Epidemics have disrupted lives for centuries with deleterious human capital and economic repercussions. In this paper, we investigate how epidemics episodes have impacted school dropouts in developing countries, considering 623 epidemics episodes across countries from 1970 to 2019. Our estimates...

This paper constructs an industry-level dataset of productivity across advanced economies, showing that Korea’s labor productivity and total factor productivity levels are below the median of other advanced economies. We identify sizable industry-level productivity gaps in Korea with respect...

Korea’s economy has leaped to high-income status thanks to several decades of sustained high growth. However, population aging and shifts in global demand provide headwinds for future growth and Korea now faces the effects of COVID-19 on economic activity. This paper asseses the expected drag...

This paper documents the existence of medium-to-long term output losses following large crises using panel data that cover 192 countries from 1970 to 2015 and shows that the magnitudes of economic scarring depend on the nature of the shock, economic activity, and pre-crisis conditions. It also...

Labor productivity levels in Bulgaria lag well behind that in the EU, weighing on the convergence process. Stronger productivity growth would allow Bulgaria to close the income gap with the EU average more quickly and to alleviate the structural problems in its labor market, reflected in its...

This paper applies the work of Berg and Ostry (2011) to the SACU region, to identify how inequalities have played a role in growth in each of these countries, and elaborates policy options to mitigate the effects of inequalities and foster growth. Lower income inequalities could lead to...

After impressive growth in the 2000s, China's productivity has more recently stagnated. We use firm-level data to analyze productivity and firm dynamism trends from 2003 to 2018. We document six facts that together show a decline in China’s business dynamism. We show that (i) the revenue share...

The age-distribution of Europe's workforce has shifted towards older workers over the past few decades, a process expected to accelerate in the years ahead. This paper studies the effect of the aging of the workforce on labor productivity, identifies the main transmission channels, and examines...

This paper estimates agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) in 162 countries between 1991 and 2015 and aims to understand sources of cross-country variations in agricultural TFP levels and its growth rates. Two factors affecting agricultural TFP are analyzed in detail - imported...

This paper empirically assesses the role of structural and institutional reforms in driving productivity growth across countries at different stages of development, using a distance-to-frontier framework. It gauges whether particular policies and reforms matter more for increasing productivity...