Prior to 2020, the Great Recession was the most important macroeconomic shock to the United States economy in generations. Millions lost jobs and homes. At its peak, one in ten workers who wanted a job could not find one. On an annual basis, the economy contracted by more than it had since the...

One of the most puzzling evidences of Brazil's economic performance is that, despite the country's ability to grow at high rates, its long-term growth has been disappointing. Behind this deficient long-term outcome, Brazil shows a high growth volatility. It has experienced substantial growth...

Prior to 2020, the Great Recession was the most important macroeconomic shock to the United States economy in generations. Millions lost jobs and homes. At its peak, one in ten workers who wanted a job could not find one. On an annual basis, the economy contracted by more than it had since the...

This paper analyzes the relationship between economic growth and research funding. The econometric analysis show that gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) as percentage of GDP is a important driver of economic growth (R2 adj = 71%) that is measured by GDP per capita. The optimization shows...

Most developing and underdeveloped countries beside Sudan suffer from the low levels of income in addition to the low savings that are result from the lack of sophisticated savings channels. Hence, the investment depends on the individual's abilities on self savings, where the investment is...

Friedman (1992) argues that regressing cross-country income changes on their final levels can be informative about [sgr]-convergence (the tendency for the dispersion of income levels to narrow) whereas a similar regression on initial levels of income cannot be. In this note we show that Bliss's...

Perhaps no question has attracted as much attention in the economics literature as “Why are some countries richer than others?� In this article, the author revisits the “development problem� and provides some estimates of the importance of human capital in accounting...

Economic growth depends not only on how people make decisions but also upon how their decisions are coordinated. Because of this, aggregate outcomes can diverge from individual intentions. I illustrate this with reference to the modern literature on economic growth, and also with reference to an...

Obtaining reliable data on capital is a recurring challenge when estimating economy-wide productivity growth, especially for developing countries. In this paper I construct energy-based productivity series which use energy consumption instead of capital when making such estimates. I first show...

In the past sixty years, transistor sizes and weights have decreased by 50 percent every eighteen months, following Moore's Law. Smaller and lighter electronics have increased productivity in virtually every industry and spurred the creation of entirely new sectors of the economy. However, while...