved) unofficial economy and across level of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aid donors are interested in understanding whether allocating aid via bilateral or multilateral channels might be more effective for achieving development goals. We review 45 papers that empirically test the associations between bilateral and multilateral aid flows and various development outcomes including gross domestic product growth, governance indicators, human development indicators and levels of nonaid investment flows. Findings suggest that differences between countries and regions, time periods, aid objectives, and individual donor organizations all may influence the effectiveness of aid delivered bilaterally and multilaterally. We find, however, no consistent evidence that either bilateral or multilateral aid is more effective overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines strategic investment subsidies in an international oligopoly. A general oligopoly model is constructed in which firms compete in two stages and governments commit to investment subsidies prior to firms' actions. The paper considers asymmetry among firms that arises from the nature of goods they produce rather than their cost structures. When firms produce asymmetrically differentiated goods, it is found that a change in the number of foreign competitors may alter the sign of the optimal unilateral investment subsidy. An example of policy reversal is provided in the case of strategic research and development subsidies for a quality-differentiated industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that the existence of endogenous growth, in the closed-form solution, in a single sector economy with a convex technology in an overlapping generations ( OLG) framework, which attempts to fill the current gap in endogenous growth theory. It finds there is an unbounded growth when trade, in the form of knowledge spillover, affects labor productivity through the formation of human capital with self-education that is not an independent sector but builds the human capital here. This conclusion holds even though there is the 'limited income' expressed as the 'non-increasing wage/investment ratio' for each generation. Moreover, it shows the convergence of growth rates for each country, which is unique and constant, while the growth rate per capita negatively relates with each country's population growth rate. Also, there is no 'poverty trap' with the introduction of externalities that is different from existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a North- South model of heterogeneous firms, the paper investigates the effects of the financial development of the South on the choice of international entry mode (export vs foreign direct investment [ FDI]) of Northern firms. Such development facilitates the entry of local firms and thus intensifies product market competition. As a result, the intensive margins, extensive margins and total sales from export or FDI of Northern firms are all reduced. The paper provides conditions that determine whether export or FDI is affected more significantly. The results generate empirically testable hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies on income convergence estimate the convergence equation derived for autarkic economies using data from the world that is increasingly integrated. This paper derives a convergence equation for a world integrated by trade from the standard Heckscher- Ohlin model with factor price equalization. The convergence equation for an integrated world differs from the autarkic one in that (1) the growth rate of each economy is increasing in the global growth rate; (2) the rate of convergence is increasing in the global growth rate; and (3) the rate of convergence, under conventional parameter values, is much lower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines empirically how the multiple-cone version of the Heckscher- Ohlin ( HO) model fits the 'flying geese' patterns of industrial development: a series of industries appear, prosper, then decline and finally disappear one after another. Using Japanese manufacturing data from 1975 to 2006, the analysis shows that the multiple-cone model fits well with the flying geese patterns of Japanese industrial development. The result suggests that part of the industrial upgrading can be explained by the multiple-cone HO model. This also implies that an underlying mechanism of macroeconomic growth is industrial upgrading, part of which can be attributed to capital accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional literature emphasizes the role of foreign capital, especially foreign direct investment ( FDI) in explaining the high growth rates that many emerging economies have enjoyed during 1990s and 2000s. The present paper accepts this conventional wisdom but argues that the FDI has also created problems of urban sprawl and congestion that would not be so intense if economic development had primarily come from domestic sources. This is because the FDI is typically concentrated in urban areas that abound in manufacturing and it neglects the rural areas where agriculture predominates. The paper suggests that a small tax on foreign capital tends to mitigate the side effects of foreign investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the link between the emigration of entrepreneurs and the emergence of economic development traps, which has not received much attention in the existing literature. We develop a theoretical model, where the economy is divided into a traditional and a modern sector. Entrepreneurs establish firms in the modern sector to produce varieties of differentiated goods. Positive spillover effects exist in the modern sector. We show that the emigration of entrepreneurs can cause economic development traps, where the productivity of the modern sector remains low, and more importantly, the economy is stuck in the traditional structure. In the typical case, the development traps exhibit strong history dependence. Under certain conditions, regardless of the initial endowment of entrepreneurs, economic development traps are unavoidable. By examining the effect of government policy intervention to correct the market failure arising from spillover effects, our study also provides a theoretical foundation for government policies used by some developed countries to attract foreign entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a two-period model in which the recipient faces borrowing constraint and the donor is a Stackelberg follower to address two important policy questions: (i) whether foreign aid can lead to the efficient level of capital investment in the recipient country and (ii) how does the form (e.g. budgetary transfers, capital transfer) and the timing of aid affect the recipient's financial savings and capital investment. It finds that the disincentive effect of the capital transfer on the capital investment by the recipient is larger than the budgetary transfers. It makes financial savings more attractive relative to the capital investment for the recipient. In the