We look at disaggregated imports of various types of equipment to make inferences oncross-country differences in the composition of equipment investment. We make threecontributions. First, we document strikingly large differences in investment composition.Second, we explain the differences as...

Economic institutions encompassing increasingly sophisticated concepts of risk-sharing and liability flourished in Europe since the High Middle Ages. These innovations occurred in an environment of fragmented local jurisdictions, not within the framework of the territorial state. In this short...

Most economic historians would surely endorse Paul Romer's view expressed above that technological progress lies at the heart of long run economic growth. Long ago Kuznets identified the epoch of 'modern economic growth' as one where growth came to be driven by scientific and technological...

[...]These political considerations may seem tangential to thesubject of price hedonics, but the events following fromGreenspan’s remark have linked the two issues. First, theSenate Finance Committee consulted a panel of experts, andthat panel reached a consensus supporting...

[...]In the case studies that follow, we will see that thedesign choices for an inflation-targeting regime fall intofour basic categories: definition and measurement of thetarget, transparency, flexibility, and timing.[...]

The Lisbon summit of the European Council in March 2000 declared the number ofpeople living in poverty and social exclusion in the European Union to beunacceptable, and called for steps to tackle the issue, beginning with the setting oftargets for particular indicators. The targets suggested...