Gold rushes are periods of economic boom, generally associated with large increases in expenditures aimed at securing claims near new found veins of gold. An interesting aspect of gold rushes is that, from a social point of view, much of the increased activity is wasteful since it contributes...

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...

Over the last few decades, countries have experienced quite different patterns of productivity growth. In this paper, we emphasize the role of country level demographics in explaining these differences. In particular, looking over the period 1960-2002, we show that cross-country data support the...

This paper is motivated by a set of cross-country observations on labor productivity growth among industrial countries over the period 1960-1997. In particular, we show that over this period, the speed of convergence among industrialized countries has decreased substantially while the negative...

This paper examines the extent to which the process of globalization can explain the observed widening in the cross--country distribution of output--per--worker. In particular examine whether the opening up of trade in a Hecksher--Ohlin type model of trade can explain the observed changes. On...

Cross-country observations on the effects of population growth are used to show why differences in rates of growth in working-age population may be a key to understanding differences in economic performance across industrialized countries over the period 1975-1997 versus 1960-1974. In...