Over the past 15 years, labor-quality growth has been very strong—defying nearly all earlier projections—and has added around 0.5 percentage points to an otherwise modest U.S. productivity picture. Going forward, labor quality is likely to add considerably less and may even be a drag on...

Income disparity across countries has been large and widening over time. We develop a tractable model where factor requirements in production technology do not necessarily match a country's factor input profile. Appropriate assimilation of frontier technologies balances such multi-dimensional...

This paper evaluates the challenges facing developing countries when there is uncertainty about the policy maker type. We consider a country characterized by volatile output, inelastic demand for fiscal outlays, high tax collection costs, and sovereign risk, where future output depends on the...

Empirical experience and theory both suggest that policy reforms can be aborted or reversed if they lack sufficient credibility, One reason for such credibility problems is the legitimate doubt regarding how serious the government really is about :he reform process. This paper considers a...