Public Infrastructure as a Determinant of Intertemporal and Interregional Productive Performance in China This paper focuses on the question whether public infrastructure capital matters for labor productivity in China, both over time and across regions. It finds that public infrastructure is a significant determinant of variations in labor productivity across provinces, but the contribution of...

In a multi-industry growth model, firms require external funds to conduct productivityenhancing R&D, and are limited by financing constraints. The cost of research differs across industries, so financing constraints hinder productivity growth in some industries more than in others. Equilibrium industry dynamics map into a differences-indifferences regression specification where industry growth ...

This paper investigates the relationship between telecommunications infrastructure competition, investment and productivity. Using econometric modelling and input-output economics, the analysis examines and measures the extent to which telecommunications has contributed to national and sectoral productivity performance. The main findings from this paper suggests that most industries have benefi...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dramatically increased worldwide and is the most important form of all private capital flows to developing countries. Yet, it is an important empirical question whether FDI affects total factor productivity (TFP) positively. We investigate the effect of FDI on TFP growth in a large sample of countries in 1970–2000. Our econometric results indicate that FDI ha...

This paper argues that international trade should affect local organization of production in a systematic way. By using the standard Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model we show that the export sector is more likely to demonstrate fragmentation, entrepreneurship and outsourcing compared to the importcompeting sector in a typical labor abundant country. Liberal trade regime will promote entrepreneurs...

Some multi-sector endogenous growth models make strong predictions about productivity differences across sectors in the form of a distribution or density function. In this paper it is demonstrated that this distribution is left-skewed for a wide range of plausible parameter values. This stands in strong contrast to the right-skewed shape of the respective empirical distribution estimated by ker...

In an economy with multiple consumption goods (including environmental amenities) that uniquely maximizes the present value of utility with constant discounting, constant or falling augmented green net national product, or zero or negative augmented net investment, at any time implies that the economy is unsustainable then. "Augmented" means that time is included as a productive stock, which in...

Adopting a time series convergence definition and panel unit root testing procedures, we fail to reject the null hypothesis of no convergence in GDP per capita across former West German states. This result stands in contrast to the findings of previous studies for West German regions using cross-section regression techniques and is contrary to the time series findings for the United States. Fro...

This paper quantifies the contributions of sectoral productivity growth and structural change to aggregate productivity convergence. Existing evidence is inconclusive because it focuses on convergence within sector and its methodology depends sensitively on the conversion factor used to compare sectoral productivity levels across countries. Thus, a methodology – β-decomposition – is proposed to...

We model core demands for better governance (political, economic and institutional), more employment and less consumer price inflation using a methodological innovation on the complete elimination of cross-country differences in signals susceptible of sparking social revolts. The empirical evidence based on 14 MENA countries show that the Arab Spring was predictable in 2007 to occur between Jan...