Widely used 'purchasing power parity' comparisons of per capital GDP are not true quantity indexes and are subject to systematic substitution bias. This bias may distort measurement of convergence and divergence. Extending Hal R. Varian's nonparametric construction of a true index gives the set...

Panel data is analyzed on government consumption and C-DP growth in 116 countries, 1950-90. The purported positive impact of government growth on GDP growth is due to simultaneity bias. The negative cross-national correlation between government size and economic growth reflects in part an...

Did global income inequality rise or fall over the last decades of the twentieth century? The answer depends on how cross-country income comparisons are made. Exchange rate comparisons suggest that inequality rose whilst the purchasing power comparisons of the Penn World Table suggest it fell....

The response of union utility to labor-saving innovation is analyzed within a framework of oligopolistic competition in the product market, taking account of wage bargaining under several alternative structures of industrial relations. Conditions are established under which wages and employment...

Two recently improved sets of cross-country panel data are combined in order to re-examine the effects of population growth and fertility on economic growth. Using a 107 country panel data set covering 1960-85, we find that high birth rates appear to reduce economic growth through investment...