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We investigate the relationship between economic growth and top income inequality under the influence of human and physical capital accumulation, using an annual panel of U.S. state-level data. Our analysis is based upon the 'unified' framework offered by Galor and Moav (2004) while the empirics account for cross-section dependence, parameter heterogeneity, and endogeneity, in nonstationary series. We conclude that changes in inequality do not influence growth, neither in the short run nor in the long run in the United States as a whole in the 1929-2013 period. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of overall income inequality measures. These findings provide support for the theoretical prediction of the unified theory of inequality and growth, according to which the growth effect of inequality becomes insignificant in the latest stages of economic development that the United States experiences during our period of investigation. Therefore, future policies aiming at moderating the concentration at the upper end of income distribution are not likely to have adverse growth consequences in developed countries such as the United States. ( JEL I21, O47, C23) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the economic and environmental impacts of tariffs on carbon embodied in trade. We find that carbon tariffs do reduce foreign emissions, but their ability to improve global cost-effectiveness of unilateral climate policy is quite limited - even if tariff rates are based on more sophisticated second-best considerations. If carbon tariffs are levied on the full carbon content of traded goods, they can even increase rather than decrease the global cost of emission reduction. The main effect of carbon tariffs is to shift the economic burden of developed-world climate policies to the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how a country's degree of economic development affects the impact of banking crises on international trade. To this end, we estimate a gravity model of trade using a sample of 139 countries over the period 1975-2012. Our results show that middle income countries are generally the most negatively affected. In contrast, financial turmoil appears to have less impact on bilateral trade flows among high income countries and, more specially, among low income nations. The level of financial development, contract enforcement, as well as the extent of the use of banking credit within international trade all help to explain our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developed countries face the risk of a sustained lack of aggregate demand, that is, secular stagnation. Demand‐oriented growth models emphasising the balance‐of‐payments constraint raise concerns about attendant adverse growth impacts on developing countries from reduced export growth. These concerns are well‐founded, albeit less serious than the simplest versions of these models would imply. Relaxing their assumptions and emphasising cumulative causation forces from domestic‐demand growth and relative price effects indicates how developing countries can combine export and domestic‐demand based strategies and how changed policies can maintain rapid growth while reducing the income elasticity of import demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a synthesis of the empirical scholarship on England and Germany, this paper demonstrates that in both regions, rural socio-economic developments from c.1200 to c.1800 are similar: this period witnesses the rise to numerical predominance and growing economic significance of the 'sub-peasant classes', which had a growing impact on the market as a result of their increasing market dependence, and from which - towards the end of the period - a rural proletariat emerged. Against the influential theory of Robert Brenner, it is argued that the period c.1200- c.1400 cannot really be categorized as 'feudal' according to Brenner's definition; and 'agrarian capitalism' does not adequately describe the socio-economic system that obtained by the end of the sixteenth century. A genuine transition to capitalism is only evident from after c.1750, and can be found in Germany as well as in England; it is predicated both on ideological shifts and on the evolution of the rural proletariat, which is only found in large numbers by or after c.1800. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even before the financial crisis, many developed economies were facing growing inequality and struggling to maintain employment and earnings. This paper addresses two key questions. What has happened to inequality? Where will tax and welfare reforms have most impact? The UK is used as a running example. The analysis suggests that the pattern of sluggish real wages at the bottom looks set to continue, and longer-term earnings growth will come mainly from high-skilled occupations. Growing earnings inequality will bring increasing pressure on the tax and welfare system. A blueprint for a coherent tax policy reform is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the asymmetric behaviour of inflation around the target level for inflation-targeting countries. The first rationale behind this asymmetry is the asymmetric policy response of the central bank around the target. Central banks could have a stronger bias towards overshooting rather than undershooting the inflation target. Consequently, the policy response would be stronger once the inflation jumps above the target, compared to a negative deviation. Second rationale is the asymmetric inflation persistence. We suggest that recently developed Asymmetric Exponential Smooth Transition Autoregressive ( AESTAR) model provides a convenient framework to capture the asymmetric behaviour of inflation driven by these two effects. We further conduct an out-of-sample forecasting exercise and show that the predictive power of AESTAR model for inflation is high for some countries in our sample, especially at long-horizons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While new empirical findings and theoretical frameworks provide insight into the interrelations between socioeconomic development, gender equity, and low fertility, puzzling exceptions and outliers in these findings call for a more all-encompassing framework to understand the interplay between these processes. We argue that the pace and onset of development are two important factors to be considered when analyzing gender equity and fertility. Within the developed world, 'first-wave developers'-or countries that began socioeconomic development in the nineteenth/early twentieth century-currently have much higher fertility levels than 'late developers.' We lay out a novel theoretical approach to explain why this is the case and provide empirical evidence to support our argument. Our approach not only explains historical periods of low fertility but also sheds light on why there exists such large variance in fertility rates among today's developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the trends in economic freedom worldwide as of February 2015. It discusses the Economic Freedom of the World index from the Canadian think tank Fraser Institute which revealed that the U.S.' economic freedom has been declining since 2000. It adds that most advanced economies' economic freedom have declined which is attributed to the decline of law and trade.