absence of capital transfer, the multi-period budgetary transfers not only lead to the efficient level of capital investment by the recipient, but also achieve the same allocation as under commitment. The capital transfer can lead to the efficient level of capital investment, but in this case, it completely crowds out the recipient's own capital investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth accelerated during the first decade of the 2000s in many poor countries, especially in Africa. This welcome news is widely discussed, even in the popular press. Yet as economies grow, some analysts express concerns that such growth is not having as significant an impact on poverty as one would hope. Analysts and policymakers ask whether this growth is adequately pro-poor, shared, or inclusive. Less noticed is that improvements in children's health are accelerating, too. This paper examines the extent to which these health improvements are equitably shared or 'inclusive.' We use a descriptive method, which is analogous to growth incidence curves, and apply it to eight countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America. We draw two principal conclusions. First, within countries, health improvements often have a different distribution than income/expenditure growth, and that distribution is usually more hopeful in the sense that it is more likely to be strongly pro-poor than the distribution of income growth. Second, we have yet to see clear patterns in terms of the within-country relationship between growth incidence curves and health improvement incidence curves. Thus, one cannot rely on the information in the growth incidence curve to infer the inclusiveness of health improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic Partnership Agreements ( EPAs) between the EU and African Caribbean and Pacific countries are frequently criticized because of fears about negative implications for economic development. Using Uganda as a case study, this paper employs an integrated computable general equilibrium-microsimulation model framework rich in household-level detail to assess the consequences of the East African Community EPA for economic output and poverty in Uganda. Simulations of the agreement's tariff liberalization provisions indicate a very small negative economic impact and ambiguous outcomes for poverty. The poverty results depend in size and sign on the poverty line, on the way the government addresses tariff revenue losses and on labor market assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the patterns of government expenditure stimuli among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD) countries during the Great Recession (2007-2009). Overall, we find that the USA net fiscal stimulus was modest relative to peers, despite it being the epicenter of the crisis, and having access to relatively cheap funding of its twin deficits. Of the 28 countries in the sample, the USA is ranked among the bottom third in terms of the rate of expansion of consolidated government consumption and investment expenditures. Contrary to historical experience, emerging markets had strongly countercyclical policy during the period immediately preceding the Great Recession and the Great Recession itself. Federal unions, emerging markets and countries with very high gross domestic product ( GDP) growth during the pre-recession period saw larger net fiscal stimulus on average than their counterparts. We also find that greater net fiscal stimulus was associated with lower flow costs of general government debt in the same or subsequent period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a two-sector R&D-based growth model with congestion effects from increasing urban population density. We show that endogenous technological progress causes structural change if there are positive productivity spillovers from the modern to the traditional sector and Engel's law holds. In turn, urban congestion effects cause a productivity slowdown in the modern sector. Eventually, economic growth may cease in the long-run. We also show that land dilution by a larger workforce may give rise to negative scale effects on ( GDP) per capita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to develop a generally applicable model to examine the eventual motivations both for internal migration and external immigration. For this reason our model involves not only economic motivations of development and geographical economics but also social motivations of behavior economics. We tested the model through Turkish internal and external population flows toward German regions. Our analysis contains the first regional-level immigration analysis between an EU country (Germany) and Turkey. The main results are: (i) the purely economic motivations are more important than the social motivations; (ii) among the economic motivations income level and economic size of host regions are the biggest ones; and (iii) and the network externalities play a more important role than the herd effect. Subsequently, we estimated some country-specific factors on im/migration. The main results are: (i) joining to the Customs Union led to acceleration in intern migration but slowing-down in external immigration; (ii) even though Turkey acts slowly in adopting EU reforms, the EU reform process seems to reduce the economic and social stress on Turkish im/migration; and (iii) the reunification of Germany created a constraint on Turkish immigration flows toward German regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When exploring the logic why some economies grow faster than others, previous studies commonly assume that all economies follow a universal growth path. This paper explores the heterogeneity of growth regimes across economies and then investigates the decomposition bias of growth sources in traditional methods. Using a panel data of China's provinces, the empirical results show that a finite mixture model with three classes is best to describe the data, revealing that there are multiple growth regimes across provinces. Also, some provinces switch regimes over time while the others remain stable. Further, neglecting heterogeneous regimes overestimates the importance of factor endowment and underestimates the importance of sector productivity, while it does not greatly influence the importance of of factor market efficiency. In particular, the decomposition bias embodies in physical capital and energy input rather than labor. Our findings indicate that the existing literature may underestimate the contribution of sector productivity. Thus, it is critical to account for heterogeneous regimes when exploring the sources of economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the factors driving manufacturing growth accelerations in a sample of 134 developing countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We first identify growth acceleration episodes of manufacturing value added (MVA) by their year of initiation and according to a country's income classification. We then estimate a probit model to explain what factors predict these MVA