Abstract: This paper evaluates the empirical relationship between the level of financial intermediary development and (i) economic growth, (ii) total factor productivity growth, (iii) physical capital accumulation, and (iv) private saving rates. We use (a) a pure cross-country instrumental variable estimator to extract the exogenous component of financial intermediary development, and (b) a new panel technique that controls for biases associated to simultaneity and unobserved country-specific effects. After controlling for these potential biases, we find that (1) financial intermediaries exert a large, positive impact on total factor productivity growth, which feeds through to overall GDP growth; and (2) the long-run links between financial intermediary development and both physical capital growth and private saving rates are tenuous.

This paper -- a product of the Finance and Private Sector Development Division, Policy Research Department -- is pa't of a larger effort in the department to understand the links between the financial system and economic growth. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Stock Market Development and Financial Intermediary Growth" (RPO 679-53). Copies of this paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Paulina Sintim-Aboagye, room N9-030, telephone 202-473-8526, fax 202-525- 1155, Internet address psintimaboagye@worldbank.org. December 1996. (44 pages) The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less tban fully pollsbed. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. Tbe findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed m tbis paper are entirely those of tbe author. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent

Evidence from a broad panel of countries shows little overall relation between income inequality and rates of growth and investment. However, for growth, higher inequality tends to retard growth in poor countries and encourage growth in richer places. The Kuznets curve—whereby inequality first increases and later decreases during the process of economic development—emerges as a clear empirical regularity. However, this relation does not explain the bulk of variations in inequality across countries or over time.

We are grateful to Yongsung Chang and three referees, particularly the final referee, for useful comments. Saasha Celestial-One provided excellent research assistance. Does Schooling Cause Growth? Barro (1991) and others find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries. A model is examined in which the ability to build on the human capital of one's elders plays an important role in linking growth to schooling. The model is calibrated to quantify the strength of the effect of schooling on growth by using evidence from the labor literature on Mincerian (1974) returns to education. The upshot is that the impact of schooling on growth explains less than one third of the empirical cross-country relationship. The model is extended to address the choice of schooling, showing that faster growth can induce more schooling by raising its effective return. Calibrating schooling choices suggests that this reverse channel can potentially explain one half or more of the observed relationship between schooling and

Estimating the impact of economic conditions on the likelihood of civil conflict is difficult because of endogeneity and omitted variable bias. We use rainfall variation as an instrumental variable for economic growth in 41 African countries during 1981–99. Growth is strongly negatively related to civil conflict: a negative growth shock of five percentage points increases the likelihood of conflict by one-half the following year. We attempt to rule out other channels through which rainfall may affect conflict. Surprisingly, the impact of growth shocks on conflict is not significantly different in richer, more democratic, or more ethnically diverse countries. I.

We provide an analysis of real economic growth prospects in emerging markets after nancial liberalizations. In contrast with previous research, we identify the nancial liberalization dates and examine the inuence of liberalizations while controlling for a number of other macroeconomic and nancial variables. Our work also introduces an econometric methodology that allows us to use extensive time-series as well as crosssectional information for our tests. We nd across a number of di#erent specications that nancial liberalizations are associated with signicant increases in real economic growth. JEL Classication: F3, G0, O1 # We appreciate the comments of Rodolfo Apreda, Sebastian Edwards and participants at the NBER Inter-American Seminar on Economics, December 2-4, 1999 in Buenos Aires. Send correspondence to: Campbell R. Harvey, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708. Phone: (919)-660-7768, E-mail: cam.harvey@duke.edu . An electronic version of the paper is...

The relationship between decentralization of government activities and the extent of rent extraction by private parties is an important element in the recent debate on institutional design. The theoretical literature makes ambiguous predictions about this relationship, and it has remained virtually unexamined by empiricists. In this paper, we make a first attempt at examining this issue empirically, by looking at the cross-country relationship between fiscal decentralization and corruption as measured by a number of different indices. Our estimates suggest a strong negative relationship between fiscal decentralization in government expenditure and corruption. Moreover, we find that legal origin performs extremely well as an instrument for decentralization. When instrumenting in this way, the estimated relationship between decentralization and corruption is even stronger. We thank Shantayanan Devarajan for useful conversations and seminar participants at the IX Conference of the Italian Society of Public Economics and the World Bank for valuable comments. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the World

We investigate the issue of model uncertainty in cross-country growth regressions using Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA). We find that the posterior probability is spread widely among many models, suggesting the superiority of BMA over choosing any single model. Out-of-sample predictive results support this claim. In contrast to Levine and Renelt (1992), our results broadly support the more ‘optimistic ’ conclusion of Salai-Martin (1997b), namely that some variables are important regressors for explaining cross-country growth patterns. However, care should be taken in the methodology employed. The approach proposed here is firmly grounded in statistical theory and immediately leads to posterior and predictive inference. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1.

This paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agricultural technology in Ghana. We use unique data on farmers ’ communication patterns to define each individual’s information neighborhood, the set of others from whom he might learn. Our empirical strategy is to test whether farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surprisingly successful in previous periods. We present evidence that farmers adopt surprisingly successful information neighbors ’ practices, conditional on many potentially confounding factors including common growing conditions, credit arrangements, clan membership, and religion. The relationship of these input adjustments to experience further supports their interpretation as resulting from social learning. In ad-The authors have benefittedfromtheadviceofRichardAkresh,Federico Bandi, Alan Bester, Dirk Bergemann,

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