Amyaz Moledina's List: OpenStax

Measures of real consumption based upon the ownership of durable goods, the quality of housing, the health and mortality of children, the education of youth and the allocation of female time in the household indicate that sub-Saharan living standards have, for the past two decades, been growing about 3.4 to 3.7 percent per annum, i.e. three and a half to four times the rate indicated in international data sets.

China’s rapid growth was fueled by substantial physical capital investments applied to a large stock of medium skilled labor acquired before economic reforms began. As development proceeded, the demand for high skilled labor has grown, and, in the past decade, China has made substantial investments in producing it. The egalitarian access to medium skilled education characteristic of the pre-reform era has given rise to substantial inequality in access to higher levels of education. China’s growth will be fostered by expanding access to all levels of education, reducing impediments to labor mobility, and expanding the private sector.

We analyze the incidence and correlates of growth slowdowns in fast-growing middle-income countries, extending the analysis of an earlier paper (Eichengreen, Park and Shin 2012). We continue to find dispersion in the per capita income at which slowdowns occur. But in contrast to our earlier analysis which pointed to the existence of a single mode at which slowdowns occur in the neighborhood of $15,000-$16,000 2005 purchasing power parity dollars, new data point to two modes, one in the $10,000-$11,000 range and another at $15,000-$16,0000. A number of countries appear to have experienced two slowdowns, consistent with the existence of multiple modes. We conclude that high growth in middle-income countries may decelerate in steps rather than at a single point in time. This implies that a larger group of countries is at risk of a growth slowdown and that middle-income countries may find themselves slowing down at lower income levels than implied by our earlier estimates. We also find that slowdowns are less likely in countries where the population has a relatively high level of secondary and tertiary education and where high-technology products account for a relatively large share of exports, consistent with our earlier emphasis of the importance of moving up the technology ladder in order to avoid the middle-income trap.

We use a newly assembled sample of 1,503 regions from 82 countries to compare the speed of per capita income convergence within and across countries. Regional growth is shaped by similar factors as national growth, such as geography and human capital. Regional convergence is about 2.5% per year, not more than 1% per year faster than convergence between countries. Regional convergence is faster in richer countries, and countries with better capital markets. A calibration of a neoclassical growth model suggests that significant barriers to factor mobility within countries are needed to account for the evidence

poverty switched from being seen as a social good to a social bad. This change in thinking, and the accompanying progress in knowledge, has greatly influenced public action, with heightened emphasis on the role of antipoverty policy in sustainable promotion from poverty, as well as protection. Development strategies today typically strive for a virtuous cycle of growth with equity and a range of policy interventions have emerged that aim to help assure that outcome. An expanding body of knowledge has taught us about how effective those interventions are in specific settings, although many knowledge gaps remain.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically determine the effects of political instability on economic growth. By using the system-GMM estimator for linear dynamic panel data models on a sample covering up to 169 countries, and 5-year periods from 1960 to 2004, we find that higher degrees of political instability are associated with lower growth rates of GDP per capita. Regarding the channels of transmission, we find that political instability adversely affects growth by lowering the rates of productivity growth and, to a smaller degree, physical and human capital accumulation. Finally, economic freedom and ethnic homogeneity are beneficial to growth, while democracy may have a small negative effect.

We investigate the role of physical and social infrastructure in economic growth in India for the period 1970 to 2006. We develop a composite index of physical infrastructure stocks and examine its impact on output. We find that physical and social infrastructures have a significant positive impact on output apart from gross domestic capital formation and international trade. Further, the causality analysis supports the results, revealing unidirectional causality from infrastructure development and human capital to output growth in India.

By studying the cross-country incidence of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, we document a structural break in the way emerging economies responded to the global shock. Contrary to popular perceptions, emerging economies suffered growth collapses (relative to the pre-crisis levels) comparable to those experienced by developed economies, even when they continued growing. Afterwards, most economies returned to their pre-crisis growth rates. Although emerging economies were not able to avoid the collapse originated in the U.S. and then transmitted across countries, they were more resilient during the global crisis than during past crises. Namely, they resumed their higher growth rates earlier and converged more quickly to their pre-crisis growth trend. Moreover, breaking with the past, emerging economies did not fall more than developed economies during the global crisis and were able to conduct countercyclical policies, thus becoming more similar to developed economies.

With the progress of globalization, the openness-output nexus has drawn more attention than ever before. Results in this aspect, however, are inconclusive. Based on the average growth rate for the last two decades, we select 12 top performed Asian countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Korea Republic, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Working with these 12 emerging Asian economies over the 1971 to 2009 period, we find a positive and significant impact of openness on economic growth. The system GMM technique is used to overcome the shortcomings of endogeneity as found in most previous studies. While growth in labor force has insignificant effect on output growth, growth in capital stock exhibits a positive and significant impact on output growth. These findings have policy implications for other emerging economies of the world.

The present paper examines the differences in growth performances of Asia and Latin America, in particular, the roles of trade and institutions in explaining the differential growth experiences of the two regions. In examining trade policy instruments as a plausible explanation of growth divergence, we have focused on the emerging pattern and composition of export baskets in the two regions and regional integration and accession to WTO. In a GMM dynamic panel estimation for the period 1975-2005, though it is found that diversification and composition of exports have significant impacts on economic growth in both the regions, diversification within the manufacturing sector is important for Asia only. The common determinants of growth in the two regions are exports, investment, public debt and human capital. On the other hand, the differentiating factors on the diverging growth experiences of Asia and Latin America are infrastructure, regional integration and institutional aspects like patent protection, and WTO.

The global youth unemployment rate, estimated at 12.6 per cent in 2013, is close to its crisis peak. 73 million young people are estimated to be unemployed in 2013.1 At the same time, informal employment among young people remains pervasive and transitions to decent work are slow and difficult. The economic and social costs of unemployment, long‐term unemployment,
discouragement and widespread low‐quality jobs for young people continue to rise and undermine economies’ growth potential.