Using a human capital based growth model, we show the essential role of labor mobility and cross-country tax harmonization in equalizing income levels of countries that start off from different initial income positions. Knowledge spillovers cum labor mobility are the driving forces behind the...

The human capital of young and old workers are imperfect substitutes both in production and in on-the-job training. This helps explain why capital does not flow from rich to poor countries, causing instantaneous convergence of per capita output. If each generation chooses its human capital...

One critical aspect of economic development is that productivity growth and a rising standard of living are realized through more roundabout methods of production and increasing specialization of intermediate inputs and producer services. We use an extended version of the Judd-Grossman-Helpman...

This paper examines whether the Solow growth model is consistent with the international variation in the standard of living. It shows that an augmented Solow model that includes accumulation of human as well as physical capital provides an excellent description of the cross-country data. The...

In recent papers, Nelson and Pack (1995) , Rodrik (1997), and Hsieh (1997a) argue that standard measures of total factor productivity growth in countries where the capital-labour ratio has risen rapidly, e.g. the East Asian NICS, will understate true productivity growth if the elasticity of...

This paper takes a step towards formalizing the theoretical interconnections among four post-Industrial Revolution phenomena - the industrialization and growth take-off of rich northern' nations, massive global income divergence, and rapid trade expansion. Specifically, we present a...

This paper examines the relationship between openness, trade, and migration in the Asia-Pacific region during the post-1970 period. Conventional reduced-form empirical-growth specifications are augmented by an appeal to structural modelling, an extension that reveals a rich set of interactions...

We consider the role of capital mobility and international taxation. In explaining the observed diversity in long-term growth rates. Our major finding is that, under capital mobility, international differences in taxes will not matter for total growth differentials. Policy differences have a...

We consider trade between two countries of unequal size, where the creation of new intermediate inputs occurs in both. We assume that the knowledge gained from R&D in one country <i>does not</i> spillover to the other. Under autarky, the larger country would have a higher rate of product creation. When...

Census data from international sources covering 77% of the world's migrant population indicate that the skill composition of migrants in major destination countries, including the US, has been rising over the last 4 decades. Moreover, the population share of skilled migrants has been approaching...