Conflicts and political instability have been serious constraints to growth in Guinea-Bissau. Of special concern was the civil war of 1998, which lasted 11 months and led to substantial loss of life as well as to a massive decrease in GDP per capita. Based on research on the economic cost of...

We study labor productivity in agriculture within a two-region, two factor and two commodity economy. Increases in productivity can lead to higher or to lower agricultural prices, depending on the internal structure of the economy. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for either outcome;...

The April 21, 2005 issue of the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS carried a lead article titled ‘Blood for Oil?’ The paper is attributed to a group of writers and activists – Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts – who identify themselves by the collective name ‘Retort.’ In...

We study properties of the solutions to a parametrized constrained optimization problem in Hilbert spaces. A special operator is studied which is of importance in economic theory; sufficient conditions are given for its existence, symmetry, and negative semidefiniteness. The techniques used are...

This paper studies the impact of process and product innovations introduced by firms on their employment growth. A model that relates employment growth to process innova- tions and to the growth of sales due to innovative and unchanged products is derived and estimated using a unique source of...

The Chinese economy does still not qualify as demand-driven economy. Its growth is based on investment. In fact successive waves of investment have emerged during the eighties and produced a piling-up of productive systems. A wave of small national enterprises and entrepreneurs, a second large...

To shed lights on growth, distribution and the relationships between the two, we develop a growth model with heterogeneous individuals who care about social status. Individuals' heterogeneity stems from two sources: their innate skills and their degree of ambition. While the willingness of...

This article outlines work in progress on a study of technological choice in the context of North-South development. Its main purpose is to describe the methodology being developed in the pilot phase of the study. This is of interest because it links together a number of analytic...

The present study examines the relationship between openness (trade-GDP ratio) and growth. Our cross-country panel data analysis of a sample 51 countries of the South during 1981-2002 shows that for only 11 rich and highly trade-dependent countries a higher real growth is associated with a...

Review essay of M. Abramovitz, "Thinking About Growth"