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27 publications found, searching for 'Jesus Felipe '
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Working Paper No. 1046
March 07, 2024
The Aggregate Production Function and Solow’s “Three Denials”
AbstractThis paper offers a retrospective view of the key pillar of Solow’s neoclassical growth model, namely the aggregate production function. We review how this tool came to life and how it has survived until today, despite three criticisms that undermined its raison d’être. They are the Cambridge Capital Theory Controversies, the Aggregation Problem, and the […]
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Working Paper No. 1039
February 02, 2024
Can the Philippines attain 6.5–8 Percent Growth During 2023–28?
AbstractWe expand the standard balance-of-payments–constrained (BOPC) growth rate model in three directions. First, we take into account the separate contributions of exports in goods, exports in services, overseas remittances, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Second, we use state-space estimation techniques to obtain time-varying parameters of the relevant coefficients. Third, we test for the endogeneity […]
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Working Paper No. 1036
January 05, 2024
The Estimation of Production Functions with Monetary Values
AbstractFor decades, the literature on the estimation of production functions has focused on the elimination of endogeneity biases through different estimation procedures to obtain the correct factor elasticities and other relevant parameters. Theoretical discussions of the problem correctly assume that production functions are relationships among physical inputs and output. However, in practice, they are most […]
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Working Paper No. 1030
October 09, 2023
Economic Transformation and Growth in the Philippines
AbstractThe main gateway for the Philippines to develop and become an upper-middle-income economy—and eventually, a high-income economy—is to expedite the shift of workers out of agriculture and to produce and export more complex products with a higher income elasticity of demand. The actual growth rate is constrained by the balance-of-payments equilibrium growth rate, about 6 […]
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Working Paper No. 1029
September 07, 2023
Is Anything Left of the Debate about the Sources of Growth in East Asia Thirty Years Later?
AbstractThe year 2023 commemorates the 30th anniversary of the publication of the influential, yet controversial, study The East Asian Miracle report by the World Bank (1993). An important part of the report’s analysis was concerned with the sources of growth in East Asia. This was based on the neoclassical decomposition of growth into productivity and […]
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Working Paper No. 1006
April 29, 2022
Why the Feldstein-Horioka “Puzzle” Remains Unsolved
AbstractThis paper argues that the 40-year-old Feldstein-Horioka “puzzle” (i.e., that in a regression of the domestic investment rate on the domestic saving rate, the estimated coefficient is significantly larger than what would be expected in a world characterized by high capital mobility) should have never been labeled as such. First, we show that the investment […]
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Working Paper No. 994
October 26, 2021
Production Function Estimation
AbstractThe possible endogeneity of labor and capital in production functions, and the consequent bias of the estimated elasticities, has been discussed and addressed in the literature in different ways since the 1940s. This paper revisits an argument first outlined in the 1950s, which questioned production function estimations. This argument is that output, capital, and employment […]
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Working Paper No. 946
February 03, 2020
The Relationship between Technical Progress and Employment
AbstractWe show that Autor and Salomons’ (2017, 2018) analysis of the impact of technical progress on employment growth is problematic. When they use labor productivity growth as a proxy for technical progress, their regressions are quasi-accounting identities that omit one variable of the identity. Consequently, the coefficient of labor productivity growth suffers from omitted-variable bias, […]
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Working Paper No. 725
May 17, 2012
Problems with Regional Production Functions and Estimates of Agglomeration Economies
AbstractOver the last 20 years or so, mainstream economists have become more interested in spatial economics and have introduced largely neoclassical economic concepts and tools to explain phenomena that were previously the preserve of economic geographers. One of these concepts is the aggregate production function, which is also central to much of regional growth theory. […]
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Working Paper No. 718
May 04, 2012
Aggregate Production Functions and the Accounting Identity Critique
AbstractIn a reply to Felipe and McCombie (2010a), Temple (2010) has largely ignored the main arguments that underlie the accounting identity critique of the estimation of production functions using value data. This criticism suggests that estimates of the parameters of aggregate production functions cannot be regarded as reflecting the underlying technology of the industry. While […]
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Working Paper No. 715
April 30, 2012
Tracking the Middle-income Trap
AbstractThis paper provides a working definition of what the middle-income trap is. We start by defining four income groups of GDP per capita in 1990 PPP dollars: low-income below $2,000; lower-middle-income between $2,000 and $7,250; upper-middle-income between $7,250 and $11,750; and high-income above $11,750. We then classify 124 countries for which we have consistent data […]
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Working Paper No. 670
May 18, 2011
The Product Space
AbstractIn this paper we look at the economic development of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the context of structural transformation. We use Hidalgo et al.’s (2007) concept of product space to show the evolution of the region’s productive structure, and discuss the opportunities for growth and diversification. The majority of SSA countries are trapped in the export of unsophisticated, […]
