More than half a decade has passed since the bursting of the housing bubble and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. In retrospect, what is surprising is that these events and their consequences came as such a surprise. What was it that prevented most of the world from recognizing the impending...

Recent studies have shown that knowledge-based capital (KBC) is an important source of economic growth in many of the world’s advanced economies (much more so than R&D alone) and is positively correlated with real GDP per capita in a cross-section of these economies. This literature is still...