Surprisingly little is known about the impact of resource booms on income inequality in resource rich countries (Ross, 2007).  This paper develops a simple theory, in the context of a two sector growth model in which learning-by-doing drives growth, to explain the time path of inequality...

This paper surveys the experience of economic growth in the 20th century with a focus on technological change at the frontier together with issues related to success and failure in catch-up growth.  A detailed account of growth performance based on historical national accounts data is given and...

The paper measures productivity growth in seventeen countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  GDP per worker and capital per worker in 1985 US dollars were estimated for 1820, 1850, 1880, 1913, 1939 by using historical national accounts to back cast Penn World Table data for 1965...

History offers many examples of dictators who worsened their behavior significantly over time (like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe), while there are also cases of dictators who have displayed remarkable improvements (like Jerry Rawlings of Ghana).  We show that such mutations can result from rational...

Despite the emerging consensus on the validity of purchasing power parity (PPP) between trading countries in the long run, empirical evidence in favour of the PPP theory is scarce in data predominantly exposed to real shocks. This paper tests for PPP between Norway and its trading partners using...

Agriculture is the largest sector in most sub-Saharan economies in terms of employment, and it plays an important role in supplying food and export earnings.  Rural poverty rates remain high, and labor productivity is strikingly low.  This paper asks how these factors shape the role of...

The paper examines the notion of a 'developmental state' and shows that China possesses the characteristics of a developmental state.  It explains the political economy which generated such a state in China and in some other economies.  It analyses the methods and mechanisms that were...

The paper analyses two cross-section national household surveys, relating to the years 1988 and 1995, to explain the rise in inequality of income that occured in Chine over those seven years. The Gini coefficient of household income per capita increased from 38 to 45 per cent, i.e. by 1,0...

This paper attempts to establish the trend of market development in Europe in the centuries before the industrial revolution, by applying three different measures of market integration to a compilation of monthly and annual price data. In contrast to much of the existing work, which suggests...