We use changes in indices of revealed comparative advantage in 1240 products to study whether export diversification is path-dependent (i.e., history matters); whether it is more difficult to diversify into more sophisticated products; and whether education helps reduce path dependence, or helps...

Potential output growth generally decelerated after the global financial crisis during 2008–2009. This paper examines the possible determinants of potential output growth using Bayesian Model Averaging and assesses how the determinants can be used to increase the growth of potential output. It...

This paper analyzes why the Philippines' growth performance has improved significantly in recent years. As in the medium to long term actual growth adjusts to potential, we posit that the reason behind this improvement is that the country's potential growth is increasing. We derive an estimate...

The possible endogeneity of labor and capital in production functions, and the consequent bias of the estimated elasticities, has been discussed and addressed in the literature in different ways since the 1940s. This paper revisits an argument first outlined in the 1950s, which questioned...

We provide the first evidence that low- and middle-income countries with high education levels were more successful in developing comparative advantage in products unrelated to those they already export. In contrast, controlling for the relatedness of target products to these countries’...

The severe economic downturn caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has forced governments worldwide to increase spending while tax revenues simultaneously collapsed. Concurrent with this, central banks in several of these countries are financing a significant percent of their...

We use the information compiled as of 15 June 2020 by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in the ADB COVID-19 Policy Database to analyze the measures taken by its 68 members, plus the European Central Bank, and the European Union, to combat the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Measures...

This paper argues that the 40-year-old Feldstein-Horioka “puzzle” (i.e., that in a regression of the domestic investment rate on the domestic saving rate, the estimated coefficient is significantly larger than what would be expected in a world characterized by high capital mobility) should...

We show that Mazumdar`s recently proposed methods for estimating the elasticity of the wage bill with respect to output growth, and for decomposing the growth rate of the wage rate into an output effect, an employment effect, and a price effect, are problematic. The decomposition proposed is a...