ABSTRACT As population demographics change and economic crises spread and deepen, welfare reform has become an urgent problem in many developed countries. As elsewhere in East Asia, the state in Singapore has in recent years stepped up its efforts to deal with issues of healthcare, education, support for care, retirement and even unemployment. Much of this has been in response to demographic shifts, economic trends and, importantly, political pressures. This article evaluates the possibilities and limits of recent reforms. It looks at some promising aspects of reform, such as increases in spending in certain areas, before examining the limitations of the reforms. These include the fact that most resources have been directed toward supporting businesses, while increases in direct spending on citizens have been limited and conditional rather than universal; furthermore, little or no attention has been paid to the issue of women's underemployment. These features suggest constraints within the logic and principles of welfare, which continue to define citizens as having limited rights and entitlements, and citizenship as entailing regular employment and heavy obligations toward the family. The analysis of reforms sheds light on how the appearance of expansion can mask continuing limitations. The case of Singapore illustrates the importance of looking not just at expenditure but also at the principles and logics in which welfare reforms are embedded, in a variety of national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using annual data, the paper studies the time-series evidence regarding the allocation of fluctuations in the exchange rate between demand components, real growth and price inflation in a sample of developing and advanced countries. Subsequently, cross-country correlations establish the relevance of fluctuations in imports to the pass-through channel of exchange rate fluctuations to economic activity. Further, the evidence evaluates the direct effects of fluctuations in the nominal values of imports on price inflation and real growth. Cross-country regressions evaluate the effects of variation in the average and variability of exchange rate fluctuations on import growth. Subsequently, variation in indicators of macroeconomic performance (real growth, price inflation and the growth of private consumption and investment) is evaluated with respect to variation in the exchange rate and/or import growth. In developing countries, the evidence indicates the relevance of fluctuations in import growth to the transmission mechanism of exchange rate fluctuations to the macroeconomy. Where this relationship dominates, fluctuations in the exchange rate are no longer significant to the difference in macroeconomic indicators, having controlled for variation in import growth across countries. In advanced countries, import fluctuations may be transmitted to economic activity, further to fluctuations in the exchange rate, in line with variations in terms of trade. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective One relatively neglected question raised by Amartya Sen's theory of human development is: Why do people and societies differ in their capacity to convert income and commodities into valuable human achievements ('functionings' in Sen's terminology)? I focus upon the degree to which people in developed and developing societies realize each of the six diverse types of valued functionings: long life, schooling, living in a society with less income inequality and less gender inequality, more political freedom, and greater life satisfaction. Methods Using data from all societies with a population of over 1 million ( N = 156), I first regress each type of functioning on societies' GDP per capita to obtain the residual scores. These scores indicate which societies do better than expected, as expected, or worse than expected on the basis of their level of economic development. Results and Conclusion To explain these differences, I then estimate an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model whose independent variables are economic growth rate, ethnolinguistic fractionalization, civil war fatalities, corruption, and several dummy variables for cultural regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of inflation targeting (IT) claim that it increases the credibility of central banks, which in turn should result in smaller sacrifice ratios (SRs) - that is, the ratio of output losses to the change in trend inflation during disinflations. We show that IT does indeed reduce SRs, but only if the disinflation is long: in a four-year-long disinflation, our estimates suggest that IT reduces SRs by at least 60%. In fast disinflations, IT does not affect SRs. These results suggest that IT and fast disinflations are substitute alternatives in enhancing the credibility of disinflationary processes and reducing their costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounts of globalisation fail to distinguish the current globalisation from that which followed the industrial revolution. Before the industrial revolution most economic activity was local, with production and consumption bundled in the close geographic proximity. In the first globalisation, production and consumption unbundled on an unprecedented global scale as natural and man-made trade costs fell. In the second unbundling the production process itself is being unbundled globally, with traditional 'made in' labels losing meaning as supply chains become more and more complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effect of domestic political accountability on leaders' strategies for attracting foreign direct investment to less developed countries. We consider two policy areas: the tax burden imposed on firms and the regulatory environment in which they operate. We find that democratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lower tax rates to foreign investors, whereas autocratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lax regulation. This result is driven by the greater elasticity of the political survival function to environmental and labor regulations in more democratic countries. Analyses of firm-level survey data confirm our main theoretical conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The great story of the last decade has been the 'rise of the rest'-emerging economies such as China, Brazil, Turkey and India-to a position rivaling that of the established, advanced economies. As the aftershocks of the financial crisis of 2008-2009 continue to ripple through the global system, will the rising rest stay or track or be derailed? Some of the world's top economists examine this question in the following section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an evident global imbalance puzzle: debt levels in developed countries are continuing to expand despite their huge size whereas the size of foreign exchange reserves held by developing countries continues to grow. This paper argues that this pattern of global imbalances is a consequence of an asymmetric international system, the roots of which lie in the differences in labour structures between the developed and developing countries. It suggests that this global imbalance is likely to continue and is beneficial for both developed and developing countries. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the linkages between the global business cycle and national cycles. We first analyse the evolution of the global business cycle and present its main properties during global recessions and recoveries. We then consider how the sensitivity of national cycles to the global cycle varies over different phases of the global cycle and depends on country-specific features. Our findings collectively portray an intricate liaison between the global business cycle and national cycles. National business cycles are tightly linked to the global cycle, but the sensitivity of national cycles to the global cycle is much higher during global recessions than expansions. There are significant differences across countries in how they respond to the global cycle as advanced economies appear to be more sensitive to global recessions than are developing economies. Moreover, countries tend to be more sensitive to the global cycle, the more integrated they are to the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the emergence of intractable economic stagnation in most developed countries, spectacular failures in financial markets and the empirical refutation of hypotheses central to economic policy for the last three decades, the economics profession remains largely complacent. Some reasons for this complacency are discussed, along with some suggestions for future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies panel-data techniques to examine the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis (BSH) for 33 countries. We introduce a new approach for classifying traded and non-traded industries which allows for country-specific heterogeneity over each industry and changes in classifications across periods. We find that in developed countries, productivity growth in traded goods leads to a real depreciation of the currency, inconsistent with the BSH; however, higher growth countries experience real appreciation. The results of developing countries support the BSH in that higher productivity growth in traded goods leads to real appreciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how fluctuations in money growth correlate with fluctuations in real output growth and inflation. Using band-pass filters, we extract cycles from each time series that last 2-8 (business cycles) and 8-40 (longer-term cycles) years. We employ annual data, 1880-2001 without gaps, for 11 industrial countries. Fluctuations in money growth do not play a systematic role at business cycle frequencies. However, money growth leads or affects contemporaneously inflation, but not real output growth, in the longer run. Also, formal break tests indicate no structural changes for the longer-term money growth and inflation relationship, despite changes in policy regimes.( JEL E3) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This publication presents economic forecasts for several industrialized nations and emerging markets for 2012. It covers discussions of the economic conditions of major industrialized countries including Japan, Spain and Germany, forecasts for financial markets in the U.S. and Great Britain, as well as charts demonstrating global growth prospects.

