A recent explanation for declining GDP growth is that R&D has gotten harder. The formal explanation in Jones (1995) is “fishing out”-- idea discovery decreases in the level of knowledge. If valid, long-run growth is exogenous. In follow-on empirical work, Bloom, Jones, Van Reenen and Webb...

The paper concentrates on the question whether the low level of productivity in East Germany can be explained by deficits in the stock of human capital. It is shown that figures on ?formal? qualifications yield a too optimistic view on human capital endowments; in fact, the effective stock on...

This paper compares output per person across Canadian provinces — using nominal or current dollar GDP per capita as the metric over the period 1990 to 2003. Differences in GDP per capita can be attributed to differences in the underlying efficiency of provincial economies. This is measured by...