Research

(Publications, Working Papers, Case Studies and Book Chapters )

Publications

"How the Millennium Development Goals are Unfair to Africa" World Development, forthcoming.

"Institutions: Top Down or Bottom Up?" American Economic Review, forthcoming, May 2008.

(with Tobias Pfutze) "Where Does the Money Go? Best and Worst Practices in Foreign Aid" Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 22, No.2, Spring 2008

(with Timothy Irwin and Luis Serven) "Walking up the down escalator: Public investment and fiscal stability" The World Bank Research Observer, Vol. 23, No. 1, 37-56, Spring 2008

"Inequality does cause underdevelopment" Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 84, Issue 2, November 2007, 755-776. For dataset click here.

"Are Aid Agencies improving?" Economic Policy, Vol. 22, Issue 52, 633-678, October 2007

"Was Development Assistance a Mistake?" American Economic Review, May 2007, Vol. 97, No.2, 328-332

"Planners vs. Searchers in Foreign Aid" Asian Development Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1-35, 2006

"Reliving the 50s: the Big Push, Poverty Traps, and Takeoffs in Economic Development" Journal of Economic Growth, Vol.11, No.2, 289-318, December 2006

( with Jozef Ritzen and Michael Woolcock) " Social Cohesion, Institutions and Growth" Economics and Politics, Vol. 18, No. 2, July 2006

(with Roberta Gatti and Sergio Kurlat) "Development, Democracy, and Mass Killings" Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 11, No.2, June 2006, pp.129-156

"An Identity Crisis? :Examining IMF Financial Programming" World Development, Vol. 34 No. 6, June 2006

"The Big Push Déjà Vu: A Review of Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time" Journal of Economic Literature Vol. 44, No. 1, March 2006

"National policies and economic growth" in Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, editors, Handbook of Economic Growth, Elsevier, 2005

What did structural adjustment adjust? The association of policies and growth with repeated IMF and World Bank adjustment loans, Journal of Development Economics Vol 76, February 2005 , pp. 1-22.

Comment on: "Latin America in the rear view mirror", Journal of Monetary Economics Vol 52 Issue 1, January 2005, pp.109-112.

(with Ross Levine and David Roodman) "New Data, New Doubts: A Comment on Burnside and Dollar's "Aid, Policies, and Growth" American Economic Review, June 2004. Dataset , New Data

"The Cartel of Good Intentions: The Problem Bureaucracy in Foreign Aid", Journal of Policy Reform, 2003, pp.1-28.

(with Alberto Alesina, Arnaud Devleeschauwer, Sergio Kurlat and Romain Wacziarg) "Fractionalization" Journal of Economic Growth, Volume 8, 2003, pp. 155-194. Dataset

(with Shanta Devarajan and Howard Pack) "Low Investment is not the Constraint on African Development" Economic Development and Cultural Change, Volume 51, No. 3, April 2003

(with R. Levine) "Tropics, germs, and crops: the role of endowments in economic development",Journal of Monetary Economics, 50:1, January 2003.

"The Middle Class Consensus and Economic Development" Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 6, No. 4, December 2001, 317-336.

(with Ross Levine) "It's Not Factor Accumulation: Stylized Facts and Growth Models" World Bank Economic Review, Volume 15, Number 2, 2001

(with Allan Drazen) "Do Crises Induce Reform? Simple Empirical Tests of Conventional Wisdom" Economics and Politics, Volume 13, No. 2, July 2001, 129-158

The Lost Decades: Explaining Developing Countries' Stagnation in Spite of Policy Reform 1980-1998" Journal of Economic Growth, Volume 6, Issue 2, June 2001, 135-157.

"Can Institutions Resolve Ethnic Conflict?" Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2001

"Growth Implosions and Debt Explosions: Do Growth Slowdowns Explain Public Debt Crises?" Contributions to Macroeconomics, 2001, volume 1, article 1, Berkeley Electronics Press

(with Stanley Fischer) "Inflation and the Poor" Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, May 2001, Part 1, 159-178.

"The Ghost of Financing Gap: Testing the Growth Model of the International Financial Institutions", Journal of Development Economics, (60)2 December 1999 pp. 423-438 (selected for summary of top 100 annual journal articles in Economic Intuition)

(with A. Alesina and R. Baqir) "Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions" Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1999,Volume CXIV, Issue 4, pp. 1243-1284.

"Life During Growth" , Journal of Economic Growth, Volume 4, Issue 3, September 1999, pp. 239-275
Supporting Dataset

(with M. Bruno) "Inflation Crises and Long-run Growth", Journal of Monetary Economics 41 February 1998, 3-26. (selected for summary of top 100 annual journal articles in Economic Intuition)
Supporting Dataset

(with R. Levine) "Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions," November 1997, Quarterly Journal of Economics. CXII (4), 1203-1250. Supporting Dataset

General growth and development dataset (Global Development Network Growth Database)

Working Papers

"Superpower Interventions and their Consequences for Democracy: an Empirical Inquiry" (with Shanker Satyanath and Daniel Berger) NBER Working Paper 13992, May 2008.

"Was the Wealth of Nations determined in 1000B.C.?" (with Diego Comin and Erick Gong) DRI Working Paper No. 26, September 2006.

"Artificial States" ( with Alberto Alesina and Janina Matuszeski ) DRI Working Paper No. 24, March 2006 and NBER Working Paper No. 12328, June 2006

" How to assess the needs for aid? The answer: Don't ask." Paper prepared for the Third AFD/EUDN Conference; Financing Development: What are the Challenges in Expanding Aid Flows? Paris, December 14th 2005

Empirics of Strategic Interdependence: The Case of the Racial Tipping Point" DRI Working Paper No. 5, October 2005

Case Studies

"Growth in Ethiopia: Retrospect and Prospect" mimeograph, 2004.

"Freedom versus Collectivism in Foreign Aid" in Economic Freedom of the World: 2006 Annual Report.

"Globalization" , Entry for Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, October 2006