This paper studies the productivity impact of heterogeneous capital inputs of selected EU-15 member countries and of the U.S. at the macroeconomic level. The stochastic possibility frontiers approach of Battese and Coelli (1992) applied here is used to identify neutralities or non-neutralities...

In this study, we suggest an explanation for the alarmingly low growth rates of real housing prices in Canada and Germany in comparison to other OECD countries over 1975-2005. We show that the long-run development of housing markets is determined by real disposable per capita income, real...

This paper applies semiparametric regression models using penalized splines to investigate the profile of well-being over the life span. Splines have the advantage that they do not require a priori assumptions about the form of the curve. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)...

In this paper, we examine beta-convergence of real per-capita income of Chinese counties. We account for both the spatial dependences between counties and the possibility of different convergence regimes. The first feature is captured by the spatial error term, whereas the second one is modeled...

In this paper, we propose an indicator of the homeownership rate based on Internet ads offering the housing for rent and sale. We constructed the HOR estimate using the number of ads in four different markets (flats for rent, flats for sale, houses for rent, and houses for sale). Our HOR...

The international transmission of knowledge through import spillovers, as a source of TFP growth, has received much attention in the literature. We investigate two additional direct channels through which R&D disseminates: the import of high-technology goods and the internationalization of...

In this paper, we suggest to estimate the home rents and prices in German regions/cities using the data from Internet ads offering the housing for rent and sale. Given the richness of information contained in the ads, we are able to construct the quality-adjusted rent and price indices using the...

Previous research shows that technical progress at the industry level, measured by sectoral TFP growth, is more localized in continental European countries than in Anglo-Saxon countries. We use EU KLEMS data sets to decompose sectoral TFP for nine European countries by means of a Malmquist...

Over the past decade, research explaining cross country income differences has increasingly pointed to the dominant role of total factor productivity (TFP) gaps as opposed to factor accumulation. Nevertheless, it is a widely held belief that a country's ability to absorb and implement...

In this paper, the process of productivity convergence is investigated for the enlarged European Union using regional (NUTS-2) data. The Solow model extended by human capital is employed as a workhorse. Alternative strategies are proposed to control for spatial effects. All specifications...