This paper focuses on one possible explanation for the empirical evidence of: (a) income convergence among the world’s poorest countries and among its wealthiest countries; and (b) income divergence among most of the remaining countries. The model incorporates the assumption of subsistence...

This paper evaluates relations between industrial activity and the structure of countries' financial, ownership and legal systems. Using data on 27 industries in 14 OECD countries over the period 1970 to 1995, we evaluate whether the structure of countries' systems is associated with different...

A quantitative investigation of financial intermediation in the U.S. over the past 130 years yields the following results : (i) the finance industry’s share of GDP is high in the 1920s, low in the 1950s and 1960s, and high again in the 1990s and 2000s; (ii) most of these variations can be...

This paper estimates the impact of public investment on regional economic growth and convergence at the NUTS III level in Greece. Using a new database of public expenditure per region for the period 1978-2007, it proposes a model which captures not just the impact of public investment in Greek...

This is an attempt to derive broad, strategic lessons from the diverse experience with economic growth in last 50 years. The paper revolves around two key arguments. One is that neo-classical economic analysis is a lot more flexible than its practitioners in the policy domain have generally...

Some channels through which increased inflation tends to reduce economic growth, and vice versa, are studied within a simple model incorporating money into an optimal growth framework with constant returns to capital. The model includes the potential impact of inflation on: (a) saving through...

We investigate the impact of within-country spatial concentration of economic activity on country-level growth, using cross-section OLS and dynamic panel GMM estimation. Agglomeration is measured alternatively through measures of urbanization and through indices of spatial concentration based on...

The paper reviews the economic performance of the Republic of Ireland since 1945. Its focus is comparative: Ireland's record is assessed against the evidence in OECD and Penn Mark V datasets for a `convergence club' of European economies, and is found wanting. The comparison confirms that the...

We model technological and financial innovation as reflecting the decisions of profit maximizing agents and explore the implications for economic growth. We start with a Schumpeterian endogenous growth model where entrepreneurs earn monopoly profits by inventing better goods and financiers arise...

Societies typically have three objectives for work and welfare: sustained income/economic growth per capita, employment growth (and job security?), a just distribution of income along with access to certain basic services. There may be tensions between these objectives. This paper tries to...