Industrialization experiences differ significantly across countries. We use a bench-mark model of structural change to shed light on the sources of this heterogeneity and, in particular, the phenomenon of premature deindustrialization. Our analysis leads to three key findings. First, benchmark...

This paper describes an emerging literature in economics that aims to merge macro issues of structural change and growth with micro data and analysis. This literature focuses on a set of related patterns of change that accompany the processes of growth and development. Traditionally, the focus...

The Argentine economy was transformed in the late nineteenth century by the mass migration of millions of Europeans. Various ideas have surfaced concerning the likely impact of this labor inflow: that it favored the wheat revolution on the pampas; that it promoted urbanization and the rapid...

This paper provides evidence on the unit root hypothesis and long-term growth by allowing for two structural breaks. We reject the unit root hypothesis for three-quarters of the countries approximately 50% more rejections than in models that allow for only one break. While about half of the...

Employing a 'factor-content' model that relates sectoral growth to regional factor endowments, we find that 1) U.S. state factor endowments are reasonably strong correlates of cross-state sectoral growth in value-added, with patterns that accord well with intuition; 2) that inter-sectoral...

We find disparate trend variation in TFP and labor growth across major U.S. production sectors over the post-WWII period. When aggregated, these sector-specific trends imply secular declines in the growth rate of aggregate labor and TFP. We embed this sectoral trend variation into a dynamic...

The positive association between the service sector share of output and per capita income is one of the best-known regularities in all of growth and development economics. Yet there is less than complete agreement on the nature of that association. Here we identify two waves of service sector...

This paper analyzes the role of specialized high-skilled labor in the growth of the service sector as a share of the total economy. Empirically, we emphasize that the growth has been driven by the consumption of services. Rather than being driven by low-skill jobs, the importance of...

The remarkable decline in macroeconomic volatility experienced by the U.S. economy since the mid-80s (the so-called Great Moderation) has been accompanied by large changes in the patterns of comovements among output, hours and labor productivity. Those changes are reflected in both conditional...

Most industries go through a "shakeout" phase during which the number of producers in the industry declines. Industry output generally continues to rise, however, which implies a reallocation of capacity from exiting firms to incumbents and new entrants. Thus shakeouts seem to be classic...