Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Really Show?

We examine the effects of aid on growth--in cross-sectional and panel data--after correcting for the bias that aid typically goes to poorer countries, or to countries after poor performance. Even after thiscorrection, we find little robust evidence of a positive (or negative) relationship between aid inflows into a country and its economic growth. We also find no evidence that aid works better in better policy or geographical environments, or that certain forms of aid work better than others. Our findings, which relate to the past, do not imply that aid cannot be beneficial in the future. But they do suggest that for aid to be effective in the future, the aid apparatus will have to be rethought. Our findings raise the question: what aspects of aid offset what ought to be the indisputable growth enhancing effects of resource transfers? Thus, our findings support efforts under way at national and international levels to understand and improve aid effectiveness.

An Empirical Analysis of the Pricing of Collateralized Debt Obligations

We study the pricing of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) using an extensive new data set for the actively-traded CDX credit index and its tranches. We find that a three-factor portfolio credit model allowing for firm-specific, industry, and economywide default events explains virtually all of the time-series and crosssectional variation in CDX index tranche prices. These tranches are priced as if losses of 0.4, 6, and 35 percent of the portfolio occur with expected frequencies of 1.2, 41.5, and 763 years, respectively. On average, 65 percent of the CDX spread is due to firm-specific default risk, 27 percent to clustered industry or sector default risk, and 8 percent to catastrophic or systemic default risk. Recently, however, firm-specific default risk has begun to play a larger role.

Aid, Dutch Disease, and Manufacturing Growth

We examine the effects of aid on the growth of manufacturing, using a methodology that exploits the variation within countries and across manufacturing sectors, and corrects for possible reverse causality. We find that aid inflows have systematic adverse effects on a country’s competitiveness, as reflected in the lower relative growth rate of exportable industries. We provide some evidence suggesting that the channel for these effects is the real exchange rate appreciation caused by aid inflows. We conjecture that this may explain, in part, why it is hard to find robust evidence that foreign aid helps countries grow.manufacturing; economic development; dutch disease; cgd; center for global development

Medspectives - the Podcast about Health Professionals, the Stories of Their Practice, and Their Diverse Perspectives into the World Around Us

Medspectives is the podcast about health professionals, the stories of their practice, and their diverse perspectives into the world around us. The goal of the show is to capture the viewpoints of health professionals in all areas of healthcare, and to ultimately foster a greater public understanding of their different roles. Medspectives currently has a focus on covering the viewpoints and opinions of healthcare workers around the world in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the struggles they are facing. The healthcare professionals on the show speak about their personal anecdotes and experiences in medicinev in a way that anyone can understand, whether the listener has a background in medicine, or not. This past year, I've had the honor to speak with so many amazing people and they've shared countless stories: empowering stories of overcoming the odds when everything was stacked against them, funny and cute stories about the kid in the emergency room who just wanted a sticker, and heartbreaking stories about the feeling of powerlessness that arose from treating the elderly COVID patient with heart conditions who wanted nothing more than to just breathe. I've learned so much from talking to professionals ranging from an ICU nurse, emergency medicine doctors, paramedics, a trauma surgeon, spine surgeon, a nurse anesthetist among others, and this experience has been extremely eye-opening. A big goal I have in 2021 is to talk with health professionals around the globe to understand their stories and the different issues that face them. This podcast is also my Senior Honors Project, but I hope to continue working on it as a medical student, physician, and beyond

Patterns of international capital flows and their implications for economic development

Capital ; Economic development

India's Patterns of Development: What Happened, What Follows

India seems to have followed an idiosyncratic pattern of development, certainly compared to other fast-growing Asian economies. While the emphasis on services rather than manufacturing has been widely noted, within manufacturing India has emphasized skill-intensive rather than labor-intensive manufacturing, and industries with typically higher average scale. We show that some of these distinctive patterns existed even prior to the beginning of economic reforms in the 1980s, and argue they stem from the idiosyncratic policies adopted soon after India's independence. We then look to the future, using the growth of fast-moving Indian states as a guide. Despite recent reforms that have removed some of the policy impediments that might have sent India down its distinctive path, it appears unlikely that India will revert to the pattern followed by other countries.