The author argues that the history of slavery, culture, and politics of the southern states in the U.S. is not unique when compared and contrasted with the history of humankind. She asserts that much of the world has had to face questions of volatile issues such as slavery, the role of labor, and transitioning to societies and economies that are primarily agrarian to more modern and industrialized economies. In addition, the author argues that there are several nations that have not undergone the economic transformation from rural to urban and, thus, similar patterns of development and difficulties that characterized the American south will emerge in other parts of the world.

Following the Great Recession, many commentators are already forecasting a bleak economic future for developed economies over the next decade. Our research suggests, however, that there are ample opportunities for new growth and jobs in mature economies. Policymakers and business leaders can mine rich seams of growth through imaginative responses to oft-perceived challenges around aging populations, the transition to a low-carbon future, rising demands for public services, new information-based services, and growing demands in the emerging world for social and physical infrastructure. However, such growth will fail to materialize unless action is taken today to secure the necessary supply-side foundations for longer-term growth. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates the effectiveness and feasibility of two FDI policies, fiscal incentives and deregulation, aimed at improving the attractiveness of a country in the short run. Using disaggregated data on sales by US MNEs’ foreign affiliates in 43 developed and developing countries over the 1982–94 period, results show that the provision of fiscal incentives or the deregulation of the labour market would exert a positive impact on total FDI. Given the drawbacks frequently associated with the use of incentive packages, economy-wide policies which ease firing procedures and reduce severance payments would certainly be the best policy option. This paper also highlights the different aggregation and omitted variable biases that have affected results of previous studies and provides some support to recent theoretical models of FDI by showing that third-country effects and spatial interdependence influence respectively the location of export-platform FDI and vertical FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes how major industrialized countries coped with the global financial crisis in 2009. The most affected countries as a result of the U.S. exposure to financial services, housing booms, and consumer debt and trade are Germany, Italy, Japan, and Eastern Europe. While major central banks made aggressive cuts in interest rates and other unconventional measures, governments have released large fiscal stimulus packages.

I perform a Schumpeterian analysis of a world economy in which heterogenous individuals and firms endogenously respond to stronger global competition by undertaking more education and by spending more in research and development (R&D). A more globalized economy is predicted to exacerbate wage inequality, but to spur human capital accumulation within each country. However, despite its positive level effects on consumption and output, globalization can reduce each country's per-capita output growth rate. R&D specialization allows each country to positively invest in manufacturing, variety proliferation R&D, and product quality upgrading R&D. The existence of such an R&D specialization – jointly with domestic size – allows us to explain some different economic performance about inequality and R&D effort of developed regions, such as the US and the EU countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about the potential and limits of community control and development (community-building) in the developed world, but most of the references are to the USA. There is a paradox in the contemporary political economy. As the level of the social, political and economic relationships at which communities and cities are embedded has become increasingly globalised – and thereby remote from people in cities and communities – there has been a substantial turn towards the community level as the domain and level at which social, political and economic problems should be solved. The article explores this paradox, beginning with a detailed explanation of contemporary political economy – the increasing economic globalisation existing side by side with political devolution at the community level. This is followed by a discussion of the growth of community-based organisations in the USA, their activities and their histories. From there, the article shifts gears to critique the theories of community that guide most mainstream practices. The article ends with a discussion of alternative forms of community organising and development that lead towards greater community control in the context of capital mobility and economic globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates some of the macro-determinants of commercial gambling in 21 industrialized nations. Of the possible economic determinants, two seem particularly important: the per capita income of the country since gambling represents a larger share of the income of low-income people than high-income people; and the general uncertainty of the economic environment, as measured by annual fluctuations in the GDP. Of the possible cultural determines, two also seem particularly important: the values held by the population, as measured by a factor analysis of a number of questions from the World Value Study; and the degree to which the society insures against risk through social welfare expenditures. For the OECD nations in the early part of the 21st century, all four variables prove to be significantly related to the ratio of gambling expenditures to disposable income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first half of this century in many of today's developed countries, the proportion of voting age populations 65 years old or older will roughly double. As voting age populations age, the proportion