We develop a novel Bayesian pooling technique to estimate aggregate production functions for the previously centrally planned economies (PCPEs) of Eastern Europe and for Western economies, as well as for a group of developing countries. This technique adjusts for the low quality of the PCPE data...

Diewert and Fox (2013) proposed decompositions of a Malmquist-type productivity index into explanatory factors, with a focus on extracting technical progress, technical efficiency change and returns to scale components. A major problem with their decompositions is that it may be difficult to...

We develop a micro-founded general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents to identify pertinent constraints to financial inclusion. We evaluate quantitatively the policy impacts of relaxing each of these constraints separately, and in combination, on GDP and inequality. We focus on three...

This paper analyses the characteristics of firms that operate at the global productivity frontier and their relationship with other firms in the economy, focusing on the diffusion of global productivity gains and the policies that faciliate it. Firms at the global productivity frontier –...

How do changes in market structure affect the US business cycle? We estimate a monetary DSGE model with endogenous firm/product entry and a translog expenditure function by Bayesian methods. The dynamics of net business formation allow us to identify the extent to which desired price markups and...

China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...