This paper argues that institutional quality has both direct and indirect (moderating) effects on productivity of countries. These hypotheses are tested using a battery of institutional proxies (governance, economic freedom, intellectual property rights and ease of doing business) and two...

This paper analyzes a dynamic, Ricardian model of international trade in which relative differences in technology are endogenously determined by investments in innovation by competitive firms. It considers the impact of these investments on trade patterns and the effect of trade patterns on...

This paper examines the impact on TFP of North-South trade-related technology diffusion in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). North-South R&D flows are constructed based on industry-specific R&D in the North, North-South trade patterns, and input-output relations in the South. The main...

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift toward digital services. Meanwhile, the race for technological and economic leadership has heated up, with risks of decoupling that could set back trade and growth and hinder the recovery from the worst global recession since the Great Depression....

This paper combines the standard incomplete markets model of uninsurable idiosyncratic risks and borrowing constraints with the Arrow/Romer approach to endogenous growth to analyze the interaction of risk, growth, and inequality, the latter also endogenously determined in equilibrium. We derive...

Empirical evidence shows that R&D spending is highly correlated with firm productivity, highly concentrated among large firms, and responsive to trade liberalization. This paper develops a model of product upgrading with heterogeneous firms that captures these characteristics by allowing firms...

The effects of the quality of institutions on economic development and comparative advantage have been so far investigated separately. This paper proposes a theoretical framework in which trade patterns and growth rates are jointly determined by international differences in contract enforcement...

I summarize the main results and policy insights from the 2011 EIB Conference on “Productivity and Long-Term Growth Potential in Europe”. Europe’s need for productivity growth has become more pressing against the backdrop of huge government debt and a beginning slowdown in labour supply....