This paper argues that Japan's export growth is likely to slow sharply over the next few years, perhaps to zero. For the past dozen years Japan's export volume has gown much more rapidly than her domestic production. This divergence was made necessary primarily by rising oil prices, and...

Unlike most cross-country growth analyses, we focus on turning points in growth performance. We look for instances of rapid acceleration in economic growth that are sustained for at least eight years and identify more than 80 such episodes since the 1950s. Growth accelerations tend to be...

We estimate the respective contributions of institutions, geography, and trade in determining income levels around the world, using recently developed instruments for institutions and trade. Our results indicate that the quality of institutions trumps' everything else. Once institutions are...