Widely used 'purchasing power parity' comparisons of per capital GDP are not true quantity indexes and are subject to systematic substitution bias. This bias may distort measurement of convergence and divergence. Extending Hal R. Varian's nonparametric construction of a true index gives the set...

A model is developed highlighting interactions between firm-level union-employer bargaining and industry-level oligopolistic price-setting, combining models of parametric conjectural variation oligopoly and asymmetric Nash-bargaining. Wages can only be bargained up if product market behavior is...

Recent findings concerning the impact of government spending on economic growth have been as diverse as the theories underpinning them. Proceeding from a methodological critique of prior work in the field and drawing on a variety of methodological innovations suggested in recent studies, we seek...

We present theory and evidence to suggest that, in the context of analyzing global poverty, the EKS approach to estimating purchasing power parities yields more appropriate international comparison of real incomes than the Geary-Khamis approach. Our analysis of the 1996 and 2005 International...

Various hypotheses are examined seeking to explain inter-country convergence at the upper end, but divergence at the lower end, of the world income rankings. A model of disequilibrium growth with sector-specific technological progress and spillover is developed and then estimated on two samples...