We identify measures of shocks to total factor productivity and preferences from two real business cycle models and subject them to Granger causality tests to see whether they can be considered exogenous to other plausible sources of the German business cycle in the mid nineteen seventies and...

In this position paper we deal with the conception of heterogeneity as both the force and the result of evolutionary change. We ask, how this heterogeneity can be measured empirically and how we can get a measure which allows to get a broad comparable empirical account especially on several...

In this paper we add new results to the emerging field of investigating productivity levels rather than productivity change, as initiated by Hall and Jones (1996, 1997). To obtain measures of relative productivity levels we depart from traditional growth accounting and calculate the Malmquist...

This paper studies an analytically tractable model of the formation and evolution of chains of production. Over time, entrepreneurs accumulate techniques to produce their good using goods produced by other entrepreneurs and labor as inputs. The value of a technique depends on both the...

We develop a general equilibrium model to assess the quantitative impact of distorting institutions and policies related to the poor business environment in 30 sub-Saharan African countries. A subset of the distortions - namely, regulation, crime, corruption, and poor infrastructure - is modeled...

The welfare gain to consumers from the introduction of personal computers is estimated here. A simple model of consumer demand is formulated that uses a slightly modified version of standard preferences. The modification permits marginal utility, and hence total utility, to be finite when the...

The lack of internationally comparable capital stock data has been a major obstacle to empirical studies of the contribution of the capital stock to economic growth. In this paper, we provide estimations of aggregate capital stocks for 103 countries in 2010. Depending on data availability the...

The international transmission of knowledge through import spillovers, as a source of TFP growth, has received much attention in the literature. We investigate two additional direct channels through which R&D disseminates: the import of high-technology goods and the internationalization of...

European Union countries have implemented widespread reforms to product markets in order to stimulate competition, innovation and economic growth. We provide empirical evidence that the reforms carried out under the EU Single Market Programme (SMP) were associated with increased product market...

This paper presents a unified model that integrates the theoretical literatue on Schumpeterian endogenous growth, the microeconometric literature on R&D and productivity, and the empirical literature on productivity convergence. Starting from a structural model of endogenous growth following...