Seminal papers of Solow (1957) and Swan (1956) stimulated debate among economists on the role of technical change in productivity improvements and for that matter economic growth. The consensus is that technological change accounts for a significant proportion of gross national product (GNP)...

Traditional measures of labour quality might have the shortcoming of missing some features of the very important increase in labour utilization within European countries. In particular, we explore the case of Spain. Despite showing one of the most important increases in labour quality in the EU...

Doctor of Philosophy

Este documento analiza el papel de las diferencias en crecimiento de la PTF entre el sector de la construcción y la economía en su conjunto para explicar la evolución de los precios reales de la vivienda. Para ello, primero se comparan las sendas de precios de construcción y vivienda en...

This paper examines cross-country patterns of economic growth by estimating a stochastic frontier production function for 80 developed and developing countries and decomposing output change into factor accumulation, total factor productivity growth, and production efficiency improvement. In...

The current study was motivated by statements made by the Economic Strategies Committee that Singapore’s recent productivity levels in services were well below countries such as the US, Japan and Hong Kong. Massive employment of foreign workers was cited as the reason for poor productivity...

There is a continuing debate on whether or not ownership changes accompanying privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) lead to performance improvements of such firms. Since profitability measures alone are possibly inappropriate for SOEs, we address this very significant current question...

Fortunes in the agricultural sectors of four of the largest South Pacific countries are traced in recent decades by estimating the single factoral terms of trade index. The single factoral terms of trade are measured for agriculture in four Melanesian countries-Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon...

Studies of total factor productivity in livestock production are rare, but when available provide useful information especially in the context of developing countries such as China where livestock is becoming more important in the domestic agricultural economy. We estimate total factor...

Studies of total factor productivity in livestock production are rare, but when available provide useful information especially in the context of developing countries such as China where livestock is becoming more important in the domestic agricultural economy. We estimate total factor...