The Principal Components of Growth in the Less Developed Countries
用探索性因子分析重新审视欠发达国家增长的国际证据，将大量增长决定因素降维为少数综合指标，以解决遗漏变量、多重共线性和测量误差问题，并检验这些指标在增长回归中的统计显著性和定量重要性。
SUMMMARY This paper re‐examines the international evidence on the sources of growth in less developed countries (LDCs) using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Although EFA was first used in the development context by Adelman and Morris (1967) it has rarely been used since, despite being ideally suited to a context in which a large number of latent factors have been hypothesized to determine growth, and in which an even greater number of imperfectly measured and multicollinear proxies have been used to measure these latent factors. This paper uses EFA to minimize these problems of omitted variables biases, multicollinearity and measurement error, by reducing a large array of hypothesized growth determinants into a parsimonious and non‐collinear set of composite indices. The paper then provides theoretical interpretations of the derived indices, tests their statistical significance and quantitative importance in otherwise conventional growth regressions, and uses these results to reappraise the usefulness of cross‐country empirics in deriving robust, policy‐relevant knowledge of the principal components of growth in LDCs, including the so called ‘economic miracles’.