We estimate the rate of total factor productivity growth in Indian manufacturing industry for the period 1973-1992, and compare the results to those obtained by Young for the East Asian Tigers. We then interpret our results in light of Krugman's hypothesis that, because the Asian Miracle was...

Economists use micro-based and macro-based approaches to assess the effects of health on economic growth. The micro-based approach tends to find smaller effects than the macro-based approach, thus presenting a micro-macro puzzle regarding the economic return on health. We reconcile these two...

We explore the relationships between subjective well-being and income, as seen across individuals within a given country, between countries in a given year, and as a country grows through time. We show that richer individuals in a given country are more satisfied with their lives than are poorer...

A great deal of research has been devoted to the effects of technical change on economic growth. Less attention has been given to the factors driving the growth of the technological innovators themselves. This paper examines the case of one of the central contributors to the IT revolution, the...

Incomes per capita have grown dramatically over the past two centuries, but the increase has been unevenly spread across time and across the world. Growth accounting is the principal quantitative tool for understanding this phenomenon, and for assessing the prospects for further increases in...

The "Easterlin paradox" suggests that there is no link between a society's economic development and its average level of happiness. We re-assess this paradox analyzing multiple rich datasets spanning many decades. Using recent data on a broader array of countries, we establish a clear positive...

Average income per capita in the countries of the OECD was more than 20 times larger in 2000 than that of the poorest countries of sub-Sahara Africa and elsewhere, and many of the latter are not only falling behind the world leaders, but have even regressed in recent years. At the same time,...

Published macroeconomic data traditionally exclude most intangible investment from measured GDP. This situation is beginning to change, but our estimates suggest that as much as $800 billion is still excluded from U.S. published data (as of 2003), and that this leads to the exclusion of more...

This paper explores the relationship between the relative size of the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector, economic growth, and poverty alleviation using a new database on the share of SME labor in the total manufacturing labor force. Using a sample of 45 countries, we find a strong,...

This paper examines whether financial development boosts the growth of small firms more than large firms and hence provides information on the mechanisms through which financial development fosters aggregate economic growth. We define an industry's technological firm size as the firm size...