This paper employs a production frontier approach that allows distinguishing technological progress from efficiency development. Data on 35 African countries in 1970-2007 show that efficiency losses have constrained growth in Africa while technology progress has played a marginal growth...

We employ bootstrap techniques in a production frontier framework to provide statistical inference for each component in the decomposition of labor productivity growth, which has essentially been ignored in this literature. We show that only two of the four components have significantly...

This paper presents a dynamic factor model where the extracted factors and shocks are given a clear economic interpretation. The economic interpretation of the factors is obtained by means of a set of over-identifying loading restrictions, while the structural shocks are estimated following...

This paper develops a Spatial Vector Auto-Regressive (SpVAR) model that takes into account both the time and the spatial dimensions of economic shocks. We apply this framework to analyze the propagation through space and time of macroeconomic (inflation, output gap and interest rate) shocks in...

This paper proposes Bayesian estimates for welfare effects of consumption fluctuations and growth. Annual data from 82 developed and developing countries indicate a large degree of uncertainty as regards point estimates. Moreover, the comparison between the welfare gain from consumption...

We employ bootstrap techniques in a production frontier framework to provide statistical inference for each component in the decomposition of labor productivity growth, which has essentially been ignored in this literature. We show that only two of the four components (efficiency changes and...

In this paper we compare two flexible estimators of technical efficiency in a cross-sectional setting: the nonparametric kernel SFA estimator of Fan, Li and Weersink (1996) to the nonparametric bias corrected DEA estimator of Kneip, Simar andWilson (2008). We assess the finite sample performance...

In this paper we used the procedures developed in the Kumar and Russell (2002) growth-accounting study to examine cross-country growth during the 1990's. Using a data set comprising developed, newly industrialized, developing and transitional economies, we decomposed the growth of output per...