Although Japanese economic growth after the Meiji Restoration is often characterised as a gradual process of trend acceleration, comparison with the United States suggests that catching-up only really started after 1950, due to the unusually dynamic performance of the US economy before 1950. A...

The issue of model uncertainty is central to the empirical study of economic growth. Many recent papers use Bayesian Model Averaging to address model uncertainty, but Ciccone and Jarocinski (2010) have questioned the approach on theoretical and empirical grounds. They argue that a standard...

This paper brings the aid effectiveness debate to the sub-national level. We hypothesize the non-robust results regarding the effects of aid on development in the previous literature to arise due to the effects of aid being insufficiently large to measurably affect aggregate outcomes. Using...

Two issues related to mapping a multi-sector model into a reduced-form value-added model are often neglected: the composition of intermediate goods, and the distinction between the productivity indices for value added and for gross output. We illustrate their significance for growth accounting...

Composition of the euro area workforce evolves over time and in response to changing labour market conditions. We construct an estimate of growth in euro area labour quality over the period 1983-2004 and show that labour quality has grown on average by 0.6% year-on-year over this time period....

This Paper uses 1985-99 manufacturing census data for old Russian enterprises to calculate the magnitude and productivity effects of gross job flow rates before and after reforms. Job creation was low throughout the period in this sector, but increased slightly during the transition, while job...

We analyse productivity growth in UK manufacturing 1980-92 using the newly available ARD panel of establishments drawn from the Census of Production. We examine the relative importance of 'internal' restructuring (such as new technology and organizational change) and 'external' restructuring...

We test for internal and external economies of scale in European manufacturing, employing a more disaggregated data set than has been used in earlier analyses. We aim to separate externalities from common business cycle effects. Fifteen European manufacturing industries in Germany, France, the...

The paper surveys both the usefulness of endogenous innovation models of growth in economic history and the implications of historical research for new growth theorists. It is suggested that economic historians should take endogenous innovation models seriously and that this will help them to...

The commonly accepted chronology for comparative productivity levels based on GDP data does not apply to the manufacturing sector, where there is evidence of a much greater degree of stationarity of comparative labour productivity performance among the major industrialized countries of Germany,...