This paper argues that the single most important factor that explains East Asia's development success was its fast structural transformation toward industrialization, manufacturing in particular. Workers moved out of agriculture into manufacturing, and the sector diversified and upgraded its...

The People's Republic of China's (PRC) remarkable growth performance over the last 3 decades has been associated to very robust export growth, so much so that many refer to it as a clear example of export-led growth (ELG). Using the concept of the balance-of-payments equilibrium (BOPE) growth...

We investigate the claim that national labor markets have become more globally interconnected in recent decades. We do so by deriving estimates over time of three different notions of interconnection: (i) the share of labor demand that is export induced (i.e., all labor demand created by foreign...

This research work is an empirical analysis of the determinants of long-run growth and technical progress in five Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, i.e., the ASEAN countries, during the last three decades. We ask the fundamental question of...

We expand the standard balance-of-payments-constrained (BOPC) growth rate model in three directions. First, we take into account the separate contributions of exports in goods, exports in services, overseas remittances, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Second, we use state-space...

This paper offers a retrospective view of the key pillar of Solow's neoclassical growth model, namely the aggregate production function. We review how this tool came to life and how it has survived until today, despite three criticisms that undermined its raison d'être. They are the Cambridge...

From 1962 to 2013, the People's Republic of China's (PRC's)agricultural employment share declined from 82% to 31%. The transfer of workers out of low-productivity agriculture is a fundamental pillar of the PRC's aspirations to progress and eventually become a high-income economy. We hypothesize...

We estimate the People's Republic of China's (PRC's potential growth rate in 2012 at 8.7% and at 9.2% for the average of 2008-2012, about the same as the average actual growth rate for this period. This rate is the natural growth rate, that is, the rate consistent with a constant unemployment...

This paper asks, first, whether today's developing economies can achieve high-income status without first building large manufacturing sectors. We find that practically every economy that enjoys a high income today experienced a manufacturing employment share in excess of 18%-20% sometime since...