Foreign Capital and Economic Growth

Nonindustrial countries that have relied more on foreign finance have not grown faster in the long run as standard theoretical models predict. The reason may lie in these countries’ limited ability to absorb foreign capital, especially because their financial systems have difficulty allocating it to productive uses, and because their currencies are prone to appreciation (and often overvaluation) when such inflows occur. The current anomaly of poor countries financing rich countries may not really hurt the former’s growth, at least conditional on their existing institutional and financial structures. Our results do not imply that foreign finance has no role in development or that all types of capital naturally flow “uphill.” Indeed, the patterns associated with foreign direct investment flows have generally been more consistent with theoretical predictions. However, we find no evidence that providing financing in excess of domestic saving is the channel through which financial integration delivers its benefits.Foreign capital, economic growth, macroeconomics, foreign finance

Laparoscopic Management of Adrenal Lesions Larger Than 5 cm in Diameter

Introduction: Laparoscopic adrenalectomy remains a controversial procedure for large tumors. The incidence of adrenocortical carcinoma increases and technical difficulty of adrenalectomy increases as the size increases. We examined the outcome and complications of laparoscopic adrenalectomy for such lesions. Materials and Methods: Twenty-nine patients underwent laparoscopic adrenalectomy, of whom 19 had tumors larger than 5 cm in diameter, having a median tumor size of 7.0 cm. They were compared with patients whose adrenal tumors were smaller than 5 cm. Results: Patients with small tumors (< 5 cm) had a significantly shorter median operative time of 90 minutes as compared to 145 minutes in those with large tumors (> 5 cm). There was no significant difference in the median hemoglobin drop (1.05 g/dL versus 1.30 g/dL), time for starting oral intake (24 hours in both groups) or hospital stay (3.5 days versus 4.0 days) between patients with small and large tumors, respectively. There were no intra-operative complications except for 1 incidence of supraventricular tachycardia in a patient with a large pheochromocytoma. There were no major complications seen in any of the patients and no open conversions. Histopathology of large tumors revealed 16 benign tumors (8 pheochromocytomas, 4 adenomas, 2 ganglioneuromas, 1 pseudocyst, and 1 myelolipoma) and 3 malignancies, of which 1 was primary adrenocortical carcinoma and 2 were metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Conclusion: In experienced hands, laparoscopic adrenalectomy is safe and feasible for large functioning adrenal tumors. Large adrenal tumors suspicious of harboring malignancy with no peri-adrenal involvement can be tackled laparoscopically

Gender Differences in Russian Colour Naming

In the present study we explored Russian colour naming in a web-based psycholinguistic experiment (http://www.colournaming.com). Colour singletons representing the Munsell Color Solid (N=600 in total) were presented on a computer monitor and named using an unconstrained colour-naming method. Respondents were Russian speakers (N=713). For gender-split equal-size samples (NF=333, NM=333) we estimated and compared (i) location of centroids of 12 Russian basic colour terms (BCTs); (ii) the number of words in colour descriptors; (iii) occurrences of BCTs most frequent non-BCTs. We found a close correspondence between females’ and males’ BCT centroids. Among individual BCTs, the highest inter-gender agreement was for seryj ‘grey’ and goluboj ‘light blue’, while the lowest was for sinij ‘dark blue’ and krasnyj ‘red’. Females revealed a significantly richer repertory of distinct colour descriptors, with great variety of monolexemic non-BCTs and “fancy” colour names; in comparison, males offered relatively more BCTs or their compounds. Along with these measures, we gauged denotata of most frequent CTs, reflected by linguistic segmentation of colour space, by employing a synthetic observer trained by gender-specific responses. This psycholinguistic representation revealed females’ more refined linguistic segmentation, compared to males, with higher linguistic density predominantly along the redgreen axis of colour space