The conventional approach to estimating how fast economies converge examines the cross-economy relationship between the growth rate of per-capita output over some time period and its initial level. This approach produces consistent estimates only under highly restrictive assumptions, which are...

Using panel data for the forty-eight contiguous U.S. states in each year between 1970 and 1986, this paper investigates the extent to which government capital and current government services contribute to private production. The paper finds fairly strong evidence that current government...

This paper investigates the relationship between nominal interest rates and prices using nearly two centuries of data from ten industrial countries. Both a positive relationship between interest rates and price levels (that is, a positive Gibson effect) and a negative relationship between...

This paper investigates whether the forty-eight contiguous U.S. states converge and, if so, whether convergence is absolute. Economies are shown to converge if, and only if, technology is stationary around a common trend. If convergence does occur, it is unlikely to be absolute unless the...