This paper examines agricultural policies in 18 developing countries over the period 1961-1985. We measure productivity with both a nonparametric Malmquist index and a production function, confirming previous findings of declining agricultural productivity, but with sufficident inconsistencies...

This paper examines changes in agricultural productivity in18 developing countries over the period 1961-1985. We use the nonparametric, output- based Mamquist index to examine whether the results from such approach confirm results from other methods that have indicated declining agricultural...

In this paper we propose an empirical model to decompose the evolution of the agricultural GDP share of Taiwan into three components: price changes, factor endowment changes and technological change. The full sample period is 1967 to 1997. The data were first tested to assess whether the time...

Data on energy and mineral reserves suggest that natural resource abundance has not been a significant structural determinant of economic growth between 1970 and 1989. The story behind the effect of natural resources on economic growth is a complex one that typical growth regressions do not...

In this paper we emphasize the contribution of technical change, broadly defined, towards productivity growth in explaining the relative East Germany-West Germany performance during the post-World War II era. We argue that previous work was excessively focused on physical capital investments...

The business services industry represents a large and fast-growing chunk of the Dutch economy, approaching the size of the total manufacturing industry. The industry, however, has displayed stagnating productivity growth, accompanied in some years by a fall in productivity. Do these stylised...

This paper studies the role of trade, both domestically as well as internationally, as a channel of technology transmission. A model is presented in which R&D investments towards product innovations trigger total factor productivity growth at the industry level. If the new products are exported...

This paper collects most recent developments in the emerging economic sub-area Economics of Religion. According to secularization thesis, the importance of beliefs and religious activities should weaken as education, scientific knowledge and economic welfare increases. That hypothesis has been...

Productive consumption enables the satisfaction of current needs and, at the same time, increases the productive potential of labour. Theoretical as well as empirical evidence suggests that productive consumption is primarily relevant to low-income countries. From the perspective of growth...

Views of the future China vary widely. While some believe that the collapse of China is inevitable, others see the emergence of a new superpower that increasingly poses a threat to the U.S. This paper examines the economic growth prospects of China over the next two decades. Extrapolating past...