of net contributors to national budgets (mainly through taxes) will fall and the proportion of net beneficiaries (mainly through public pension and health care benefits) will rise. By mid-century in many wealthy countries, a near majority of electorates will become net beneficiaries of government expenditures, producing unprecedented changes in their political landscapes. We analyze three aspects of this phenomenon in Germany, Japan, and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to outline main features of the East Asian welfare model, to understand its past development and assess lessons that can be learned for other developing and developed countries. It describes the particular path of welfare state development in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, by focusing particularly on developmental and political aspects of welfare state development. In the final part of the study, particular features of the East Asian welfare model are outlined, and thus the existence of a distinct, ideal-typical welfare regime in East Asia substantiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Uruguay Round Agreement on agriculture attempted to lower distortions in global agricultural markets. However, the significant fall in commodity prices in the late 1990s may have reduced the incentives for both developed and developing countries to better integrate into world markets. This study analyzes price linkages and adjustment between developed and developing countries during the post–Uruguay Round period. Prices of two key commodities, long-grain rice and medium-hard wheat, are assembled for major exporters and producers. Results of multivariate cointegration analysis suggest partial market integration between developed and developing countries in the post–Uruguay Round period. Developed countries are found to be price leaders in these two markets, and in most cases, changes in their prices have relatively large impacts on those of the developing countries. Developing countries (e.g., Vietnam and Argentina) have faced considerable price adjustment due to changes in the developed countries' prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article carries out agricultural production function estimations, based on data for the period 1995–2000 on 81 countries, to present empirical evidence on the relationship between the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) and agricultural productivity. It is found that new ICT has a significantly positive impact on agricultural productivity. The evidence suggests that the adoption of modern industrial inputs in agricultural production relies on the information and communication infrastructure. However, the empirical evidence from this study also suggests that new ICT could be a factor for the divergence between countries in terms of overall agricultural productivity. Not only do we find that the ICT adoption levels of the richer countries are much higher than those of the poorer countries, but also that returns from ICT in agricultural production of the richer countries are about two times higher than those of the poorer countries. A plausible explanation for the poorer countries' relatively low productivity elasticity of ICT is the lack of important complementary factors, such as a substantial base of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether deviations from PPP are stationary in the presence of nonlinearity, and whether the adjustment towards PPP is symmetric from above and below. Using alternative nonlinear models, our results support mean reversion and asymmetric adjustment dynamics. We find differences in magnitudes, frequencies and durations of the deviations of exchange rates from fixed and time-varying thresholds, both between over-appreciations and over-depreciations and between developed and developing countries. In particular, the average cumulative sum of deviations during periods when exchange rates are below forecasts is twice that during periods of over-appreciation and larger for developing than advanced countries. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an empirical study of the factors affecting burden sharing among OECD's 22 DAC members in ‘bankrolling’ the multilateral aid agencies. Annual data over 1970–2000, pooled across the donor countries, form the basis for the empirical estimation of each donor's share in the ODA aid receipts for each multilateral agency. Our findings suggest the existence of reverse exploitation, i.e., the financial burden of the agencies is disproportionally carried by the smaller donors. The study also finds that factors such as inherent donor generosity, donor concern for domestic egalitarianism, and the extent to which donors are pro-poor in their bilateral aid policies have an impact on their readiness to support multilateral agencies financially. Size of the donor government and its budgetary balance positively influence burden sharing of contributions to other multilateral agencies. But neither the phase of economic cycle nor the rate of economic growth affects the burden-sharing responsibility of donors. It was also observed that contributions by EU members to the EC do not appear to crowd-out their contributions to other multilateral aid agencies and that right-wing donor governments are generally more parsimonious with regard to financial assistance to multilateral aid agencies. The preferred alternative, particularly among EU member countries, appears to be the EC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the success of science, and the use of scientific knowledge in different cultures, which has profoundly changed everyday life, mainly in developed countries. Life expectancy has increased strikingly and cures are available for many diseases, agricultural productivity has increased to match demographic developments. New methods of communication, information handling and computation have brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges. The governments of developed countries consider science and technology as essential for economic progress and military power, and therefore allocate abundant financial resources to education and research.

