In a widely cited paper, Young (1995) showed that the East Asian miracles (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan) grew mostly through input accumulation during the period 1966-1990. Using data for 83 countries taken from the Penn World Table, version 6.1, and Barro and Lee (2000), we use a...

Due to several policy distortions, including import-substitution industrialization, widespread government intervention and both domestic and international competitive barriers, there has been a general presumption that Latin America has been much less productive than the leading economies in the...