Economies at early stages of development are often shaken by abrupt changes in growth rates, whereas in advanced economies growth rates tend to be relatively stable. To explain this pattern, we propose a theory of technological diversification. Production makes use of different input varieties,...

We revisit Western Europe’s record with labor-productivity convergence, and tentatively extrapolate its implications for the future path of Eastern Europe. The poorer Western European countries caught up with the richer ones through both higher rates of physical capital accumulation and...

Developing countries are vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, yet there is disagreement about what they should do to protect themselves from antic- ipated damages. In particular, it is unclear what the optimal balance is between investments in traditional productive capital...

In this paper we distinguish different “qualities” of FDI to re-examine the relationship between FDI and growth. We use ‘quality’ to mean the effect of a unit of FDI on economic growth. However this is difficult to establish because it is a function of many different country and project...

In this paper we revisit the gender decomposition of wages in the presence of selection bias. We show that when labor market participation decisions of couples are not independent, the sample selection corrections used in the literature have been incomplete (incorrect). We derive the appropriate...

Background: Evidence suggests a much higher prevalence of postpartum depression in South Asia than in ‘western’ contexts. Aim: To conduct a rapid systematic review of evidence on the association between social relationships and postpartum depression in South Asia. Methods: Five databases...

We examine the vertical transmission of overweight drawing upon a sample of English children, both adopted and non-adopted, and their families. Our results suggest strong evidence of an intergenerational association of overweight among adoptees, indicating transmission through cultural factors....

If participation in the labor market helps to secure women’s outside options in the case of divorce/separation, an increase in the perceived risk of marital dissolution may accelerate the increase in female labor supply. This simple prediction has been tested in the literature using time...

How big a boost to long run growth can countries expect from the ICT revolution? I use the results of growth accounting and the insights from a two-sector growth model to answer this question. The use of a two-sector rather than a one-sector model is required because of the very rapid rate at...

This paper presents a single unified framework that integrates the theoretical literature on Schumpeterian endogenous growth and major strands of the empirical literatures on R&D, productivity growth, and productivity convergence. Starting from a structural model of endogenous growth following...