Working Papers by Topic

Long-Term Economic Growth and Income Gaps

"EU Accession, Institutional Change, Growth and Human Capital," March 2022. 

We use the experience of ex-socialist countries to examine the roles of initial institutions and change in institutions upon joining the EU in the mid-2000s on growth. Using difference-in-difference analysis we show ex-socialist countries that joined the EU boosted their growth after accession. We examine the proximate causes of this boost in growth and find it to be human capital. These countries did not receive a boost in human capital upon accession. Nor did other economic or political confounders change since these countries had fully opened-up and adopted privatization, governance and enterprise restructuring, price liberalization, and pro-competition policy and democracy in early 1990s. Communism’s collapse at transition created poor institutions that permitted self-serving behavior of old socialist elite and of new opaque business networks that emerge to exploit the complex environment. Accepting and implementing the European Union regulations and norms in all details upon joining it puts an end such behavior, permits building of transparent networks, and improves institutions. These countries had higher than OECD level of human capital at transition. Their skilled labor needed right institutions – transparent business networks and EU norms and regulations - to create value it was capable of. Institutions’ effect on growth is channeled through human capital.

"Long-Term Growth Miracles and Failures and Human Capital" February, 2022.

The recent empirical growth literature has noted that few countries’ incomes grow uniformly over periods longer than a decade or so. Several authors have drawn attention to start-stop growth experience, growth accelerations and decelerations, and within-country regime changes. We extend the above literature as follows: we ignore income variations over the short run, consider growth variations over a long period (up to 66 years), study growth relative to a benchmark country, and collapse the varieties of growth experiences to two: where a country is growing faster than the benchmark country/relative convergence, and where it is growing slower/divergence. To minimize parameter heterogeneity, we consider one geographical region, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Sub-Saharan countries are eminently suitable for this examination because they experience both regimes copiously The average catching-up duration is 17.8 years, average falling-behind is 27.2 years and the number of periods for the two experiences is almost the same. We use panel estimation, including the “between” estimator, separately for the two sets of periods, and examine proximate factors for relative income changes, The main difference of the divergence panels from the r-convergence panels is on the role of human capital. Catching-up relatively is mostly explained by human capital and for the catching-up panels, total factor productivity (TFP) is less important than human capital.

"State of the Developing World: PPP Income, Catching-Up/Falling Behind, and No Growth," June 2021

See abstract at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2909338

"South Asia/Frontier Long-Term Income Dynamics and Income-Health Relationships," July 2019.

See abstract at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3277198

Globalization and Institutions

"Multinational Corporations and Institutions" July 2019.

See abstract at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2909320

“Foreign Aid and Long-Term Prospects of Recipients,” September 2019.

See abstract at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3277203

Published Papers by Topic

Total citations to my papers: 653 on 3/13/22 (including some to working papers)

For list of citations, see, my Google Scholar profile here.

Long-Term Economic Growth and Income Gaps, Total Citations: 23.

“Income Convergence and The Catch-Up Index,” The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Vol. 48 (2019), pp. 613-627. Published online August 16, 2018, Cited by: 21.

Stillbirths and Life Expectancy, Total Citations: Two.

"Stillbirths: How should its rate be reported, its disability-adjusted-life-years (DALY), and stillbirths adjusted life expectancy, "BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, Vol. 19 (2019), pp. 133-140, Cited by: Two.

Globalization and Institutions, Total Citations: 30.

“Financial Openness & Institutions In Developing Countries,” Research in International Business and Finance, Vol. 46, December 2018, pp 240-250, Cited by: Eight.

“Are Institutions In Developing Countries Malleable,” Journal of Policy Modeling, Vol. 38 (2016), Issue 2, pp. 272-289. Cited by: 22.

Capital Flight and Capital Flows, Total Citations: 299.

“Relationship Between Different Types of Private Flows To Developing Countries,” Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis in Social Sciences, Vol. 4 (2010), Issue 1, pp. 58-82, Cited by: Six.

“Capital Flight,” Commissioned Entry in the Encyclopedia of Globalization, Vol. I (2007), R. Robertson and J.A. Scholte (eds.), published by Routledge. ISBN # 0-415-97314-7

“Capital Mobility among Advanced Countries.” Journal of Policy Modeling, Vol. 27, December 2005, pp. 1067-1081, Cited by Eight.

"The Asian Crisis and Financial and Capital Account Liberalization,” pp. 98-108 in Chatterji, M. and P. Gangopadhyay (eds.) “Economic Globalization and Asia.” (2005) Ashgate Publishing Ltd., U.K., ISBN # 0-75-46414-7,

“What is Capital Flight?” The World Economy, Vol. 25, No. 3, March 2002, pp. 341-358, Cited by 63.

“Capital Inflows and Capital Flight – Individual Countries Experience,“ Journal of Economic Integration, December 1998, pp. 644-61, Cited by 33.

“Foreign Direct Investment and Capital Flight” Princeton Studies in International Finance, No. 80 (1996), International Finance Section, Department of Economics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Cited by 189.

Transfer Pricing, Total Citations: 298.

“Minority Ownership, Deferral, Perverse Intra-firm Trade and Tariffs,” International Economic Journal, Spring 1995, pp. 19-39. Cited by 24.

“Multinational Firms and Government Revenues,” Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 42 (1990), Issue 2, pp. 135-47/ Cited by 89.

“Perverse Intra-firm Trade,” Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 56 (1989), No. 1; Cited by 11.

“Foreign Subsidiary, Transfer-pricing and Tariffs.” Southern Economic Journal 55 (1988), 162–170; Cited by 39.

“Endogenous Transfer Pricing and the Effects of Uncertain Regulation,” Journal of International Economics, 24 (1988), 147-157; Cited by 135.