Statistics on the size and growth of the U.S. federal government, along with the rhetoric of President Franklin Roosevelt, seem to indicate that the Great Depression was the event that started the dramatic growth in government spending and intervention in the private sector that has continued to...

We include learning in a standard equilibrium business cycle model with explicit growth. We use the model to study how the economy's agents could learn in real time about the important trend-changing events of the postwar era in the U.S., such as the productivity slowdown, increased labor force...

The German system of codetermination contributes to the entrenchment of labor. We show in a two-period model of project choice that entrenched labor leads to underinvestment and overstaffing. We provide empirical evidence that German firms subject to codetermination with equal representation of...

This is the first of two articles on the dynamics of the Jamaican economy over the last two and a half decades. It compares the overall macroeconomy of Jamaica in the areas of output, fiscal and monetary policy, capital formation and trade to that of Singapore and South Korea. The conclusion...

In this paper we investigate the relation between the quality of institutions and macroeconomic volatility. Using instrumental variable regressions, we show that higher barriers to entry lead to higher volatility. In particular, a one standard deviation increase in entry costs increases the...

There is a great deal of variation in the levels of entrepreneurship, or rates of self-employment, across the regions of Britain. Over the period 1983-95, average self-employment in the North, Scotland, and the West Midlands was respectively 25%, 15%, and 15% lower than the national average,...

To address how technological progress in financial intermediation affects the economy, a costly state verification framework is embedded into the standard growth model. The framework has two novel ingredients. First, firms differ in the risk/return combinations that they offer. Second, the...

How important is financial development for economic development? A costly state verification model of financial intermediation is presented to address this question. The model is calibrated to match facts about the U.S. economy, such as intermediation spreads and the firm-size distribution for...

This paper deals with a classic development question: how can the process of economic development – transition from stagnation in a traditional technology to industrialization and prosperity with a modern technology – be accelerated? Lewis (1954) and Rostow (1956) argue that the pace of...

We develop a theory of labor quality based on (i) the division of the labor force between unskilled and skilled workers and (ii) investments in skilled workers. In our theory, countries differ in two key dimensions: talent and total factor productivity (TFP). We measure talent using the observed...