I argue in this paper that the `speed of convergence' estimated in recent works on `convergence' does not capture `actual' convergence towards a steady state, but rather conditional dynamics towards a moving target. Although this conditional convergence can be taken to imply that there are...

This paper offers new tests of the `convergence hypothesis'. It first analyses the pattern of growth of measured inputs (human and physical capital conventionally measured by an inventory method) and shows that these tests sustain the hypothesis. On the other hand, when the pattern of growth of...

This paper surveys the literature on external debt which has developed over the past decade. Initially this literature emphasized the intertemporal nature of the balance of payments, and reflected the view that balance of payments movements were an equilibrium phenomenon reflecting either...

This paper aims to disentangle the correlation between LDC debt and growth in the 1980s. We show that large debt was not an unconditional predictor of slow growth in the eighties and that investment was not abnormally low, when compared with a `financial autarky' rate, calculated in the text. We...

This paper applies the methodology and the empirical results derived from the `endogenous growth literature' to the East European countries. From that baseline, we analyse the solvency of Eastern Europe by calculating a `growth-adjusted-debt-per-effective-capita' measure of the burden of debt in...

The two notes deal (from different angles) with the extension of the Solow model that has been offered by Mankiw, Romer and Weil (MRW). In this `extended Solow' model, physical capital enters the production function with the same weight as human capital and both weights are about 1/3. The first...

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that a fundamental shift in Europe, along with the other OECD countries, is taking place. This shift is from the managed economy to the entrepreneurial economy. While politicians and policy-makers have made a plea for guidance in the era of...

This paper is a reflective survey of past and recent econometric work on the growth of firms. Most of this work suggests that firm size follows a random walk; i.e. that corporate growth rates are random. The survey documents this, and shows what a strong result this is by contrasting it with...

Combining unique data bases on emissions with sectoral output and employment data, we study the sources of the fall in world-wide SO2 emissions and estimate the impact of trade on emissions. Contrarily to concerns raised by environmentalists, an emission-decomposition exercise shows that scale...

This paper shows that fiscal policy, when used for stabilization purposes, can have a positive effect on the economy's growth, on human capital accumulation, and on welfare, along the transition path. We introduce symmetric productivity shocks into a model in which productivity is augmented...