Why have some countries done so much better than others over the recent past? In order to shed new light on this issue, this paper provides a decomposition of the change in the distribution of output-per-worker across countries over the period 1960-98. The main finding of the paper is that most...

The impact of demographic developments on productivity is still a little-explored subject. The authors find a strong and unexpected link between slow labour productivity growth and rapid labour force growth over the period from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s. They situate this finding in the...

Why have some countries done so much better than others over the recent past? This paper sheds light on this issue by providing a decomposition of the change in the distribution of output per worker across countries over the period 1960-1998. We find that most of the change in shape of the world...

This papers examines changes in the distribution of per-worker-output across countries over the period 1960-98, with a particular focus on identifying the forces behind the hollowing out of the middle of the distribution and the associated emergence of a twin-peaks phenomenon. The main finding...