growth accelerations. Our results show that human capital and institutions represent contextual factors that favor the growth of manufacturing, together with macroeconomic policies related to investment, and openness to foreign trade and capital. We also find that most of these factors not only foster episodic accelerations of industry, but they contribute as well to a sustained process of industrialization that characterized the process of economic growth of a few successful countries over the period 1970 to 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the effect of international trade on income growth depend on the economy’s level of development? More specifically, is trade more beneficial to lower income economies? Does trade contribute to a smaller international income inequality? The present paper seeks to answer these questions by employing the empirical model of Frankel and Romer (1999 ), which shows trade increases income growth in a cross section of 150 countries. We find evidence in support of the hypothesis that international trade benefits the lower income economies more than it benefits the higher income economies. This finding is robust in the presence of control variables including distance from the equator and institutional quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that, for dynamic optimizing economies with different types of natural resource, environmental, and human-made capital stocks, a necessary and sufficient condition for permanently sustaining an optimal utility/consumption level is the stationarity of the current-value Hamiltonian. For economies whose development is not exogenously and directly affected by time (i.e., time-autonomous economies), this stationarity condition generalizes Dixit et al.’s (1980 ) “zero-net-aggregate-investment” rule of sustain-ability, which in turn generalizes Solow-Hartwick’s sustainability rule. For non-autonomous economies, the stationarity condition is not generally fulfilled, and the current-value Hamiltonian under ( over) estimates the true welfare level by an amount equal to the discounted value of the net “ pure time effect.” For the non-autonomous case of a time-dependent utility discount rate, a general condition on the discount rate function (of which the hyperbolic discount rate function is a special case) upholds the results obtained for autonomous cases. The paper concludes with a discussion of policies that promote both optimality and sustainability objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines the impact of different aid types, namely project aid, program aid, technical assistance, and food aid on the fiscal sector of the aid-recipient economy by using time-series data for Côte d’Ivoire over the period 1975–99. Our empirical results show that when a single value (or aggregated) for aid is used, foreign aid is fully consumed in the case of Côte d’Ivoire. However, results obtained under the assumption of aid heterogeneity clearly suggest that the government responds differently according to the nature of the aid inflows. Our approach tries to illuminate the response of the aid-recipient government to different categories of foreign aid inflows and the empirical findings clearly demonstrate the importance of the aid disaggregation approach for delving deeper into aid effectiveness issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper models the relationship between an aid-providing international financial institution (IFI) and an aid-receiving government whose economic policy choices are influenced by a domestic interest group. Two assistance schemes are evaluated: conditional aid in which the IFI makes assistance contingent on less- distorting economic policies and unconditional aid which is provided without such conditions. Conditional aid is shown to raise welfare of the receiving country and the world as a whole relative to unconditional aid. The paper also examines how conditional and unconditional aid schemes are influenced by the IFI's opportunity cost of providing assistance and the receiving government's political dependence on a domestic interest group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the relationship between stock market development and economic growth. It provides a theoretical basis for establishing the channel through which stock markets affect economic growth in the long run. It examines the hypothesis of endogenous growth models that financial development causes higher growth through its influence on the level of investment and its productivity. The empirical part of this study exploits techniques recently developed to test for causality in VARs. The evidence obtained from a sample of four countries suggests that investment productivity is the channel through which stock market development enhances the growth rate in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the impact of skill transfer on economic growth. Even if there are the benefits of backwardness and the ability to absorb them, the South may not exploit them, because the skilled workers in the North are not willing to come to the South owing to their high opportunity cost. It is shown that if the South's relative income is low, the South cannot offer high wages to attract skilled workers from the North, and stays in the low rank. But if its relative income is high enough, exploiting the benefits of backwardness, it attains high growth and converges to a relatively higher position. This prediction is consistent with the evidence that the world distribution of relative income has two peaks. The study also shows that an increase in human capital in the North increases the minimum requirement for human capital in the South to soar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates whether mixed trade strategies of import substitution and export promotion, if permanently or temporarily applied, can generate pro-tradables movements in the real exchange rate. Static and dynamic general-equilibrium modeling with a nontradables sector and alternative types of tradables is used to explore real exchange rate responses to uniform and nonuniform trade policy interventions. The paper shows that uniform, permanent interventions are neutral, having no impact on the equilibrium real exchange rate. The real exchange rate effect of temporary uniform interventions is, however, in general ambiguous when prices and incomes are fully endogenized. The breakdown of Lerner symmetry or of neutrality following uniform temporary interventions does not mean that intended promotion of tradables necessarily results in a pro-tradables movement in the real exchange rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a model of social and economic development which relaxes some of the assumptions made in existing papers on the determinants of growth. In particular, the model allows for multidirectional causality between social and economic indicators. The model indicates that there are strong causal relationships in both directions between economic development and social and political development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]