This paper explores the role of managerial capital and business research and development (R&D) in fostering multifactor productivity (MFP) convergence in a panel of 42 countries. The OECD long-term growth model is augmented to show that, in addition to trade openness, an economy’s speed of...

In this this paper we combine economic factors that have strong trends and political factors that are stationary in a dynamic, empirical model of the evolution of public policy over a very long period in a stable democracy. The role of variation in the intensity of political competition is the...

The central challenges facing the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia as they work to catch up to advanced European Union (EU) income levels are discussed in this new book. Focusing on the region’s growth performance, and outlining two...

Higgins et al. (2006) report several statistically significant partial correlates with U.S. per capita income growth. However, Levine and Renelt (1992) demonstrate that such correlations are hardly ever robust to changing the combination of conditioning variables included. We ask whether the...

This Selected Issues paper for Algeria analyzes the growth prospects of the Algerian economy. Drawing on the findings of the empirical growth literature, the paper combines growth accounting and cross-country growth regressions to examine the role of macroeconomic and institutional factors in...

We use U.S. county data (3,058 observations) and 41 conditioning variables to study growth and convergence. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) and three-stage least squares with instrumental variables (3SLS-IV), we report on the full sample and metro, nonmetro, and and regional samples: (1) OLS...

The economic growth of the Romania is explain by improvements in total factor productivity. Between 1991 and 2004 the contribution from labor was negative as a result of labor shedding. Due to periods of contracting investment followed by weak capital accumulation, on average there was no...