Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Cross-industry cross-country models are used to address a wide array of questions in economics. They do so by analysing how the economic performance of industries in different countries depends on an interaction effect between industry and country characteristics. As the relevant industry characteristics are unobservable in most countries, they are approximated by industry characteristics in a benchmark country. We show that this approach generally yields biased estimates of the industry–country interaction effect. The sign of the bias depends on whether or not technologically similar countries tend to be similar in other country characteristics. We propose an alternative estimation approach.

We examine the effect of rainfall on agricultural output and democratization in the world's most agricultural countries. As in the agricultural economics literature, we find that the relationship between rainfall and agricultural output has an inverted U‐shape, as agriculture is harmed by both droughts and very wet conditions. We also find the effect of rainfall on agricultural output to be transitory. The relationship between rainfall and democratization is U‐shaped in the short run, and this effect persists in the long run. Hence democratic transitions outlast the (transitory) rainfall shocks that started the democratization process. The U‐shaped relationship between rainfall and democratization is consistent with rainfall affecting democratization through its (inverted‐U‐shaped) effect on agricultural output.

Jones (2014 ) examines development accounting with imperfect substitutability between different types of skills in the production of output. He finds that human capital variation can account for the totality of the variation in income across countries. We show that this finding is entirely due to an assumption that the relative wage of skilled workers is solely determined by attributes of workers (once the supply of skilled workers is accounted for). If skill premia are predominantly determined by technology, institutions, and other features of the economic environment, human capital differences explain none of the variation in income per worker. (JEL E24, I26, J24, J31)

Does cutting red tape foster entrepreneurship in industries with the potential to expand? We address this question by combining the time needed to comply with government entry procedures in 45 countries with industry-level data on employment growth and growth in the number of establishments during the 1980s. Our main empirical finding is that countries where it takes less time to register new businesses have seen more entry in industries that experienced expansionary global demand and technology shifts. Our estimates take into account that proxying global industry shifts using data from only one country–or group of countries with similar entry regulations–will in general yield biased results.