The authors develop a simple analytical framework that shows how the composition of public spending affects economic growth. Distinguishing between productive and unproductive government spending (that which complements private sector productivity and that which does not), they show that...

The authors investigate the implications of pollution as a byproduct of production and analyze how environmental concern affects the optimal rate of economic growth and optimal government policy. The government must levy taxes on income to finance both productive government spending and...

The introduction of new high-yielding varieties of cereals in the 1960s, known as the green revolution. Changed dramatically the food supply I Asia, as well as in other countries. The authors examine over an extended period, the growth consequences for agriculture in Indonesia, the Philippines,...

Why, when given the same resources, might productivity be lower on farms operated through sharecropping than on owner-run farms? The reason is that sharecropping, much less wage contracts, cannot overcome the divergence of interests between those who till the land and those who own it. Only land...

In recent years, various Latin American governments have resorted to taxes on bank debits and financial transactions as alternative ways of raising revenue. Considerable interest has developed in understanding the consequences of such reforms. The author constructs a dynamic general equilibrium...

The authors review the qualitative macroeconomic and welfare implications of replacing a pay-as-you-go pension system with a fully funded scheme. They summarize the typically small effects found in the simulations literature, based on exogenous-growth one-sector models. Much larger, and...

Are natural resources a blessing or a curse? The authors present a model in which natural resources have a positive effect on the level of income and a negative effect on its growth rate. The positive and permanent effect on income implies a welfare gain. There is a growth effect stemming from a...

Cross-national data on economic growth rates show that increases in educational capital resulting from improvements in the educational attainment of the labor force have had no positive impact on the growth rate of output per worker. In fact, contends the author, the estimated impact of growth...

The authors evaluate whether the level of development in the banking sector exerts a causal impact on economic growth and its sources-total factor productivity growth, physical capital accumulation, and private saving. They use (1) a pure cross-country instrumental variable estimator to extract...

There was substantial spatial variation in labor market outcomes in Brazil over the 1990s. In 2000, about one-fifth of workers lived in apparently economically stagnant municipios where real wages declined but employment increased faster than the national population growth rate. More than...