This paper analyzes the welfare benefits from falling relative prices of IT (information technology) goods across a wide range of countries. We find, using two separate methodologies and datasets, that welfare benefits mainly accrue to users of IT, not their producers, because of falling...

This paper studies the impact of the level and volatility of the commodity terms of trade on economic growth, as well as on the three main growth channels: total factor productivity, physical capital accumulation, and human capital acquisition. We use the standard system GMM approach as well as...

This paper provides evidence on the role played by the real exchange rate in the growth process of emerging economies. The empirical analysis is conducted on a panel dataset of Latin-American countries over the period 1970-2010. We find keeping an undervalued real exchange rate is conducive to...

This research explores the effects of distance to the pre-industrial technological frontiers on comparative economic development in the course of human history. It establishes theoretically and empirically that distance to the frontier had a persistent non-monotonic effect on a country's...

This paper integrates in a unified and tractable framework some of the key insights of the field of international trade and economic growth. It examines a sequence of theoretical models that share a common description of technology and preferences but differ on their assumptions about trade...

We revisit Western Europe's record with labor-productivity convergence and tentatively extrapolate its implications for the future path of Eastern Europe. The poorer Western European countries caught up with the richer ones through both higher rates of physical capital accumulation and greater...

Most projections envision continued rapid growth in ASEAN, the PRC and India over the next two decades. By 2030, they could quadruple their output, virtually eliminate extreme poverty, and dramatically transform the lives of their more than 3 billion citizens. The impact will be felt across the...

The way the results of the human activity are measured has been and still is a major theoretical and practical concern of the economic world. In this article we are particularly interested in analyzing the circumstances that provide a real image for the economic results at macroeconomic level....

The paper studies endogenous world balanced growth equilibria in which national learning productivity differentials govern relative per capita products. Learning productivities depend on the national share of world specialized-goods production, national and world scale, and familiarity with the...