A method for analyzing productivity convergence based on frontier production functions is proposed. It is examined whether departures from the frontier - country-level inefficiencies - exhibit long-run relationships and convergence. The method is applied to 1-digit industries of 14 OECD...

We examine the importance of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in middle-income countries based on cross-country panel data for the period 1975-2014. We find that TFP growth contributed significantly to a country’s upward transition from middle-income to high-income country group. The TFP...

We argue theoretically and document empirically that aging leads to greater (industrial) automation, and in particular, to more intensive use and development of robots. Using US data, we document that robots substitute for middle-aged workers (those between the ages of (36 and 55). We then show...

Global Manufacturing and International Supply Chains changed the way trade and international economics are understood today. The present essay builds on recent statistical advances to suggest new ways of looking at the demand and supply side approaches when Global Value Chains (GVCs) -...

The productivity generated by capital goods is not uniform along the time. When there exist conventional physical capital goods the productivity obtained is minor that the one generated by quality capital goods. To obtain a correct measure of growth in presence of this embodied technical...

This study investigates the economic growth and catch-up of the Republic of Korea over the past half-century. The gap of output per worker between the Republic of Korea and United States has decreased rapidly, as the Republic of Korea's lower per capita income, relative to its potential level,...

The empirical growth literature has focused on capital accumulation but largely ignored productivity growth. To address this imbalance, we propose a methodology for analyzing productivity convergence based on frontier production functions. We examine whether departures from the frontier are...

In the euro area, there is mixed evidence that the GDP per capita of lower-income economies has been catching up with that of higher-income economies since the start of monetary union. The significant real convergence performance of some of the most recent members contrasts with that of the...

The year 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of William J. Baumol’s seminal model of "unbalanced growth", which predicts the so-called "Growth Disease", i.e., the tendency of aggregate productivity growth to slow down in the process of tertiarisation. In an important contribution published in...