Cross country poverty comparisons on unit records have, rarely, involved both developing and developed countries. The present study attempts to fill this gap by comparing poverty across fourteen nations with diverse economic and demographic characteristics and at vastly different stages of economic development. The study contains evidence on (a) cross country variation in the equivalence scales estimated in the presence of both household size economies and adult/child relativities, (b) impact of demographic adjustment of the poverty line, that incorporate household size and composition changes, on the poverty rates, and (c) sensitivity of the poverty estimates and their rankings to the ‘equivalence elasticity’. The study finds that country rankings based on per capita GNP bear very little resemblance with that based on the aggregate poverty rates. The latter hide substantial variation in the poverty estimates across different household types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid economic development of the newly industrialised economies (NIEs) in East Asia over three decades was associated with rapid growth in exports of manufactures to developed countries. Some commentators have recommended that other developing countries follow the development path pioneered by these countries and direct their economies towards large-scale exports, in particular of labour-intensive manufactures, to developed countries. Others have dismissed this recommendation as a feasible strategy only for a limited number of small economies arguing that it is a fallacy of composition to generalise from a part to the whole. The fallacy of composition — sometimes also called 'adding-up problem' — means that what is viable for one small exporter acting in isolation may not be viable for a group of exporters acting at the same time: if all, in particular large, developing countries try to substantially increase exports of labour-intensive manufactures, there will be a risk that they encounter rising protective resistance from developed countries and/or that the terms of trade decline to such an extent that the benefits of any increased volume of exports is more than offset by losses due to lower export prices. Concern in this regard has become particularly acute by two events: first, the shift since the mid1980s of several strongly populated low-income countries, notably in South Asia, towards more export-oriented strategies, which has strongly increased competition in world markets for labour-intensive manufactures, and second, China's entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which is likely to give additional impetus to the strong rise in the exports of labour-intensive manufactures — in particular clothing, as well as parts and components in the electronics sector — that China has experienced over the past few years. Based on a review of the literature, the objective of this paper is to discuss the implications of these two... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the transmission patterns of stock market movements between developed and emerging market economies by estimating a four-variable vector autoregression model. Economic fundamentals and trade links have been considered as possible determinants of differences in transmission patterns. Results of the impulse response functions and variance decompositions indicate that significant links exist between the stock markets of the U.S. and Mexico and weaker links between the markets of the U.S., Argentina, and Brazil. However, differences in the patterns of stock market responses are consistent with differences in trade flows. It has been found that the combined effect of emerging markets on the U.S. stock market has been a significant one. These findings can be linked to differences in the speed of information processing and to the institutional structure governing the market. It has been concluded that the transmission of stock market movements is in accord with underlying economic fundamentals rather than irrational contagion effects.

