This paper provides evidence on the effects of the size and the composition of public spending on long-term growth and inequality. An estimated baseline convergence model captures the long-term effect of human capital and total investment on potential output for a panel of OECD countries. The...

An estimated baseline convergence model capturing the long-term effect of human capital and physical investment on potential output for a panel of OECD countries is augmented with public investment and its components. The estimations suggest that public investment has a positive effect on...

This paper integrates in a unified and tractable framework some of the key insights of the field of international trade and economic growth. It examines a sequence of theoretical models that share a common description of technology and preferences but differ on their assumptions about trade...

This chapter examines the relationship between health and economic growth. Across countries, income per capita is highly correlated with health, as measured by life expectancy or a number of other indicators. Within countries, there is also a correlation between people’s health and income....

This paper estimates the impact of fiscal consolidation on unemployment and job market flows across EU countries using a recent database of consolidation episodes built on the basis of a “narrative” approach (Devries et al., 2011). Results show that the impact of fiscal consolidation on...

Thailand and the Republic of Korea were developing at a similar pace during the 1960s. However, the Republic of Korea’s economic development rapidly expanded from the 1970s onward, leaving Thailand lagging far behind. This paper investigates the labor productivity slowdown in Thailand using a...

Investment in network infrastructure can boost long-term economic growth in OECD countries. Moreover, infrastructure investment can have a positive effect on growth that goes beyond the effect of the capital stock because of economies of scale, the existence of network externalities and...

Externalities play a central role in most theories of economic growth. We argue that international externalities, in particular, are essential for explaining a number of empirical regularities about growth and development. Foremost among these is that many countries appear to share a common long...

The transition from stagnation to growth and the associated phenomenon of the great divergence have been the subject of an intensive research in the growth literature in recent years. The discrepancy between the predictions of exogenous and endogenous growth models and the process of development...

What obstacles prevent the most productive technologies from spreading to less developed economies from the world’s technological frontier? In this paper, we seek to shed light on this question by quantifying the geographic and human barriers to the transmission of technologies. We argue that...