In the midst of a major U.S. military effort in Iraq and the Middle East, economists should be able to assess the relationship between U.S. troops and growth. The necessity of military force in providing security for nation-building is a common assumption among policymakers and international...

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 this paper we analyze the relative importance and mutual behavior of two competing base-load electricity generation options that each are capable of contributing significantly to the abatement of global CO2 emissions: nuclear energy and coal-based power production complemented with CO2...

This paper analyzes the contribution of network externalities to the pickup in U.S. productivity in the early 2000s. The Internet and wireless communication are treated as the central mechanisms of ICT-driven productivity growth. The approach contrasts with the dominant view in the...

It is now widely recognized that information technology (IT) was critical to the dramatic acceleration of U.S. labor productivity growth in the mid-1990s. This paper traces the evolution of productivity estimates to document how and when this perception emerged. Early studies concluded that IT...

The theoretical richness and variety of the new growth literature can make it difficult to capture the essence of growth models. With this paper, we wish to provide one possible integrating view of the nature of the growth generating processes. Revisiting the models that constitute the core of...

This paper examines the underpinnings of the successful performance of the US economy in the late 1990s. Relative to the early 1990s, output growth has accelerated by nearly two percentage points. We attribute this to rapid capital accumulation, a surge in hours worked, and faster growth of...

Life is short. That's never been more true for corporations today. An analysis of all 29,688 firms that listed from 1960 through 2009, divided into 10-year cohorts, reveals that newly listed firms in recent cohorts fail more frequently than did those in older ones. Creative destruction is...

The macroeconomic experience of the last decade stressed the importance of jointly studying the growth and business cycle fluctuations behavior of the economy. To analyze this issue, we embed a model of Schumpeterian growth into an estimated medium-scale DSGE model. Results from a Bayesian...

The aim of this paper is to create an indicator that compares the efficiency of countries in converting economic complexity into human development through the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method and econometric validation. The DEA will not only enable comparisons of efficiency across...