Does competition spur productivity? And if so, how does it accomplish this? These have long been regarded as central questions in economics. This article reviews the literature that makes progress toward answering both questions

Latin American countries are the only Western countries that are poor and that aren't gaining ground on the United States. This paper evaluates why Latin America has not replicated Western economic success. We find that this failure is primarily due to TFP differences. Latin America's TFP gap is...