The article focuses on problems and opportunities of economic growth in industrialized countries. Standard neo-classical theory teaches that a country's productive potential depends on its endowments of labor, capital, and natural resources and on the ingenuity or technological know-how deployed. In a world of trade and capital mobility, capital, natural resources, and know-how are all tradeable and so responsive to deeper forces making for growth. Growth derives from the profit opportunities for business in employing a country's labour at the wages that labour will accept. Capital and other necessary inputs flow into that country in whatever quantity is required to realize these opportunities. A major contributor to the better productivity has been the new union legislation. Privatization and deregulation have also contributed to accelerating productivity. All this suggests that corporatism may succeed in containing unemployment but that the cost in efficiency and dynamism is likely to be substantial. The author has concluded that corporatism looks like a failed experiment in economic management based on a neglect of incentives. The cure for the European economic problems looks very much like the abandonment of corporatism. The corollary for growth is also clear. Liberalization is confirmed by the evidence here as the key to achieving a country's growth potential.

This paper seeks to quantify the effect independent central banks may have not only on the rate of inflation but also on the behavior of the fiscal authority [6]. The empirical analysis uses pooled cross-section data for twelve industrialized countries over the 1960-1983 period. The international nature of the study permits the effect of different institutional arrangements to be evaluated directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the political business cycles in industrialized democratic countries. Influence of the real income and inflation on the rejection of random walk model; Reconciliation of the traditional hypothesis of business cycles with pure random walk patterns; Effects of the development of rational expectations on economic development.

Following the economic decline in most industrialised countries after the second oil crisis in 1979 public expenditure generally shows smaller growth rates than in the seventies. In some subsectors, such as public higher education, absolute reductions of real expenditure are implemented, leading to absolute decreases in the level of manpower and other inputs [OECD, 1985]. In this article, an explanation of the allocation of declining budgets to organisational subunits is sought using hypotheses from public choice theory. Section II describes the basis of the theoretical model that has been developed. Section III gives some results for the empirical tests of the model. Finally, section IV draws a few conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the features of industrialized and developing market economies with slow growth and reduced employment. Measures that have been taken to adjust employment to changes in trade; Principal options available to policy-makers; Cause of the rise in output and incomes in market economies during the 1950s and 1960s.

This article examines the international debt of the non-oil less developed countries from 1972 to 1977. The real value of outstanding less developed countries debt has been declining at a remarkable rate due to inflation. Appraising the real value of the debt involves an index number problem. It revolves around the choice of deflator. The income from international debts represents generalized purchasing power and can be used to purchase a variety of market baskets. Therefore, there is no unique basket of commodities whose prices can serve as deflator.

Analyzes the progress of technology as determinants of economic growth in developed economies, thereby providing the foundation for a philosophy of poverty. Impact of the technological progress on the changing philosophy of poverty; Outline of the traditional perspective on poverty; Establishment of level of technology with the traditional perspective on poverty.

This section shows an overview of the world economy as of 2009. The recovery of most major economies from recession by the third quarter is attributed to the industrial sector. Improvement was also seen in the parts of the service sector such as finance and business services. However, there is cited risk in the domestic demand in the major industrialized countries. It notes that money growth remains weak due to credit supply contracting in many countries.

Presents economic forecasts and indicators for industrialized and developed countries until 2005. Impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States (U.S.) on the world economy; Reasons for changes in consumers' attitudes toward the economic decline in the U.S. and Europe; Factor behind the transformation of the economic downturn into a protracted recession.