The estimates of the gross national product (GNP) per capita in US dollars published in the World Bank Atlas are used throughout the world for comparing relative levels of income across countries. The Atlas method of calculating per capita GNP is designed to smooth effects of fluctuations in...

Better health and nutrition are thought to improve children's performance in school, and therefore their productivity after school. Most literature ignores the fact that child health and schooling reflect behavioral choices, so the estimated impact of health and nutrition on a child's schooling...

The authors present a database of indicators of innovative activity around the world since the early 1960s. The data include measures of innovation outcomes as well as variables related to innovation effort. The main indicator of innovation outputs is patents. The main variables related to...

Bargaining is ubiquitous in real life. It is a major dimension of political and business activities. It appears at the international level, when governments negotiate on matters ranging from economic issues (such as the removal of trade barriers), to global security (such as fighting against...

The authors present a method for forecasting growth cycles in economic activity, measured as total industrial production. They construct a series which they aggregate into a composite leading indicator to predict the path of the economy in Lithuania. The cycle is the result of the economy's...

Lederman and Maloney trace the evolution of research and development (R&D) expenditures along the development process using a new global panel data set. They show that R&D effort measured as a share of GDP rises with development at an increasing rate. The authors examine how four groups of...

This paper presents a case study of willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimation using random valuation models. A contingent valuation survey was conducted in Yerevan, Armenia to estimate people's WTP for the protection of Lake Sevan. Three elicitation formats-open-ended, closed-ended, and the stochastic...

Forming a regional grouping with neighboring nations may be one way for microstates to overcome a major problem: Because of their weak bargaining power and high fixed costs of negotiation, microstates are at a severe disadvantage in dealing with the rest of the world. They don't have the human...

In this analysis of capital's role in agricultural production, a new construction of data on capital allowed the authors to advance the cross-country study of production functions. The model reveals the relative importance of capital, a finding quite robust to modifications of the model and the...

In this paper, the authors provide systematic panel-based econometric estimates of plant-level returns to scale for various 3-digit and 4-digit manufacturing industries, using panel data for Chilean plants. The paper attempts to answer two questions: 1) Do policies that promote"bigness"in...