Recent empirical studies tend to confirm the importance of investment in human and technological capital as determinants of growth. Extensions of the neoclassical model that incorporate these factors explain rather well the long-run growth experience of a large sample of countries, and are...

This paper analyzes the redistributive effects of the EU budget during the period 1986-97 and advances a proposal for setting member countries' budgetary balances in a manner consistent with a simple equity criterion based on relative income per capita.

This paper analyses the sources of post-war growth and convergence in the OECD using an extension of Mankiw, Romer and Weil's (1992) model in which the rate of technical progress is determined endogenously by the level of R&D spending and a process of technological catch-up. The results indicate...

This Paper compares the observed distribution of the stock of infrastructures across the Spanish regions with the optimal allocation derived from a planning problem in which the observed degree of ex-post redistribution is taken as given. The results suggest that Spanish public investment policy...

This paper explores the sources of Ireland’s relative growth performance. Using panel data for a sample of OECD countries, we estimate a convergence equation and use it to conduct a growth accounting exercise which provides quantitative estimates of the immediate sources of Ireland’s growth...

In the last decade or so, growth has come to occupy an increasingly important place among the interests of macroeconomists, displacing to some extent their previous preoccupation with the business cycle. This change is largely due to two factors. The first one is the realisation that, in terms...

This note develops a flexible methodology for splicing economic time series that avoids the extreme assumptions implicit in the procedures most commonly used in the literature. It allows the user to split the required correction to the older of the series being linked between its levels and...

This paper develops a simple model that can be used to estimate the effectiveness of Cohesion expenditure relative to similar but unsubsidized projects, thereby making it possible to explicitly test an important assumption that is often implicit in estimates of the impact of Cohesion policies....

Scores in standardized international student achievement tests and some recent adult literacy studies provide interesting data on the quality of educational outputs and on the skill level of the population that can be a useful complement to the data on the quantity of schooling which have been...

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for the quantitative analysis of the private and fiscal returns to schooling and of the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education. This framework is applied to 14 member states of the European Union. For each of these...