Differences in the relative price of investment over consumption goods across countries are big, even after excluding non-tradable consumption goods. We interpret these differences as arising from differences in a wide range of policies that increase the cost of investment. Under this...

Neoclassical growth models require large productivity/distortion differences across countries to produce the observed disparities in the wealth of nations. In this paper I develop an otherwise very standard neoclassical model with technology adoption and schooling decisions, and show that in...

I develop a growth model where a single good can be produced with a traditional and a modern technology. The traditional technology features low total factor productivity (TFP) and a low share of reproducible capital. In this framework, barriers to capital accumulation affect technology use and...

We assess the effects of a major land-policy change on farm size and agricultural productivity using a quantitative model and micro-level data. We study the 1988 land reform in the Philippines that imposed a ceiling on land holdings and severely restricted the transferability of the...

We construct a new dataset using census, survey, and registry data from hundreds of sources to document a clear positive relationship between development and average establishment size in manufacturing across 134 countries. We rationalize this relationship using a standard model of reallocation...

Lack of comprehensive sectoral productivity data across a large set of countries has turned researchers to structural analysis using detailed international price data to infer cross country productivity at the sector level. Because the relative price of services is higher in rich than in poor...

We assess the effects of a major land policy change on farm size and agricultural productivity, using a quantitative model and micro-level data. In particular, we study the 1988 land reform in the Philippines, which was an extensive land redistribution program that imposed a ceiling of 5...

We develop a model of the structural transformation with three sectors: agriculture, industry, and services. In addition to reallocation across sectors over time, the model also features a reallocation of consumption across services that differ in their labor intensity and a distribution sector....

Online appendix for the Review of Economic Dynamics article

The relative price of services rises with development. A standard interpretation of this fact is that cross-country productivity differences are larger in manufacturing than in services. The service sector comprises heterogeneous categories. We document that the behavior of relative prices is...