Comment on 'Growth Empirics and Reality,' by William A. Brock and Steven N. Durlauf
World Bank economists are mostly practical people, people who try to answer the question, 'what exactly should this particular country do right now?' But if they had hoped that the growth regression lessons summarized in William Brock and...
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English en_US |
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Washington, DC: World Bank
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/05/17737235/comment-growth-empirics-reality-william-brock-steven-n-durlauf http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17446 |
| Summary: | World Bank economists are mostly
practical people, people who try to answer the question,
'what exactly should this particular country do right
now?' But if they had hoped that the growth regression
lessons summarized in William Brock and Steven
Durlauf's article would enhance their practical advice
giving, they might feel some dissatisfaction. How would they
change their advice to, say, Brazil? But that is why this
article is important conceptually. It goes to the heart of
the matter by proposing a change in the empirical growth
literature's fundamental methodology, from model
testing to decision theoretic. The article's valiant
but flawed attempt reveals the difficulties in making this
shift, however. The reader likes to make three points: there
is a tension between the interests of academics and
practitioners in growth regressions; output response
heterogeneity is a huge practical problem; and policy
decisions can be guided only in broad outlines by growth regressions. |
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