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...

Average income per capita in the countries of the OECD was more than 20 times larger in 2000 than that of the poorest countries of sub-Sahara Africa and elsewhere, and many of the latter are not only falling behind the world leaders, but have even regressed in recent years. At the same time,...

We introduce a tractable model of endogenous growth in which the returns to innovation are determined by the technology adoption decisions of the users of new technologies. Technology adoption involves an implementation investment that determines the initial productivity of a new technology....

The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of education in promoting economic well-being, with a particular focus on...

We present evidence on the differences in the intensity with which ten major technologies are used in 185 countries across the world. We do so by calculating how many years ago these technologies were used in the U.S. at the same intensity as they are used in the countries in our sample. We...

What is good for big business need not generally advance a country's overall economy. Big business turnover correlates with rising income, productivity, and (in high income countries) faster capital accumulation; consistent with Schumpeter's (1912) creative destruction and recent formalizations...

Published macroeconomic data traditionally exclude most intangible investment from measured GDP. This situation is beginning to change, but our estimates suggest that as much as $800 billion is still excluded from U.S. published data (as of 2003), and that this leads to the exclusion of more...

We estimate the rate of total factor productivity growth in Indian manufacturing industry for the period 1973-1992, and compare the results to those obtained by Young for the East Asian Tigers. We then interpret our results in light of Krugman's hypothesis that, because the Asian Miracle was...

Countries in which billionaire heirs' wealth is large relative to G.D.P. grow more slowly, show signs of more political rent-seeking, and spend less on innovation than do other countries at similar levels of development. In contrast, countries in which self-made entrepreneur billionaire wealth...

This paper shows that those low and middle income countries that use infrastructure inefficiently pay a growth penalty in the form of a much smaller benefit from infrastructure investments. The magnitude of this penalty is apparent when the growth experience of Africa is compared with that of...