Expanded international data from the PIAAC survey of adult skills allow us to analyze potential sources of the cross-country variation of comparably estimated labor-market returns to skills in a more diverse set of 32 countries. Returns to skills are systematically larger in countries that have...

Drawing on the OECD's structural analysis (STAN) database, this paper contributes to the understanding of European economic growth through a decomposition into employment and productivity, across sectors, and across different time periods and countries. The US productivity surge from the...

Even though the industrial revolution started in Europe, many commentators suggest that European entrepreneurship has become an oxymoron. The facts of the case are, however, growing against them. For instance, Europeans nowadays run a fair share of Silicon Valley companies. Examples include...

This paper develops a model in which the interaction of entrepreneurial investments and power of the owners of land or other natural resources determines structural change and economic development. A more equal distribution of natural resources promotes structural change and growth through two...

Empirical growth regressions typically include mean years of schooling as a proxy for human capital. However, empirical research often finds that the sign and significance of schooling depends on the sample of observations or the specification of the model. We use a nonparametric local-linear...

What is the relationship between economic growth and its volatility? Does political instability affect growth directly or indirectly, through volatility? This paper tries to answer such questions using a power-ARCH framework with annual time series data for Argentina from 1896 to 2000. We show...

Argentina is the only country in the world that was "developed" in 1900 and "developing" in 2000. The various competing explanations highlight, mainly, the roles of trade openness, political institutions, financial integration, financial development, and macroeconomic instability. Yet no study...