From an engineering perspective, a capital good’s service is energy conversion – e.g., the physical ‘work’ done by a machine – and can thus be measured directly by the energy consumed in production. We show important empirical advantages of our concept over traditional measures. The...

The Selected Issues paper on the Russian Federation discusses the economic growth and future growth potential of the country. After almost a decade of impressive growth performance, Russia suffered a sharp contraction in 2009 with GDP falling by 8 percent. This paper gives an overview of the...

The global distribution of poor livestock keepers tailors closely the regional distribution of poverty densities in the developing world. Reducing poverty among this group requires livestock sector growth in these regions. As per capita incomes expand, household expenditures on meat and milk...

The dynamics of annual price rates of 459 manufacturing sectors of the American economy from 1959 to 1996 are studied in the paper. There is a small but stable negative correlation between the sector price rates and the growth ones. At the same time there exists a substantial positive...

After two generations of economic growth, the next phase of structural transformation for Asia will have several salient features. Our results suggest that no single policy orientation, pathway, or even destination will apply to all economies. The main driver for each economy’s structural...

The paper criticises the concept of total factor productivity as a measure of technical change and economic performance on two grounds: (i) theoretical, because it shares all the weaknesses of the neoclassical production function from which it is derived, (ii) its relevance in helping to...

The classical problem of agricultural productivity measurement has regained interest owing to recent price hikes in world food markets. At the same time, there is a new methodological debate on the appropriate identification strategies for addressing endogeneity and collinearity problems in...

This research note concerns total factor productivity measurement at the firm level. Specifically the purpose of the note is to describe a means for incorporating return on investment (ROI) as the improvement criterion in profit-linked total factor productivity measurement procedures. The...

Development economists over the years have solicited the use of small and medium industries (SMI) to accelerate the pace of industrialization and economic growth, particularly in developing economies. In recognition of this, entrepreneurship education and the promotion of entrepreneur spirit...

The paper attempts to bring to public debate certain asymmetrical evolutions present in the complicated and difficult process of command economy transformation into a functional market economy, with a special focus on Romania’s agri-food sector. One of the economic phenomena acting as a...