Paper #201

Title:

I just ran four million regressions

Author:

Xavier Sala-i-Martin

Date:

January 1997

Abstract:

In this paper I try to move away from the Extreme Bounds method of identifying ``robust'' empirical relations in the economic growth literature. Instead of analyzing the extreme bounds of the estimates of the coefficient of a particular variable, I analyze the entire distribution. My claim in this paper is that, if we do this, the picture emerging from the empirical growth literature is not the pessimistic ``Nothing is Robust'' that we get with the extreme bound analysis. Instead, we find that a substantial number of variables can be found to be strongly related to growth.

Keywords:

Economic growth, growth regressions, empirical determinants of economic growth

JEL codes:

O51, O52, O53

Area of Research:

Macroeconomics and International Economics

Published in:

American Economic Review, 87, 2, (1997), pp. 178-183

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