The COVID-19 pandemic struck the global economy after a decade that featured a broad-based slowdown in productivity growth. Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers, and Policies presents the first comprehensive analysis of the evolution and drivers of productivity growth, examines the effects of COVID-19 on productivity, and discusses a wide range of policies needed to rekindle productivity growth. The book also provides a far-reaching data set of multiple measures of productivity for up to 164 advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies, and it introduces a new sectoral database of productivity. The World Bank has created an extraordinary book on productivity, covering a large group of countries and using a wide variety of data sources. There is an emphasis on emerging and developing economies, whereas the prior literature has concentrated on developed economies. The book seeks to understand growth patterns and quantify the role of (among other things) the reallocation of factors, technological change, and the impact of natural disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is must-reading for specialists in emerging economies but also provides deep insights for anyone interested in economic growth and productivity. Martin Neil Baily Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution Former Chair, U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers This is an important book at a critical time. As the book notes, global productivity growth had already been slowing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and collapses with the pandemic. If we want an effective recovery, we have to understand what was driving these long-run trends. The book presents a novel global approach to examining the levels, growth rates, and drivers of productivity growth. For anyone wanting to understand or influence productivity growth, this is an essential read. Nicholas Bloom William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, Stanford University The COVID-19 pandemic hit a global economy that was already struggling with an adverse pre-existing condition—slow productivity growth. This extraordinarily valuable and timely book brings considerable new evidence that shows the broad-based, long-standing nature of the slowdown. It is comprehensive, with an exceptional focus on emerging market and developing economies. Importantly, it shows how severe disasters (of which COVID-19 is just the latest) typically harm productivity. There are no silver bullets, but the book suggests sensible strategies to improve growth prospects. John Fernald Schroders Chaired Professor of European Competitiveness and Reform and Professor of Economics, INSEAD

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011 With the British Industrial Revolution, part of the world's population started to experience extraordinary economic growth—leading to enormous gaps in wealth and living standards between the industrialized West and the rest of the world. This pattern of divergence reversed after World War II, and now we are midway through a century of high and accelerating growth in the developing world and a new convergence with the advanced countries—a trend that is set to reshape the world. Michael Spence, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, explains what happened to cause this dramatic shift in the prospects of the five billion people who live in developing countries. The growth rates are extraordinary, and continuing them presents unprecedented challenges in governance, international coordination, and ecological sustainability. The implications for those living in the advanced countries are great but little understood. Spence clearly and boldly describes what's at stake for all of us as he looks ahead to how the global economy will develop over the next fifty years. The Next Convergence is certain to spark a heated debate how best to move forward in the post-crisis period and reset the balance between national and international economic interests, and short-term fixes and long-term sustainability.

Focuses on the nature, causes and features of economic growth across a range of countries and regions. This title covers a variety of growth related topics - from theoretical analyses of economic growth in general to empirical analyses of growth in the OECD, transition economies and developing economies. This enlightening and significant new volume focuses on the nature, causes and features of economic growth across a wide range of countries and regions. Covering a variety of growth related topics - from theoretical analyses of economic growth in general to empirical analyses of growth in the OECD, transition economies and developing economies - the distinguished cast of contributors address some of the most important contemporary issues and developments in the field. These include, amongst others: endogenous growth theory, Keynesian theories of the business cycle and growth, unemployment and growth, FDI and productivity spillovers, and knowledge externalities and growth. This useful analysis of the many facets of economic growth will be an essential read for those interested in economic theory and economic policy-making, as well as students and scholars of macroeconomics and finance.

This paper reexamines the ability of the Solow-type growth models to explain the pattern of cross-country growth rates. Recent authors, most notably Mankiw, Romer and Weil [1990], have argued that differences in national growth rates are compatible with the view that each country has access to a common, neoclassical aggregate production function. Such models imply that, conditional on population growth and savings rates, disparate economies are converging over time to the same level of per capita output. We argue that cross-country growth is better explained by a model of local versus global convergence. Countries converge locally in the sense that economies with similar initial conditions tend to converge to one another. However, we find little evidence of convergence across economies with substantially different initial conditions as measured by per capita output or literacy rates. Further, the impact of capital formation on aggregate output increases with the level of economic development. These results are consistent with models of multiple equilibria in long run behavior. Our results suggest that the Solow growth model should be supplemented with a theory of aggregate production function differences in order to fully explain international growth patterns.