02170cas a2200253 a 4500 AALejournalIMF011354 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781463923273 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Swiston, Andrew. The Role of Structural Reforms in Raising Economic Growth in Central America / Andrew Swiston, Luis Barrot. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2011. 1 online resource (20 pages) IMF Working Papers <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students Central America experienced moderate growth during the last decade, including in the years leading up to the global financial crisis, but the rate of convergence toward advanced country income levels has still been slow. Moreover, forecasts imply that these trends will continue. What can be done to spur higher growth in Central America? We bring new data to bear on this question-version 7.0 of the Penn World Table and a new IMF database on structural reforms. Our cross-country panel regression of economic growth using System GMM captures the importance to growth of conditional convergence, factor accumulation, and macro policies. In addition, structural efficiency is a significant factor in explaining growth performance. We construct a broad index of efficiency and find that increasing the degree of structural efficiency by one standard deviation raises growth by 1\2 percent. This implies that Central American countries could significantly increase their long-run growth rates by increasing the flexibility of markets and improving the quality of regulation. Mode of access: Internet Barrot, Luis. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2011/248 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2011/248/001.2011.issue-248-en.xml IMF e-Library