The Indices of Social Development combine over 200 variables from 25 sources, providing the most comprehensive database showing the variation of social institutions – understood as the informal norms and behaviors that pattern social interaction – across countries and over time. Based on these sources, progress on five areas, civic activism, clubs and associations, interpersonal safety and trus...

As the central role of innovation in driving economic growth has become more widely recognized, policymakers are becoming aware that they need information on innovative practice to help them design effective policies, and monitor their impact over time. It is generally agreed that the evidence has to be collected systematically and repeatedly, in order to better understand not only the trends o...

The focus on human capital as a driver of economic growth for developing countries has led to undue attention on school attainment. Developing countries have made considerable progress in closing the gap with developed countries in terms of school attainment, but recent research has underscored the importance of cognitive skills for economic growth. This result shifts attention to issues of sch...

This paper aims to examine indigenous innovation and draw implications for sustainable economic growth in China. It investigates China’s capacity and achievements in indigenous innovation at both the macro and micro levels. China’s indigenous innovation is also compared to that in other major economies in the world. It is found that China’s innovation development is well ahead of other economie...

Two approaches taken to the embodiment question are compared and discussed: quantitative theory and traditional growth accounting. The two approaches give very different estimates for the contribution of investment-specific technological advance to economic growth. Therefore, the approach taken matters. It is argued that the measures used in traditional growth accounting to gauge the importance...

If economic growth elsewhere raises an individual’s earning prospects relative to his present location, then the individual will move. However, if the individual can exploit economic growth elsewhere by commuting, he will not need to move to gain from the expansion. County-level data from eight states in the Midwest over the period 1969–1994 are used to show that local county population respond...

Competition is a crucial factor in driving economic growth. First, it places pressure on firms to increase their efficiency. Second, it ensures that more productive firms increase their market share at the expense of the less productive. These lower productivity firms may then exit the market, to be replaced by higher productivity firms. Third, in the presence of competition, firms will aim to ...

Since the 1950s, economic growth rates in industrialized countries have declined. Whereas the per capita growth rate of gross domestic product in industrial countries was 3.7 in the 1950s ind 4.2 in the 1960s, the growth rate came down to 3.0 in the 1970s and to 2.1 in the 1980s (Table 1). This picture of declining growth rates is even stronger when the growth rate is not expressed on a per cap...