For more than fifty years, the Solow decomposition (Solow 1957) has served as the standard measurement of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in economics and management, yet little is known about its precision, especially when the capital stock is poorly measured. Using synthetic data...

We analyze a large stratified random sample of firms that provide us with measures ofperformance and each firm’s top manager’s perception of the severity of businessenvironment constraints faced by his/her firm. Unlike most existing studies that rely onexternal and aggregated proxy measures of...

We prove that in a closed economy without distortionary taxation, the welfare of a representativeconsumer is summarized to a …rst order by the current and expected future values of the Solowproductivity residual in level and by the initial endowment of capital. The equivalence holds if...

In the literature technical change is mostly assumed to be exogenous and specified as afunction of time. However, some exogenous external factors other than time can also affecttechnical change. In this paper we model technical change via time trend (purely externalnon-economic) as well as other...

We prove that the change in welfare of a representative consumer is summarized by thecurrent and expected future values of the standard Solow productivity residual. Theequivalence holds if the representative household maximizes utility while taking pricesparametrically. This result justifies TFP...

We use panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants to study the connection between plants´responses to changes in the economic environment and their contributions to aggregateproductivity growth in the period following the implementation of the North American TradeAgreement (NAFTA)...

We study the dispersion in rates of provincial economic- and TFP growth in China. Our results show that regional growth patterns can be understood as a function of several interrelated factors, which include investment in physical capital, human capital, and infrastructure capital...

We study the dispersion in rates of provincial economic- and TFP growth in China. Ourresults show that regional growth patterns can be understood as a function of severalinterrelated factors, which include investment in physical capital, human capital, andinfrastructure capital; the infusion of...

This paper analyzes data from a novel field experiment designed to test the impact of twodifferent insurance products and a secret saving device on solidarity in risk-sharing groupsamong rural villagers in the Philippines. Risk is simulated by a lottery. Risk-sharing ispossible in solidarity...

This paper investigates the traits of the self-employed entrepreneurs in urbanChina, an economy rife with informational and institutional imperfections, underdevelopedfinancial markets, but a growing and important non-state sector. The selfemployedmake on average 20% more than non-entrepreneurs,...