Reducing income inequality in Africa rests on agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth and convergence. Liberalizing trade has emerged as a force of TFP Notwithstanding increasing trade, is falling while the differences rates remain wide. We provide evidence impact liberalization examine by origin, disaggregated into intra-Africa, rest-of-the-world trade. Also, we recognize uniquenes...

In this paper we examine long-run house price convergence across US states using a novel econometric approach advocated by Pesaran (2007) and Pesaran et al. (2009). Our empirical modelling exercise employs a probabilistic test statistic for convergence based on the percentage of unit root rejections among all state house price differentials. Using a sieve bootstrap procedure, we construct confi...

This paper analyzes—both empirically and theoretically—how fluctuations in uncertainty interact with financial market imperfections in determining economic outcomes. In a standard bond-contracting framework, an increase in uncertainty benefits equity holders at the expense of bondholders, and to the extent that firms face significant frictions in financial markets, increased uncertainty implies...

The paper develops an economic–political model to explain why the convergence hypothesis fails even though good economic policies seem to be a sufficient condition for strong economic growth (Sachs, J., Warner, A., 1995a. Economic convergence and economic policies. NBER Working Paper No. 5039. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.). The model has three variables: growth, policy, ...

after establishment of the world trade organization (wto) in 1995, not only all countries around the world had to receive progressively the wto accession but also those that had higher economic potentials benefited further advantages from their memberships. one goal which has been followed by the wto has relied on economic convergence. it is now a time to ask whether convergence in monetary po...

In the growth literature, evidence on convergence of per capita incomes is mixed. In the development literature, health and education indicators are often used to measure countries’ development progress. This study examines whether average stocks of health and education are converging across countries and calculates the speed of their convergence using data from 84 countries for 1970–90. A thre...

A startling fact of firm level productivity analysis is the large and persistent differences in both labour productivity and total factor productivity (TFP) between firms in narrowly defined sectoral classes. The competitiveness of an industry is potentially an important factor explaining this productivity dispersion. The degree of competition has also implications for the measurement of TFP at...

We document empirical evidence linking regional growth in the United States over the last 25 years with entrepreneurial activity, or ‘business dynamism’. The main data source is the Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) released by the US Census Bureau. We uncover a new stylised fact: across US states, it is not the level but rather the change in business entry rate that has a significant positive...