This document forms a record of a workshop held on 16 January 2006, aimed at examining the mechanisms underlying cross-country convergence of per capita GDP, to what extent they operate in practice, and the implications for policies, including those requiring plausible long-term projections of...

We suggest that the geographical patterns of income differences across the world have deep underpinnings. We emphasize that economic development is a complex process driven by economic, political, social, and biophysical forces. Some economists have argued that the patterns reflect mainly the...

Following Solow's (2001) recent advice, this paper takes productivity as the left-hand-side variable and offers a cross-country analysis of its determinants. The analysis follows the two-stage methodology, the first of which is devoted to obtaining productivity estimates, and the second stage is...

This paper reviews new growth theories (NGT) from the perspective of developing countries. It shows that despite some views to the contrary, NGT and the growth debate that it spawned have some useful lessons for developing countries. Some of these lessons and ideas were indeed available from...

This paper investigates the idea that the dynamics of national innovation systems is driven by the coevolution of two main dimensions: innovative capability and absorptive capacity. The empirical analysis employs a broad set of indicators measuring national innovative capabilities and absorptive...

This document forms a record of a workshop held on 16 January 2006, aimed at examining the mechanisms underlying cross-country convergence of per capita GDP, to what extent they operate in practice, and the implications for policies, including those requiring plausible long-term projections of...

In 1961, Nicholas Kaldor used his list of six "stylized" facts both to summarize the patterns that economists had discovered in national income accounts and to shape the growth models that they were developing to explain them. Redoing this exercise today, nearly fifty years later, shows how much...

This paper integrates the analysis of choices on education and on technology adoption to study international economic disparities. Two candidate explanations are considered: differences in distortions that affect the cost of technology adoption and differences in the effectivenss of schools. The...