This paper examines Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and knowledge flows, using international patent data. The result is a measure of technology that isolates sources of innovation and their contributions to domestic TFP. Within-industry innovation enhances domestic productivity, and domestic...

In an influential paper Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) argue that the evidence on the international disparity in per-capita income levels and growth rates is consistent with a standard Solow model, once it has been augmented to include human capital as an accumulable factor. In a study on...

Although non-R&D innovation activities account for a significant portion of innovation efforts carried out across very heterogeneous economies in Europe, how to incorporate them in to economic models is not always straightforward. For instance, the traditional macro approach to estimating the...

There has been a concomitant rise in R&D and the rate of economic growth in emerging countries. Analyzing a panel of 31 emerging countries, we find convincing evidence of scale effects which make government policies potent for long-run growth. This contrasts sharply with the well known findings...

Many writers have claimed that R&D has two 'faces'. In addition to the conventional role of stimulating innovation, R&D enhances technology transfer by improving the ability of firms to learn about advances in the leading edge ('absorptive capacity'). In this paper we document that there has...

Although non-R&D innovation activities account for a significant portion of innovation efforts carried out across very heterogeneous economies in Europe, how to incorporate them in to economic models is not always straightforward. For instance, the traditional macro approach to estimating the...

Productivity dispersion across firms is large and persistent, and worker reallocation among firms is an important source of productivity growth. The purpose of the paper is to estimate the structure of an equilibrium model of growth through innovation that explains these facts. The model is a...

This paper contributes to the policy discussion on COVID-19 by presenting real-time evidence on the magnitude of the shock for Italian firms. We take advantage of unique panel data on 7,800 companies between January 2020 – right before the pandemic – and March of the same year – in the...

We use detailed product- and firm-level data to study the sources of innovation and the patterns of productivity growth over the period from 2007 to 2013. We document several new facts on product reallocation. First, every quarter around 8 percent of products are reallocated in the economy, and...