There is a divergence in the returns of top-performing firms and the rest of the economy, especially in industries that rely on a skilled labor force, raising concerns about their market power. This paper shows that the divergence is explained by the mismeasurement of intangible capital....

A data set of key macro-sustainability indicators, constructed after several fact-finding missions, and World Bank methodologies on estimating wealth accounting are used to study Mauritania's wealth, which is estimated to be between USD50 and USD60 billion. The country's produced wealth...

Since income is the return on wealth, the total wealth of any given country should be on the order of 20 times its gross domestic product. Instead the average observed ratio from the balance sheet accounts of the System of National Accounts is a factor of 2.6 to 6.6, depending on whether natural...

This paper measures intangible investment in Brazil. It estimates that during 2000-2008, annual business spending on intangible assets or knowledge-based capital in Brazil averaged about 4 percent of gross domestic product. While this is significantly lower than comparable rates for the United...

Existing wealth estimates show that in most countries intangible capital is the largest share of total wealth. Intangible capital is calculated as the difference between total wealth and tangible (produced and natural) capital. This paper uses new estimates of total wealth, natural capital, and...

In the transition to a market economy, the Russian workforce underwent a wrenching period of change, with excess supply of some industrial skills coexisting with reports of skills shortages by many enterprises. This paper uses data from the Russia Competitiveness and Investment Climate Survey...

This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: The export of skills embodied in goods, services, or capital from poorer to richer countries. We first present a set of stylized facts. Using a measure that combines the sophistication of a country's exports with the average...

This paper revisits traditional human capital models and proposes a new conceptual framework of human capital accumulation, anchored in skills development, to illustrate the phenomenon and implications of youth economic disengagement. In the framework, youth economic disengagement is defined as...

The fallout of nitrogen pollution is considered one of the largest global externalities facing the world, impacting air, water, soil, and human health. This paper combines data from the Demographic and Health Survey data set across India, Vietnam, and 33 African countries to analyze the causal...

The authors follow the Hellerstein, Neumark, and Troske (1999) framework to estimate marginal productivity differentials and compare them with estimated relative wages. The analysis provides evidence on productivity and nonproductivity-based determinations of wages. Special emphasis is given to...