Utilising panel data for 14 East European transition economies, we find support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of export variety relative to the U.S. helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from...

Using panel data for a large number of countries, we find that economic contractions are not followed by offsetting fast recoveries. Trend output lost is not regained, on average. Wars, crises, and other negative shocks lead to absolute divergence and lower long-run growth, whereas we find...

This paper investigates whether firms innovate persistently or discontinuously over time using an innovation panel data set on German manufacturing and service firms for the period 1994-2002. We find that innovation behaviour is permanent at the firm-level to a very large extent. Using a dynamic...

This paper explores the quantitative implications of a class of endogenous growth models for cross-country income differences. These models exhibit international spillovers, no scale effects and conditional convergence, and thus they overcome some difficulties faced by the early generation of...

The institutional reforms towards trade liberalizations in Latin America during the 1980s and the 1990s have introduced a good measure of import competition, but trade policies alone are not sufficient to create a competitive environment in an economy. The countries in Latin America have not had...

The new version of the CGE model of the Slovenian economy, based on the 1998 SAM, was used for simulations of the consequences of further foreign trade liberalization after 1998 as the outcome of the finished processes of implementation of Free Trade Agreements and the European Agreement,...

This paper analyzes the influence of risk and the expenditure policy of the public sector in a two-country stochastic AK growth model where public spending is utility-enhancing. Having characterized the macroeconomic equilibrium first we study the impact of risk and the public sector on...

Countries rich in natural resources constitute both growth losers and growth winners. We claim that the main reason for these diverging experiences is differences in the quality of institutions. More natural resources push aggregate income down, when institutions are grabber friendly, while more...

The paper analyzes the convergence dynamics of a log-linearized open- economy neoclassical growth model under the assumptions of large adjustment costs for human capital investment, moderate adjustment costs for physical capital investment, and perfect capital mobility. The model can be...

The paper explores the impacts of heterogeneity in degree of relative risk aversion on the balance on current account in a two-country endogenous growth model. It concludes that, like the heterogeneity of demographic changes, the heterogeneity in degree of relative risk aversion generates...