The famous Mincer equation regressing log earnings on years of schooling is derived from a linear human capital accumulation equation at the individual level. Even if the cross-sectional Mincer equation holds at the level of individuals, it does not hold at the macro level of countries because...

This paper follows Jones (2005) in his approach to deriving the global production function from microfoundations. His framework is generalized by allowing for dependence between the Pareto distributions of labor- and capital-augmenting developments. Using the Clayton copula family to capture...

Balanced (exponential) growth cannot be generalized to a concept which would not require knife-edge conditions to be imposed on dynamic models. Already the assumption that a solution to a dynamical system (i.e. time path of an economy) satisfies a given functional regularity (e.g....

We re-estimate the World Technology Frontier (WTF) non-parametrically, using the Data Envelopment Analysis method, with a dataset covering both OECD country-level and US state-level data on GDP per worker and the stocks of physical capital, unskilled labor, and skilled labor. The WTF 2000 is...

We construct 14 alternative measures of technological progress for 19 OECD countries over the period 1970--2000, distinguishing between measures of productivity gains actually obtained in a given country (TFP growth, Malmquist index) and technological progress at the world technology frontier...

We propose a novel mechanism giving rise to poverty traps and multiple equilibria in economic performance. It is a potentially important source of persistent underdevelopment across countries and regions. At the core of this mechanism, bridging social capital and social trust feed back on each...

Migration continues to be a very important income diversification strategy, especially for poor populations in developing countries. However, while there has been much analysis on the economic consequences of migration for migrants and the receiving regions, whether internal migration improves...