This paper studies the impact of public infrastructure on economic performance. We employ three di¤erent methodologies to estimate the returns to public investment. First, we relate growth in total factor productivity to accumulation of public capital. Second, we assess the role of public capital as an input to production. Third, we evaluate the reduction in costs that can be attributed to the ...

The paper addresses the link between productivity and labour mobility. The hypothesis tested is that technology is transmitted across industries through the movement of skilled workers embodying human capital. The embodied knowledge is then diffused within the new environment creating spillovers and leading to productivity improvements. The empirical analysis is based on household survey and in...

We estimate a unified measure of inclusive growth for emerging markets by integrating their economic growth performance and income distribution outcomes, using data over three decades. Country distributions are calibrated by combining PPP GDP per capita and income distribution from survey data. We apply the microeconomic concept of a social mobility function at the macroeconomic level to measur...

This paper argues that technical change in the East Asian countries was sector-specific, took the form of learning-by-doing and was induced by relative factor prices. Usual growth accounting exercises do not account for this in the structure of the assumed aggregate production function and therefore miss these technical gains. Assumed or estimated elasticities of substitution are too high in th...

The effect of spatial agglomeration (localisation and urbanisation economies) on employment growth is explored over a balanced panel of 23,374 Italian firms, using a flexible Bayesian model. Contrary to previous research, the agglomeration economies measures are calculated using direct measures of physical distances between pairs of firms, rather than with respect to pre-specified geographical ...

This study intends to understand how disaster is related to countries’ production efficiency using a sample of 137 countries over 1980–2011. We analyze the effect of the number of man-made and natural disaster occurrences on countries’ technological change (swift of the frontier) and technological catch-up (distribution of efficiencies). The results reveal an inverted “U” shape relationship bet...

The goal of this study examines the quantitative implications of the Malmquist index in a standard Real Business Cycle (RBC) model as a measure of technology shock. To achieve this, the paper first investigates the empirical validity of the equivalence proposition on the two technology shock measures: a relatively new Malmquist Index and the predominant Solow residual. On the basis of permutati...

We estimate productivities at the sector level for 72 countries and 5 decades, and examine how they evolve over time in both developed and developing countries. In both country groups, comparative advantage has become weaker: productivity grew systematically faster in sectors that were initially at greater comparative disadvantage. These changes have had a significant impact on trade volumes an...

This paper examines the growth experience of Latin America and discusses future prospects. For this purpose we use alternative approaches. We first perform growth decompositions to look at the behavior of total factor productivity and examine differences across regions of the world and within Latin America. Then, we use cross-country growth regressions to compare the relative performance of Lat...

This paper investigates whether there is convergence in Total Factor Productivity at the establishment level, to the technological frontier. We find evidence of convergence to the frontier, which suggests the existence of technological spillovers. The speed of catch-up does not appear to vary with the extent of foreign presence in the industry. But foreign multinationals do make up a significan...