Most recently (in 2006), before the current financial world crisis, hourly labor productivity levels were slightly … to France and Japan, a relative decline that was interrupted by the second world war (WW2); (iii) the remarkable catching … the United Kingdom and become the leading world economy. During the past 25 years, the four countries have also …

-periods, and over the longer term with respect to the growth in the size of their economies. Most important, the comparison of an …

firms (entrepreneurship) and the average quality of management (meritocracy). Legal reform also reduces financial … improve meritocracy at the expense of entrepreneurship. As a result, legal reform encounters less political opposition than …

most countries around the world. Turning to the relationship between countries, we show that average life satisfaction is …

, and economic historians. Frequently used global data come from the Penn World Table (PWT) and the World Bank's World … Development Indicators; a substantial fraction of the world is also covered in the PPP accounts produced by the OECD and the … practical problems of implementing it. All of these data are underpinned by the International Comparison Program (ICP), which …

across the world. We do so by calculating how many years ago these technologies were used in the U.S. at the same intensity …