How does a state's natural resource wealth influence its economic development? For the
past fifty years, versions of this question have been explored by both economists and …

Despite a large number of empirical studies, the controversy of whether a gender gap in
education harms or boosts economic performance still persists. We conduct a systematic …

The “middle-income trap” is the phenomenon of hitherto rapidly growing economies
stagnating at middle-income levels and failing to graduate into the ranks of high-income …

The vast empirical exchange rate literature finds the effect of exchange rate volatility on real
activity to be small or insignificant. In contrast, this paper offers empirical evidence that real …

The global debate over who should take action to address climate change is extremely
precarious, as diametrically opposed perceptions of climate justice threaten the prospects …

This paper argues that globalization may promote contagion by weakening incentives for
gathering costly information and by strengthening incentives for imitating arbitrary market …

Specialization in primary product exports reduces growth, but why? Adverse trends in, and
the high variance of, primary product prices are possible explanations. The impact on …

This paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic fundamentals on emerging market
sovereign credit spreads. We find that the volatility of terms of trade in particular has a …

In this paper we analyze empirically the effect of terms of trade shocks on economic
performance under alternative exchange rate regimes. We are particularly interested in …

How the rise of globalization over the past two centuries helps explain the income gap
between rich and poor countries today. Today's wide economic gap between the …