This paper examines the channels through which country characteristics affect growth. We investigate whether "primitives," or rates of factor accumulation, are sufficient statistics for economic growth, and whether "ancillary variables," such as political instability, income distribution, and...

This paper generalizes the Nelson-Phelps catch-up model of technology diffusion. We allow for the possibility that the pattern of technology difusion can be exponential, which would predict that nations would exhibit positive catch-up with the leader nation, or logistic, in which a country with...

We estimate the rate of embodied technological change directly from plant-level manufacturing data on current output and input choices along with histories on their vintages of equipment investment. Our estimates range between 8 and 17 percent for the typical U.S. manufacturing plant during the...