The pursuit of economic growth is at the top of every nation's policy agenda at the end of the 20th century. This authoritative and comprehensive book goes beyond the narrowly-based convergence model of economic growth by considering global, national and regional patterns of growth from a...

The early literature critical of the European Monetary Union feared the effects of asymmetric shocks on an area with little intercountry labor mobility and no common fiscal policy. Yet, asymmetric behavior, rather than asymmetric shocks, appears to be at the root of present difficulties....

The authors examine how the economic interactions between rapidly emerging China and the rest of the world may evolve over the coming two decades. They discuss China's growth potential, drawing a parallel between China's rise and the historical rise of Britain, Japan and the United States....

Despite massive regional policy efforts, GDP per capita in Southern Italy has only briefly converged on Northern Italian levels (during the 1960s). Failure since then is associated with a policy switch from investment towards income maintenance, with reduced wage sensitivity to regional labour...

For a decade now Japan has virtually stagnated. Some blame this on a succession of unfavourable shocks that began with the bursting of the "bubble" economy. More appropriate macroeconomic policies, targeting inflation and/or the exchange rate, could, in this view, lead to a revival. Others argue...