Although Japanese economic growth after the Meiji Restoration is often characterised as a gradual process of trend acceleration, comparison with the United States suggests that catching-up only really started after 1950, due to the unusually dynamic performance of the US economy before 1950. A...

This paper explores whether lobbies slow down technology diffusion. To answer this question, we exploit the differential effect of various institutional attributes that should affect the costs of erecting barriers when the new technology has a technologically close predecessor but not otherwise....

This paper attempts to draw lessons for the New Economy from what economists know about technology dissemination and economic growth. It argues that what is most notable about the New Economy is that it is knowledge-driven, not just in the sense that knowledge now assumes increasing importance...

Overall labour productivity in India was already only around 15 per cent of the UK level between the early 1870s and the late 1920s. Between 1929 and 1950 India fell further behind and remained at around 10 per cent of the UK level until the 1970s. India has been catching-up since the 1970s, but...

This paper argues that the unprecedented acceleration of growth in the developing world in the new millennium in comparison with advanced economies is due not so much to improvements in underlying fundamentals as to exceptionally favourable global economic conditions, shaped mainly by...

Over the last two centuries, many countries experienced regime transitions toward democracy. We document this democratic transition over a long time horizon. We use historical time series of income, education and democracy levels from 1870 to 2000 to explore the economic factors associated with...

Italy's economic growth over its 150 years of unified history did not occur at a steady pace nor was it balanced across sectors. Relying on an entirely new input (labour and capital) database by us built and presented in the Appendix, together with new Banca d'Italia estimates of GDP by sector,...

The past 120 years have been characterised by: (i) rapid economic growth and large productivity gains in the four countries; (ii) a decline in productivity in the United Kingdom relative to the United States, and to a lesser extent also relative to France and Japan until the second world war...

The present study contributes to the analysis of economic growth by comparing labour ant total factor productivity (TFP) in France, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States in the very long run (since 1890) and in the medium run (since 1980). During the past century, the United States has...

The structural transformation of the Indian economy from agriculture (primary sector) dominated to one led by the services sector (tertiary sector), bypassing the intermediate stage of manufacturing (secondary sector) led growth, offers an alternative to conventional theories of economic...