Working Papers by Topic

Long-Term Economic Growth and Income Gaps

"Long-Run Catching-Up And Falling-Behind And Human Capital (PWT 10.0)" June 2023

Therecent empirical growth literature has noted that few countries’ incomes grow uniformly over periods longer than a decade or so. We consider growth variations over aperiod up to 66 years, studygrowth relative to a benchmark country, and collapse the varieties of growth experiences to two. catching-up relatively and falling-behind both relatively and absolutely. To minimize parameter heterogeneity and differences in fundamentals 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 (falling-behind) duration is 17.8 (27.2) years, and the number of periods for the two is almost the same. We use panel estimation separatelyfor the two sets of periods, and examine proximate factors for relative income changes. The main difference ofthe divergence panels from the 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. 

"EU Accession, Institutional Change, Growth and Human Capital" June, 2023.

We use the experience ofex-socialist countries to examine the roles of initial institutions at transition, and change in institutions upon joining the EU, on growth. Proxying better institutions with accession tothe EU, we show ex-socialist countries thatjoined the EU boosted their growth after accession. We examine the proximate causes of thisboost in growth and find the importance of human capital increased post accession. Neither the amount of human capital change upon accession nor didother economic or political confounders change - these countries had fully opened-up and adopted neo-liberal economic policies, governance restructuring and democracy inearly 1990s. Accepting and implementing EU’s regulations and norms in all details upon joining it permits building oftransparent networks and improves institutions. These countries had higher than OECD level ofhuman capital at transition. Theirskilled labour needed the right institutions to create value it was capable of.

"Long-Term Growth Miracles and Failures and Human Capital (PWT 9.1)" January, 2022.

Therecent empirical growth literature has noted that most countries’ incomes do not grow uniformly over periods longer than a decade or so. We ignore the short-term, consider income variations over the long run (up to 65 years) and two growth regimes, and take growth relative to a numeraire country. The two regimes are: periods when a country’s income is catching-up (relative
convergence) and when it is falling-behind (both relative and absolute divergence). To minimize parameter heterogeneity, we consider one geographical region, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The average catching-up duration for this region is 19.4 years, average falling-behind is 28.1 years and the number of periods for the two experiences is almost the same. Performing growth accounting by panel estimation separately for the two sets of periods, we find when human capital is contributing to growth in a positive and statistically significant way, countries are catching-up; when it is not, they are falling behind. For the catching-up panels, we find total factor productivity (TFP) to be less important than human capital for both growth and income levels, and the excess-effect of human capital over TFP is about 2.5 times for growth than for income levels.

"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: 689 on 05/30/23 (including some to working papers)

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

Long-Term Economic Growth and Income Gaps, Total Citations: 33.

“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: 33.

Stillbirths and Life Expectancy, Total Citations: Three.

"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: 31.

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

“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: 303.

“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 60.

“Capital Inflows and Capital Flight – Individual Countries Experience,“ Journal of Economic Integration, December 1998, pp. 644-61, Cited by 34.

“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 195.

Transfer Pricing, Total Citations: 306.

“Minority Ownership, Deferral, Perverse Intra-firm Trade and Tariffs,” International Economic Journal, Spring 1995, pp. 19-39. Cited by 25.

“Multinational Firms and Government Revenues,” Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 42 (1990), Issue 2, pp. 135-47/ Cited by 92.

“Perverse Intra-firm Trade,” Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 56 (1989), No. 1; Cited by 10.

“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 140.