This paper investigates the main postulations of the Ramp;D based growth models that innovation is created in the Ramp;D sectors and it enables sustainable economic growth, provided that there are constant returns to innovation in terms of Ramp;D. The analysis employs various panel data...

This paper seeks to illuminate the uncertainty in official GDP per capita measuresusing auxiliary data. Using satellite-recorded nighttime lights as an additional measurementof true GDP per capita, we provide a statistical framework, in which the error inofficial GDP per capita may depend on the...

This paper studies the impact of the level and volatility of the commodity terms of trade on economic growth, as well as on the three main growth channels: total factor productivity, physical capital accumulation, and human capital acquisition. We use the standard system GMM approach as well as...

Based on stylized evidence showing variation of the Gini coefficient of income inequality across skill cohorts and on the rapid rise in trade in technology-intensive goods, the ripple effects of technology transmission and income inequality are explored in a global Computable General Equilibrium...

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift toward digital services. Meanwhile, the race for technological and economic leadership has heated up, with risks of decoupling that could set back trade and growth and hinder the recovery from the worst global recession since the Great Depression....

This paper analyzes the welfare benefits from falling relative prices of IT (information technology) goods across a wide range of countries. We find, using two separate methodologies and datasets, that welfare benefits mainly accrue to users of IT, not their producers, because of falling...

Africa will account for 80 percent of the projected 4 billion increase in the global population by 2100. The accompanying increase in its working age population creates a window of opportunity, which if properly harnessed, can translate into higher growth and yield a demographic dividend. We...

The “middle-income trap” is the phenomenon of hitherto rapidly growing economies stagnating at middle-income levels and failing to graduate into the ranks of high-income countries. In this study we examine the middle-income trap as a special case of growth slowdowns, which are identified as...

A prolonged low-interest-rate environment presents a significant challenge to banks and is likely to entail major changes to their business models over the long-run. Lower returns to maturity transformation in the face of flatter yield curves and an inability to offer deposit rates significantly...