While output declined in virtually all transition economies in the initial years, the speed and extent of the recovery that followed has varied widely across these countries. The contrast between the more and less successful transitions, the latter largely in the former Soviet Union, raises many...

Models of inflation and growth in the sixties emphasized the portfolio substitution mechanism by which higher inflation made capital more attractive to hold relative to money, leading to higher capital intensity, and in the transition period to higher growth.The empirical evidence, however, is...

Soviet growth over 1960-89 was the worst in the world after we control for investment and human capital; the relative performance worsens over time. The declining Soviet growth rate over 1950-87 is explained by the declining marginal product of capital; the rate of TFP growth is roughly constant...

Using a regression analog of growth accounting, I present cross- sectional and panel regressions showing that growth is negatively associated with inflation, large budget deficits, and distorted foreign exchange markets. Supplementary evidence suggests that the causation runs from macroeconomic...

The 1980s were both the lost decade of growth for much of Latin America and Africa, and the period in which -- through the new growth theory -- macroeconomists returned to the study of growth and development. The new growth theory is production function driven and concerned primarily with steady...

This paper surveys much of modern macroeconomics. The focus is on the core macroeconomic issue, of the reasons for macroeconomic fluctuations and sometimes persistent unemployment. To provide continuity and perspective on how promising research leads of the past turned out, the paper starts by...