Is public expenditure productive? Is there a shortfall or excess in public capital investment? We address these old issues in light of new econometric tools. It is argued that the Cobb-Douglas specification that ignores nonlinearity inherent in the functional relationship of the production...

This paper uses nonparametric kernel methods to construct observation-specific elasticities of substitution for a balanced panel of 73 developed and developing countries to examine the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis. The exercise shows some support for capital-skill complementarity,...

We examine the (potentially nonlinear) relationship between inequality and growth using a method which does not require an a priori assumption on the underlying functional form. This approach reveals a plateau completely missed by commonly used (nonlinear) parametric approaches - the economy...