Structural transformation in most currently developing countries takes the form of a rapid rise in services but limited industrialization. In this paper, we propose a new methodology to structurally estimate productivity growth in service industries that circumvents the notorious difficulties in...

The embarrassing living conditions of more than one billion poor people in developing countries in combination with the increasing gap of living standards between the poor and the rich, has provided a strong motivation for development policy to change this situation. From its beginning, policy...

During the pandemic, African banks rebalanced their portfolio towards sovereign assets, and crowding out of credit to private sector intensified. Policy support, however, averted a credit crunch. The increase in public debt across Africa due to the COVID-19 crisis intensified crowding out of...

The role of communications and information technology for economic growth has beenemphasized repeatedly. In particular, these technologies have been identified as the drivingforce behind the growth in the service sector. Technological breakthroughs have generatednew forms of services, such as...

Looking beyond the current recession, the recovery is widely expected to produce a substantial rebound across emerging market economies even if growth in the developed world remains relatively weak. In this sixth in the series of thinkpieces by Chatham House, Vanessa Rossi looks at the prospects...

In 2000, the Lisbon Agenda set out an ambitious plan to make the EuropeanUnion “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy inthe world”. The Agenda suggested a need for action on three broad fronts:the first explicitly macroeconomic; the second explicitly microeconomic;the third...

Renewed interest in economic growth has encouraged studies of how different sectors have contributed to convergence trends. Comparing productivity levels across countries is notoriously tricky, but one attractive approach has been to deflate sector value added by the PPP exchange rate for GDP....

[...]This article explores the inflation puzzle andinvestigates whether compensation has acted as either atemporary restraint on inflation or as the underlying sourceof a new inflation regime.2 After reviewing the recent behavior of inflation, we specify and estimate a traditionalprice-inflation...

Estimates of the marginal product of capital can help forecast economic growth, test competing businesscycle theories, and perform cost-benefit analysis. This paper presents annual and quarterly estimatesof the marginal product of capital in the U.S. separately for the residential and...