Macroeconomists acknowledge the contribution of human capital to economic growth, but their empirical studies define human capital solely in terms of schooling. In this paper, we extend production function models of economic growth to account for two additional variables that microeconomists...

I discuss the concept and empirical importance of international technology diffusion from the point of view of recent work on endogenous technological change. In this literature, technology is viewed as technological knowledge. I first review the major concepts, and how international technology...

This paper combines the perspective of an international economist with that of an economic geographer to reflect on how and to what extent the Internet will affect the location of economic activity. Even after the very substantial transportation and communication improvements during the 20th...

Emerging economies are prone to crises triggered by external shocks. During these crises, should the central bank stabilize the currency or domestic interest rates? If the choice is outside the central bank's control, as in a currency board, are there good policy substitutes? We argue that these...

Exchange rates depreciate by the difference between the domestic and foreign marginal utility growths. Exchange rates vary a lot , as much as 10% per year. However, equity premia imply that marginal utility growths vary much more, by at least 50% per year. This means that marginal utility...

There have been two very different life cycles for great artists: some have made their greatest contributions very early in their careers, whereas others have produced their best work late in their lives. These two patterns have been associated with different working methods, as art's young...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate in detail the behavior of the current account in emerging economies, and in particular its role if any in financial crises. Models of current account behavior are reviewed, and a dynamic model of current account sustainability is developed. The...

The empirical literature on contagion has mainly measured the propagation of shocks across countries using daily stock markets, interest rates, and exchange rates. Several methodologies have been used for this purpose, however, the properties of the data introduces important limitations on the...

In each of three financial and exchange rate crises, Latin America in 1982, Mexico in 1994, and East Asia in 1997, direct investment inflows into the affected countries have behaved differently from other forms of investment, and U.S. manufacturing affiliates have behaved differently from other...

We show that even in the absence of diminishing returns in production and techno-logical spillovers, international trade leads to a stable world income distribution. This is because specialization and trade introduce de facto diminishing returns: countries that accumulate capital faster than...