This paper explores the relevance of unknown nonlinearities for growth empirics. Recent theoretical contributions and case-study evidence suggest that nonlinearities are pervasive in the growth process. I show that the postwar data provide strong evidence in favor of generalized non-linearities. I provide two alternative mechanisms for making inference about the effects of production-function s...

This paper examines the dynamic effects of government outlays on economic growth and the unemployment rate. Using vector autoregression and data from twenty OECD countries over three recent decades, we found: (1) positive shocks to government outlays slow down economic growth and raise the unemployment rate; (2) different types of government outlays have different effects on growth and unemploy...

We present a model in which two of the most important features of the long-run growth process are reconciled: the massive changes in the structure of production and employment; and the Kaldor facts of economic growth. We assume that households expand their consumption along a hierarchy of needs and firms introduce continuously new products. In equilibrium industries with an expanding and those ...

A multi-country Schumpeterian growth model is constructed. Because of technology transfer, all R&D-performing countries converge to parallel growth paths. All other countries stagnate. Any parameter change that would have raised a country’s growth rate in standard Schumpeterian theory will permanently raise its productivity and per-capita income relative to other countries and raise the world g...

Unified Growth Theory uncovers the forces that contributed to the existence of multiple growth regimes and the emergence of convergence clubs. It suggests that differential timing of take-offs from stagnation to growth segmented economies into three fundamental regimes: slow growing economies in a Malthusian regime, fast growing countries in a sustained growth regime, and economies in the trans...

The evolution of economies during the major portion of human history was marked by Malthusian Stagnation. The transition from an epoch of stagnation to a state of sustained economic growth has shaped the contemporary world economy and has led to the Great Divergence in income per capita across the globe in the past two centuries. This entry examines the process of development over the course of...

We endogenize total factor productivity in a neoclassical model with increasing returns to scale. We obtain multiple steady-state equilibria with an arbitrarily small degree of increasing returns to scale. While the most productive …rms operate across all the steady states, in a poverty trap less productive …rms operate as well. This results in lower average …rm productivity and total factor pr...

A popular methodology of studying spatial income inequality is analysis of beta-convergence (i.e. an inverse relationship between current income per capita and its initial level). Its widespread use is based on a belief that the economic growth theory predicts income convergence among economies (countries or regions within a country), and that beta-convergence suggests decreasing income inequal...

7 We present a model of structural change due to non-linear Engel-curves for consumer 8 goods. Goods are sequentially introduced starting out as a luxury with high income 9 elasticity and ending up as a necessity with low income elasticity. Although this leads to 10 rising and falling sectoral employment shares, the model exhibits a steady growth path 11 along which the Kaldor facts are satisfi...