Debate over the economic convergence of currently industrialized nations has suffered a number of shortcomings. First, the underlying data base has typically been limited to Agnus Maddison's GNP and GNP per worker hour. This paper offers a new data base, purchasing-power-parity adjusted real...

This paper highlights economic factors determining the choice of technology andopenness in an intertemporal context in the presence of Institutional constraints Inthe labor market. It considers the case in which a more aggressive - developmentstrategy involves an investment in a modern...

This paper explains prices, output and employment adjustment In an open economy characterized by a monopolistic competitive market structure where goods prices are flexible while wages are determined by contracts that pre-set the wage path for several periods. The paper solves the rational...

This paper analyzes the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the patterns of cyclical dumping (exporting at a price below marginal cost). We consider a global economy where manufacturing is monopolistic-competitive, and productivity is subject to country- specific shocks. Labor is risk...

Current debate on the impact and assimilation of immigrants into the American labor market sounds remarkably like the debate which eventually triggered the imposition of the quotas in the 1920s. Then as now observers failed to agree on exactly what the impact of the mass migration was on labor...

This is the first study to present a unified quantitative account of African commodity trade in the long 19th century from the zenith of the Atlantic slave trade (1790s) to the eve of World War II (1939). Drawing evidence from a new dataset on export and import prices, volumes, composition and...

This paper investigates the changing pattern and efficacy of sterilization within emerging market countries as they liberalize markets and integrate with the world economy. We estimate the marginal propensity to sterilize foreign asset accumulation associated with net balance of payments...

This paper evaluates the sustainability of large current account imbalances in the era when the Chinese GDP growth rate and current account/GDP exceed 10%. We investigate the size distribution and the durability of current account deficits during 1966-2005, and report the results of a simulation...

The endogenous growth literature has explored the transition from a Malthusian world where real wages, living standards and labor productivity are all linked to factor endowments, to one where (endogenous) productivity change embedded in modern industrial growth breaks that link. Recently,...

Poor countries are more volatile than rich countries, and we know this volatility impedes their growth. We also know that commodity price volatility is a key source of those shocks. This paper explores commodity and manufactures price over the past three centuries to answer three questions: Has...