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Working Paper No. 651
February 14, 2011
Unit Labor Costs in the Eurozone
AbstractCurrent discussions about the need to reduce unit labor costs (especially through a significant reduction in nominal wages) in some countries of the eurozone (in particular, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) to exit the crisis may not be a panacea. First, historically, there is no relationship between the growth of unit labor costs and […]
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Working Paper No. 651
February 14, 2011
Το μοναδιαίο κόστος εργασίας στην ευρωζώνη
AbstractΟι τρέχουσες εισηγήσεις σχετικά με την ανάγκη να μειωθεί το μοναδιαίο κόστος εργασίας (κυρίως μέσω δραστικών μειώσεων των ονομαστικών μισθών) σε ορισμένες χώρες της ευρωζώνης (ειδικότερα στην Ελλάδα, την Ιρλανδία, την Ιταλία, την Πορτογαλία και την Ισπανία) προκειμένου να βγουν από την κρίση οι εν λόγω χώρες μπορεί να μην είναι πανάκεια. Κατ\’ αρχάς, ιστορικά, […]
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Working Paper No. 644
December 13, 2010
How Rich Countries Became Rich and Why Poor Countries Remain Poor
AbstractBecoming a rich country requires the ability to produce and export commodities that embody certain characteristics. We classify 779 exported commodities according to two dimensions: (1) sophistication (measured by the income content of the products exported); and (2) connectivity to other products (a well-connected export basket is one that allows an easy jump to other […]
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Working Paper No. 643
December 07, 2010
Modeling Technological Progress and Investment in China
AbstractSince the early 1990s, the number of papers estimating econometric models and using other quantitative techniques to try to understand different aspects of the Chinese economy has mushroomed. A common feature of some of these studies is the use of neoclassical theory as the underpinning for the empirical implementations. It is often assumed that factor […]
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Working Paper No. 638
November 17, 2010
Exports, Capabilities, and Industrial Policy in India
AbstractAn extensive literature argues that India’s manufacturing sector has underperformed, and that the country has failed to industrialize; in particular, it has failed to take advantage of its labor-abundant comparative advantage. India’s manufacturing sector is smaller as a share of GDP than that of East Asian countries, even after controlling for GDP per capita. Hence, […]
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Working Paper No. 631
October 31, 2010
Exploring the Philippine Economic Landscape and Structural Change Using the Input-Output Framework
AbstractThis paper explores the degree of structural change of the Philippine economy using the input-output framework. It examines how linkages among economic sectors evolved over 1979–2000, and identifies which economic sectors exhibited the highest intersectoral linkages. We find that manufacturing is consistently the key sector in the Philippine economy. Specifically, resource-intensive and scale-intensive manufacturing industries […]
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Working Paper No. 629
October 25, 2010
The Impact of Geography and Natural Resource Abundance on Growth in Central Asia
AbstractThis paper examines the growth experience of the Central Asian economies after the breakup of the Soviet Union. In particular, it evaluates the impact of being landlocked and resource rich. The main conclusions are: (1) Over the period 1994–2006, the landlocked resource-scarce developing countries of Central Asia grew at a slower pace than other landlocked […]
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Working Paper No. 628
October 21, 2010
The Role of Trade Facilitation in Central Asia
AbstractWith a decrease in formal trade barriers, trade facilitation has come into prominence as a policy tool for promoting trade. In this paper, we use a gravity model to examine the relationship between bilateral trade flows and trade facilitation. We also estimate the gains in trade derived from improvements in trade facilitation for the Central […]
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Working Paper No. 626
October 11, 2010
Technical Change in India’s Organized Manufacturing Sector
AbstractWe use the real wage–profit rate schedule to examine the direction of technical change in India’s organized manufacturing sector during 1980–2007. We find that technical change was Marx biased (i.e., declining capital productivity with increasing labor productivity) through the 1980s and 1990s; and Hicks neutral (increasing both capital and labor productivity) post-2000. The historical experience […]
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Working Paper No. 624
September 30, 2010
A Reassessment of the Use of Unit Labor Costs as a Tool for Competitiveness and Policy Analyses in India
AbstractWe reinterpret unit labor costs (ULC) as the product of the labor share in value added, times a price adjustment factor. This allows us to discuss the functional distribution of income. We use data from India’s organized manufacturing sector and show that while India’s ULC displays a clear upward trend since 1980 (with a decline […]
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Working Paper No. 619
September 19, 2010
Asia and the Global Crisis
AbstractThe global crisis of 2007–09 affected developing Asia largely through a decline in exports to the developed countries and a slowdown in remittances. This happened very quickly, and by 2009 there were already signs of recovery (except on the employment front). This recovery was led by China’s impressive performance, aided by a large stimulus package […]
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Working Paper No. 616
September 09, 2010
Product Complexity and Economic Development
AbstractWe rank 5,107 products and 124 countries according to the Hidalgo and Hausmann (2009) measures of complexity. We find that: (1) the most complex products are in machinery, chemicals, and metals, while the least complex products are raw materials and commodities, wood, textiles, and agricultural products; (2) the most complex economies in the world are […]
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