Existing growth research provides little explanation for the very large differences in long-run growth performance across OECD countries. We show that cognitive skills can account for growth differences within the OECD, whereas a range of economic institutions and quantitative measures of...

Recent studies have shown that knowledge-based capital (KBC) is an important source of economic growth in many of the world’s advanced economies (much more so than R&D alone) and is positively correlated with real GDP per capita in a cross-section of these economies. This literature is still...