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.

Economics: Beyond the Millennium contains articles by leading authorities in various fields of economic theory and econometrics, each of whom gives an account of the current state of the art in their own field and indicate the direction that they think it will take in the next ten years. The fields covered are grouped into three categories: the microfoundations of macroeconomics, where Malinvaud evaluates the theory of resource allocation and Hildenbrand examines the empirical content of economic thories; markets and and organizations, where both Gabszewicz and D'Aspremont et al. look at imperfect competition and general equilibrium, Scotchmer and Thiess consider spatial economics, Ponssard the future of managerial economics, while Van Damme looks at the next stage of game theory; and econometrics, where Gourieroux reviews econometric modelling in general, Maravall looks at time series, Lubrand and Bauwens examine Bayesian analysis, and Blundell looks at the rapidly expanding area of microeconometrics.

In the early 1980s, many observers, argued that powerful organized economic interests and social democratic parties created successful mixed economies promoting economic growth, full employment, and a modicum of social equality. The present book assembles scholars with formidable expertise in the study of advanced capitalist politics and political economy to reexamine this account from the vantage point of the second half of the 1990s. The authors find that the conventional wisdom no longer adequately reflects the political and economic realities. Advanced democracies have responded in path-dependent fashion to such novel challenges as technological change, intensifying international competition, new social conflict, and the erosion of established patterns of political mobilization. The book rejects, however, the currently widespread expectation that 'internationalization' makes all democracies converge on similar political and economic institutions and power relations. Diversity among capitalist democracies persists, though in a different fashion than in the 'Golden Age' of rapid economic growth after World War II.

This paper analyzes the evolution of the degree of global cyclical interdependence over the period 1960-2005. We categorize the 106 countries in our sample into three groups-industrial countries, emerging markets, and other developing economies. Using a dynamic factor model, we then decompose macroeconomic fluctuations in key macroeconomic aggregates-output, consumption, and investment-into different factors. These are: (i) a global factor, which picks up fluctuations that are common across all variables and countries; (ii) three group-specific factors, which capture fluctuations that are common to all variables and all countries within each group of countries; (iii) country factors, which are common across all aggregates in a given country; and (iv) idiosyncratic factors specific to each time series. Our main result is that, during the period of globalization (1985-2005), there has been some convergence of business cycle fluctuations among the group of industrial economies and among the group of emerging market economies. Surprisingly, there has been a concomitant decline in the relative importance of the global factor. In other words, there is evidence of business cycle convergence within each of these two groups of countries but divergence (or decoupling) between them.

Two of the world's leading economists discuss fundamental issues of inequality and economic growth.

As awareness of the process of globalization grows and the study of its effects becomes increasingly important to governments and businesses (as well as to a sizable opposition), the need for historical understanding also increases. Despite the importance of the topic, few attempts have been made to present a long-term economic analysis of the phenomenon, one that frames the issue by examining its place in the long history of international integration. This volume collects eleven papers doing exactly that and more. The first group of essays explores how the process of globalization can be measured in terms of the long-term integration of different markets-from the markets for goods and commodities to those for labor and capital, and from the sixteenth century to the present. The second set of contributions places this knowledge in a wider context, examining some of the trends and questions that have emerged as markets converge and diverge: the roles of technology and geography are both considered, along with the controversial issues of globalization's effects on inequality and social justice and the roles of political institutions in responding to them. The final group of essays addresses the international financial systems that play such a large part in guiding the process of globalization, considering the influence of exchange rate regimes, financial development, financial crises, and the architecture of the international financial system itself. This volume reveals a much larger picture of the process of globalization, one that stretches from the establishment of a global economic system during the nineteenth century through the disruptions of two world wars and the Great Depression into the present day. The keen analysis, insight, and wisdom in this volume will have something to offer a wide range of readers interested in this important issue.

This book studies the link between technological change and country-specific performance.