Explaining cross-country differences in growth rates requires not only an understanding of the link between growth and public policies, but also an understanding of why countries choose different public policies. This paper shows that ethnic diversity helps explain cross-country differences

We estimate a forward-looking monetary policy reaction function for the postwar United States economy, before and after Volcker’s appointment as Fed Chairman in 1979. Our results point to substantial differences in the estimated rule across periods. In particular, interest rate policy

Abstract This paper presents a Downsian model of political competition in which parties have incomplete but richer information than voters on policy effects. Each party can observe a private signal of the policy effects, while voters cannot. In this setting, voters infer the policy effects from

residual across countries. At a deeper level, we document that the differences in capital accumulation, productivity, and therefore output per worker are driven by differences in institutions and government policies, which we call social infrastructure. We treat social infrastructure as endogenous

We exploit differences in early colonial experience to estimate the effect of institutions on economic performance. Our argument is that Europeans adopted very different colonization policies in different colonies, with different associated institutions. The choice of colonization strategy was

familiar dynamic rational expectations theories to suggest that it might be useful and practical, while the implications for policy are different enough to be interesting.

Planning under uncertainty is a central problem in the study of automated sequential decision making, and has been addressed by researchers in many different fields, including AI planning, decision analysis, operations research, control theory and economics. While the assumptions

. We also discuss possible preference policies to choose among different minimal generalizations. Index terms:

; and public policies affecting families and children. A second major focus is on the patterning of environmental events and transitions over the life course as these affect and are affected by intrafamilial processes. Special emphasis is given to critical research gaps in knowledge and priorities for future

at home. I compare several different measures of foreign outsourcing, and argue that they have all increased since the 1970s. I also consider the implications of globalization for employment and wages of low-skilled workers, and for trade and regulatory policy, such as labor standards. The last few