This dissertation consists of three chapters.

The first chapter examines the frequency of banking crisis is statistically significantly correlated to growth for the time windows of 1 decade and 2 decades, this negative relationship becoming increasingly more statistically insignificant overall for time windows from 3 decades to 10 decades before finally becoming positive, though statistically insignificant, for the time windows of 13 decades and longer for our sample. The frequency of currency crisis is statistically significantly negatively associated with growth overall for the time windows of 1 decade to 10 decades, before becoming insignificantly positive for time windows of 13 decades and longer for our sample.

The second chapter examines the effect of capital account openness on growth using two measurements of capital account openness, i.e., CAPITAL (1955-2004) and The Chinn-Ito Index (1970-2014). I find that capital account openness had a positive effect on 5-year average growth, 10-year average growth and 20-year average growth based on panel analyses, but an insignificant even negative effect on growth in the long run based on cross-sectional regressions. The results are robust to controlling country dummy and time dummy.

The third chapter uses data of Gini coefficient, GDP per capita, ratio of fixed capital to GDP and ratio of labor to GDP from China for period 1978-2013, this paper attempts to explore long run and short run causality relationship between income inequality and growth. My findings show there exist neither long run nor short run causality link between Gini coefficient and log of GDP per capita.