In recent decades, aid agencies, international financial institutions, and developed countries have placed an increased focus on institutional quality (governance) as a criterion for the allocation of financial assistance to the developing countries. Such foreign aid conditionality is based on the general consensus that better governance leads to better economic outcomes. For Asian and Oceanic economies, however, previous studies have reported a negative relationship between economic growth and governance terming it the 'growth-governance paradox'. We revisit the role of governance and economic growth using panel data for 37 Asian and Oceanic countries over the period of 1996-2013. Unlike previous studies, we employ panel analytic methodologies that account for different sources of biases and find that governance has, in fact, a positive relationship with growth in developing Asian and Oceanic economies.

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This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the earnings disadvantage of 21st century immigrants in the United States. The study is the first to decompose the earnings disadvantage faced by recent immigrants to present the channels through which immigrants lag behind their native counterparts. The decomposition of the earnings disadvantage reveals that the time spent in the United States is the key determinant of the earnings disadvantage. Other important sources of the earnings disadvantage of immigrants are the levels of English-language proficiency and educational attainment. The decomposition analysis also suggests that low levels of human capital cause an even larger disadvantage for immigrants in the years following the 2008-2009 recession as compared with the corresponding relative returns of the prerecession period. The decomposition analysis and trends in returns to human capital variables highlight the merits of a selective immigration system that favors young, English-speaking, and highly educated individuals. JEL Classifications: J1, J3, J6