The world economy has experienced four global recessions over the past seven decades: in 1975, 1982, 1991, and 2009. During each of these episodes, annual real per capita global GDP contracted, and this contraction was accompanied by weakening of other key indicators of global economic activity....

In a recent article, Ritschl (2008) criticized findings of Broadberry and Burhop (2007) regarding the comparative level of manufacturing labour productivity in Germany compared to Britain between 1895 and 1938. In this paper, we re-evaluate Ritschl's claims and show that our earlier results are...

This paper analyzes factors that determine recent economic growth in the low-income countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.2 The main findings are as follows: (1) productivity gains in export-oriented sectors and expansion of exports may have become the main sources of growth in...

Based on updated datasets of value added and of labour and capital inputs, this paper provides a reassessment of the proximate causes of Italy's economic development since its political unification in 1861 to 2016. Italy's pre-WWII economy featured weak productivity growth, with the exception of...

This paper proposes a new index of sectoral labor distortion using employment and valueaddedshares. We show that this index is highly correlated with growth both crosssectionallyand over time. We also use it to compare the degree of distortion amongcountries and identify sectors where the...

This paper aims to describe, identify underlying factors and seek explanations for South Africa's economic recovery since 1994, as evidenced by trends in growth and investment. Compared with an international peer group, the initial conditions for a dramatic growth recovery were inauspicious in...

This paper finds evidence that political booms, defined as the rise in governments‘ popularity, are a good predictor of currency crises, suggesting that currency crises are often “political booms gone bust” events. The result is robust to controlling for other potential predictors of...

In order to examine innovation diffusion and convergence processes, we study productivity trends, trend breaks and levels for 13 advanced countries over 1890-2012. We highlight two productivity waves, a big one following the second industrial revolution and a small one following the ICT...

This study presents a GDP per capita level and growth comparison across 17 main advanced countries and over the 1890-2013 long period. It proposes also a comparison of the level and growth of the main components of GDP per capita through an accounting breakdown and runs Philips-Sul (2007)...

Climate change mitigation challenges national economies to increase productivity while reducing fossil energy consumption. Fossil energy-saving technical change has been assumed to accomplish this, yet empirical evidence is scarce. This paper investigates the long-run relationship between the...