In this paper we employ traditional beta, sigma, gamma-convergence tools to assess growth behaviour of groups of countries in connection with mixture densities. In the presence of mixtures, the standard methods to assess convergence are likely to be misleading. With respect to some recent papers...

We adopt a counterfactual approach to decompose labor productivity growth into growth of Technological Productivity (TEP), growth of the capital-labor ratio and growth of Total Factor Productivity (TFP). We bring the decomposition to the data using international countrysectoral information...

Modeling the cross-country distribution of per capita income using mixture analysis provides a natural platform for the detection of clubs of countries. Unfortunately, these mixture methods, when based on a strictly univariate approach are limiting towards one’s ability to learn about the...

This note explores clustering in cross country GDP per capita using recently developed model based clustering methods for panel data. Previous research characterizing the components of the overall distribution of output either use ad hoc methods, or methods which ignore/subvert the panel nature...

Economists and environmental policymakers have recently begun advocating a bottom-up approach to climate change mitigation, focusing on reduction targets for groups of nations, rather than large scale global policies. We advance this discussion by taking a quantitative perspective, focusing on...

Modeling the cross-country distribution of per capita using mixture analysis provides a natural platform for the recovery or detection of clubs of countries. Unfortunately, these mixture methods, when based on a strictly univariate approach are limiting towards one's ability to learn about the...

A well established fact in the growth empirics literature is the increasing variation in output per capita across countries. This phenomena however does not adequately describe changes in the distribution of output since it does not account for changes in the covariates which undoubtedly in...

Meta-analyses are becoming a popular tool for supporting benefit transfers, but the availability of studies is a direct consequence of policy issues, research funding, and investigator interest. We investigate fragility versus robustness of the meta-equation by considering sample selection,...

Estimation of economic relationships often requires imposition of constraints such as positivity or monotonicity on each observation. Methods to impose such constraints, however, vary depending upon the estimation technique employed. We describe a general methodology to impose...