Macroeconomic data are indispensable for modern governance, yet it is often unclear how reliable these data are. The production process of macroeconomic data inside the statistical offices is often not very transparent for the general public. Bystanders usually have no choice but to take for...

In a recent paper I argued that Baumol's (1967) model of "unbalanced growth" offers a ready explanation for the observed secular rise in health care expenditure (HCE) in rich countries (HARTWIG 2006). Baumol's model implies that HCE is driven by wage increases in excess of productivity growth. I...

A large body of both theoretical and empirical literature has affirmed a positive impact of human capital accumulation in the form of health on economic growth. Yet Baumol (1967) has presented a model in which imbalances in productivity growth between a "progressive" (manufacturing) sector and a...

The share of health care expenditure in GDP rises rapidly in virtually all OECD countries, causing increasing concern among politicians and the general public. Yet, economists have to date failed to reach an agreement on what the main determinants of this development are. This paper revisits...

Against the backdrop of Baumol's model of "unbalanced growth", a recent strand of literature has presented models that manage to reconcile structural change with Kaldor's "stylized fact" of the relative constancy of per-capita GDP growth. Another strand of literature goes beyond this, arguing...

Since the mid-nineties, U.S. labor productivity outgrows its European counterpart by a wide margin. Several recent studies have found that this result is brought about by relatively few service industries, where productivity growth has accelerated in the U.S., but not so in Europe. Based on this...

Macroeconometric policy simulation models allow for an analysis, and, above all, for a quantification of the effects different economic policies have on the various variables that represent the economy. Despite the seminal "Lucas critique" levelled against them, these models are still widely...

The American Post Keynesians - those who attach importance to the "Big P" and the absence of a dash between "post" and "Keynesian" - claim to be Keynes's most literal interpreters, or the "truest" Keynesians (HOLT ET AL., 1998, p. 17). This paper compares the Post Keynesian interpretation of the...

Der Beitrag verwendet das Modell des "unbalancierten Wachstums" von Baumol (1967), um zu zeigen, dass sich ökonomische Probleme reifer Volkswirtschaften - wie die Abschwächung des Wirtschaftswachstums, der Anstieg der Staatsquote und die "Kostenexplosion" im Gesundheitswesen - zwar erklären,...

The conventional wisdom about Keynes's Principle of Effective Demand is that it states something about quantities. It is widely held that the Principle determines the levels of output and employment in a world not governed by Say's Law. This paper argues that the Principle of Effective Demand...