The paper examines a wide range of issues relating to the mix between loans and grants as well as the degree of concessionality of loans. A number of empirical tests are carried out based on annual panel data over 1970 to 1999 for 22 donor countries and 72 recipient countries. Based on the tests, we are able to identify a number of economic and political factors that have influenced donors’ pas...

The study is an empirical test of the effects of different categories of government expenditure, revenue and deficits on economic growth in developing countries. It is based on panel data of annual series over the last three decades for 103 countries, which are further classified into low-income, high-income, mineral exports dependent, and foreign aid dependent groups. Our findings suggest that...

This paper examines the role of evidence in drawing up the recommendations for tax reform in the Mirrlees Review. The arguments are organised loosely under five related headings: (i) Key margins of adjustment, (ii) Measurement of effective tax rates, (iii) The importance of information and complexity, (iv) Evidence on the size of responses, and (v) Implications from theory for tax design. Altho...

Expert opinion is often sought by government regulatory agencies when there is insufficient empirical evidence to judge the safety implications of a course of action. However, it can be reckless to continue following expert opinion when a preponderance of evidence is amassed that conflicts with this opinion. Factual evidence should always trump opinion in prioritizing the information that is us...

Red, green, blue, yellow, and white have been distinguished from other hues as unique. We present results from two experiments that undermine existing behavioral evidence to separate the unique hues from other colors. In Experiment 1 we used hue scaling, which has often been used to support the existence of unique hues, but has never been attempted with a set of non-unique primaries. Subjects w...

It is increasingly recognized that knowledge is the norm of assertion. As this view has gained popularity, it has also garnered criticism. One widely discussed criticism involves thought experiments about “selfless assertion.” Selfless assertions are said to be intuitively compelling examples where agents should assert propositions that they don’t even believe and, hence, don’t know. This resul...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between exports, and in particular export diversity, and regional growth in a developing country context. Using export data for 19 sectors from 354 subnational (magisterial) districts of South Africa, we construct various measures of subnational export diversity. We find that it is not only how much that is exported, but also important ...

i am going to assess shortcomings of transaction cost economics (tce) of oliver williamson. my argument is that this analysis suffers from misidentification of the relevant problem of the theory, analytical incoherence, inconsistent empirical support and methodological defects. in formulating coase's fundamental idea, williamson accepts an efficient equilibrium which occurs once forever, t...

the convergence hypothesis maintains that an economy whose productivity lags behind other economies has a potential to grow faster. in other words, this economy can experience faster economic growth through absorbing, accepting, and using available technology experience. in this study, we have examined the relationship between tfp of industry sectors and regional convergence in iran's prov...