"Many countries appear to have excessively stable big business sectors, in that higher rates of big business turnover have been correlated with faster economy growth. Public policies that stabilize big business sectors are sometimes justified as supportive of social objectives. We find no...

This paper identifies factors associated with takeoff -- a sustained period of high growth following a period of stagnation. We examine a panel of 241 "stagnation episodes" from 146 countries, 54 % of these episodes are followed by takeoffs. Countries that experience takeoffs average 2.3% annual...

"This paper evaluates the sustainability of large current account imbalances in the era when the Chinese GDP growth rate and current account/GDP exceed 10%. We investigate the size distribution and the durability of current account deficits during 1966-2005, and report the results of a...