Most of the large economies in the world are dominated by services, in that services compose more than 50% of their GDP. Even in India, where most of the employment (60%) is in agriculture, services contributed just over 60% of the GDP in 2005. An exception is China, where the industrial sector...

Using data for 16 major states in India from 2001 to 2015, this paper examines the patterns, distribution dynamics, and the drivers of telecommunications (telecom) services across different states. We apply both parametric and nonparametric econometric techniques to study the distribution...

Using Mexican data, this article analyzes the impact of the workers' remittances on the cross-section distribution of prices as well as on the evolution of individual relative prices over time for 272 consumer items. The results suggest that there are important differences in the responses of...

Using data for 93 countries for a period from 1970 to 2000, this paper examines the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on cross-country differences in productivity. We construct a spatial Gini coefficient of labor productivity across countries, and weighted indices of FDI and gross...

Following the failure of multilateral trade negotiations at the Cancun meeting and the Doha Round, developing countries have pursued an alternative in so-called "south-south" trade agreements. Since these agreements lead to trade diversion from efficient north (developed) countries to less...

This paper calculates Theil’s entropy index to measure the extent of productivity differences across 92 countries for the period from 1970 to 2003. While there is evidence of increasing differences in productivity across these countries, we observe different patterns when we group the...