We revisit Western Europe's record with labor-productivity convergence, and tentatively extrapolate its implications for the future path of Eastern Europe. The poorer Western European countries caught up with the richer ones through both higher rates of physical capital accumulation and greater...

In this paper we examine the main challenges in promoting an effective market economy. While the paper ranges widely across the spectrum of economic institutions and policies, the central theme is the importance of macroeconomic stability for economic growth in the medium and long run....

Interactions between economic development and financial development are studied by looking at the roles of financial institutions in selecting R&D projects (including both imitation and innovation). Financial development is regarded as the evolution of the financing regimes. The effectiveness of...

The prominent role of monetary policy in the U.S. interwar depression has been conventional wisdom since Friedman and Schwartz [1963]. This paper presents evidence on both the surprise and the systematic components of monetary policy between 1929 and 1933. Doubts surrounding GDP estimates for...

The size and strength of the Royal Navy experienced a punctuated evolution into the largest and most powerful Navy in the world by 1815. Most historians tend to represent its superiority in conflicts at sea as an indication of several factors that would be conceptualized by economists as...

This study analyses the impact of business group affiliation on firm performance during a time when business groups are newly formed, when the economic and institutional environment is changing, and when group survival is uncertain. Based primarily on a transaction cost approach, we develop two...

Studies on the productivity spillovers of FDI have concentrated on the national-sectoral level. As a result, little is known about the impact of FDI on absolute and relative regional economic performance. In this paper we examine this issue by relying on a unique dataset of over 20,000 Greek...

Natural capital should be preserved because it exhibits features that distinguish it from all other kinds of capital. The notorious prevalence of risk, uncertainty and ignorance makes it difficult, however, to state which parts of it should be preserved. Some forms of natural capital are more...

We analyse the determinants of the decline in measured research productivity (the patent/R&D ratio) using panel data on manufacturing firms in the U.S. for the period 1980-93. We focus on three factors: the level of demand, the quality of patents, and technological exhaustion. We first develop...

This article investigates the economics of farm diversification. The analysis assesses economies of diversification using a certainty equivalent measure. It identifies two components: one associated with expected income, and one associated with risk exposure. This integrates two lines of...