If workers self-select into industries based upon their relative productivity in different tasks, and comparative advantage is aligned with absolute advantage, then the average efficacy of a sector's workforce will be negatively correlated with its employment share. This might explain the...

This paper presents a model of the interaction between invention and learning by doing. Learning depends upon invention in that learning by doing is viewed as the serendipitous exploration of the finite productive potential of invented technologies. At the same time, the profitability of costly...

Measures of real consumption based on the ownership of durable goods, the quality of housing, the health and mortality of children, the education of youths, and the allocation of female time in the household indicate that sub-Saharan living standards have, for the past two decades, been growing...

The influence of Schumpeter's notion of "creative destruction" may have led to an overemphasis on substitution between technologies in recent models of endogenous innovation. Historical examples of technological change suggest that new technologies may just as frequently complement older...

An increase in the size (scale) of an economy increases the total quantity of rents that can be captured by successful innovators which, in equilibrium, should lead to a rise in innovative activity. Conventional wisdom and the theoretical predictions of models of endogenous innovation suggest...

With minimal sleight of hand, it is possible to transform the recent growth experience of the People's Republic of China from the extraordinary into the mundane. Systematic understatement of inflation by enterprises accounts for 2.5% growth per annum in the non-agricultural economy during the...

In a partially reformed economy, distortions beget distortions. Segments of the economy which are freed from centralized control respond to the rent seeking opportunities implicit in the remaining distortions of the economy. The battle to capture, and then protect, these rents leads to the...