Growth Research

In recent years, financial crises in developed nations have wreaked havoc around the world and leaders are hungry for new insights into the central challenges of growth and development. Research at the CID’s Growth Lab works to solve the mysteries of growth and articulate the policy implications that emerge.

The Growth Lab is gaining increasing attention as the global hub for Structural Transformation, a view of development that gives a central role to the complexity of a country’s economy and identifies the capabilities a country needs to produce more sophisticated products and services.

The Lab's research seeks to understand:

What social and economic processes determine the speed of productivity improvements and technology adoption -- and how do these differ depending on the institutional environment of a society and its level of technological or financial development?

How to identify in practical settings the most important constraints on growth when many aspects of an economy are distorted, and how to identify interventions that can relax these constraints given the political and social environment.

What kinds of institutional processes can create a political capacity to identify and address opportunities and obstacles dynamically?

To answer these questions, The Growth Lab faculty and fellows engage in theoretical and empirical research on the determinants of growth and its social, political, and environmental sustainability.

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CID Director Ricardo Hausmann with South African President Jacob Zuma and former Chilean Finance Minister Andres Velasco in South Africa in June 2010.

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