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Will the Crisis Affect the Economic Recovery in Eastern European Countries ? : Evidence From Firm Level Data
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Year: 2010 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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Two sources of growth are firm learning and innovation. Using a unique panel data for 1,686 firms in six countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey), this paper applies panel data estimators and Juhn-Murphy Pierce decomposition in order to identify the effects of the global economic crisis on sales growth of innovative and young enterprises in Eastern European countries. The results show that innovative and young firms were significantly more affected by the crisis than non innovative and older enterprises. The authors interpret these results as an indication that the achievement of pre-crisis growth rates in those countries may be difficult.


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The Dynamics of Ownership of Durable Goods in Bulgaria : From Economic Crisis To EU Membership
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Year: 2008 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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The paper uses repeated cross-sections of Bulgaria's household survey data (1995, 1997, 2001, and 2003) and a comparable list of durable goods to investigate the dynamics and distribution of durable goods over time, including during the economic crisis of 1996-1997 and the subsequent period of relatively robust economic growth leading up to European Union membership. It examines the dynamics of the ownership of durable goods by wealth classes, geographic locations, and various ethnic groups, including the Roma. In the aggregate, there was convergence between the poorest and the richest classes in the ownership of durable goods between 1995 and 2003, with the poorest class making a significant gain between 2001 and 2003 after having lost some ground between 1995 and 2001. There was also convergence in the ownership of durable goods between urban and rural residents. However, there appear to be some diverging tendencies between Bulgarians and the minority ethnic groups, particularly in the ownership of relatively more expensive goods such as personal computers and cars.


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A Model on Knowledge and Endogenous Growth
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Year: 2005 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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This paper presents a model of endogenous growth in which the main engine of economic development is knowledge. Using a two-sector closed economy model that comprises of a conventional goods-producing sector and a research and development sector, our model incorporates two key aspects of knowledge: technology and human capital. Steady-state equilibrium conditions show that the growth rate of per capita income hinges on the growth rate of human capital. While the growth rate of human capital has been previously shown to affect the growth of the economy in transition between steady states or balanced growth paths, this paper is the first to link the growth rate of human capital to the steady-state growth rate of productivity and output per worker. Furthermore, this result does not exhibit scale effects or policy invariance, both of which have been longstanding concerns with the predictions of endogenous growth models developed in the 1990s.


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Endowment Structures, Industrial Dynamics, and Economic Growth
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Year: 2009 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model to explore industrial evolution and economic growth in a closed developing economy. The authors show that industries will endogenously upgrade toward the more capital-intensive ones as the capital endowment becomes more abundant. The model features a continuous inverse-V-shaped pattern of industrial evolution driven by capital accumulation: As the capital endowment reaches a certain threshold, a new industry appears, prospers, then declines and finally disappears. While the industry is declining, a more capital-intensive industry appears and booms, ad infinitum. Explicit solutions are obtained to fully characterize the whole dynamics of perpetual structural change and economic growth. Implications for industrial policies are discussed.


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Argentina : Trade Patterns and Challenges Ahead
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Year: 2010 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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Argentinean export growth was impressive during the recent economic boom (2003-2007). However, decomposing export growth reveals that the extensive margin (increases in exports of existing products to existing markets) dominates, while the intensive margin (increases in exports of new products or new markets) contributes little to export growth. Argentina's trade product concentration has increased in the past 10 years, and the main export products remain overwhelmingly natural-resource intensive. The little diversification of non-primary exports limits the country's ability to weather a decline in export commodity prices. The country has had some success finding new export markets, especially in Latin America, but should seek to develop deeper trade relationships with high GDP export destinations such as the European Union and the United States. Another challenge going forward is the relatively low sophistication of exports and limited integration into the global production chains, falling behind regional competitors such as Brazil. This calls for policy measures to improve the ability of existing firms to innovate and compete successfully in global markets.


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The Growth of China and India in World Trade : Opportunity Or Threat for Latin America and the Caribbean?
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Year: 2007 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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This paper studies the relationship between the growth of China and India in world merchandise trade and Latin American and Caribbean commercial flows from two perspectives. First, the authors focus on the opportunity that China and India's markets have offered Latin American and Caribbean exporters during 2000-2004. Second, empirical analyses examine the partial correlation between Chinese and Indian bilateral trade flows and Latin American and Caribbean trade with third markets. Both analyses rely on the gravity model of international trade. Econometric estimations that control for the systematic correlation between expected bilateral trade volumes and the size of their regression errors, as well as importer and exporter fixed effects and year effects, provide consistent estimates of the relevant parameters for different groups of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Results suggest that the growth of the two Asian markets has produced large opportunities for Latin American and Caribbean exporters, which nevertheless have not been fully exploited. The evidence concerning the effects of Chinese and Indian trade with third markets is not robust, but there is little evidence of negative effects on Latin American and Caribbean exports of non-fuel merchandise. In general, China's and to a large extent India's growing presence in world trade has been good news for Latin America and the Caribbean, but some of the potential benefits remain unexploited.


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How Will Changes in Globalization Impact Growth in South Asia ?
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Year: 2009 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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The current global crisis may change globalization itself, as both developed and developing countries adjust to global imbalances that contributed to the crisis. Will these changes help or hinder economic recovery and growth in South Asia? This is the focus of this paper. The three models of globalization - trade, capital, and economic management - may not be the same in the future. Changes in globalization could change the composition of trade flows, capital flows, and economic management, which in turn, could accelerate or restrain growth. South Asia is somewhat peculiar and different from other regions in how it has globalized, although there is a lot of diversity within the region. Its trade characteristics are different. India's growth has been spearheaded by exports of modern services and less by goods exports. Modern service trade tends to be more resilient compared with goods trade. Globalization of services is still at an early stage. So, as consumers pull back in the United States, service trade is likely to be less impacted compared to goods trade. Trade also contributes to growth through knowledge spillovers, externalities, and learning. The global crisis has not reduced the stock of global knowledge. Changes in capital flows are also not likely to have a big impact on growth in South Asia, as South Asia's investments are largely driven by domestic savings. Its dependence on foreign capital is low. South Asia has attracted capital flows that are less volatile. Remittances, which are more resilient, have been the dominant form of capital inflows, exceeding foreign direct investment and other inflows.This global downturn calls for counter-cyclical economic management. But South Asia has limited room for fiscal stimulus, given high debt-to-gross domestic product ratios. Nevertheless, reduced commodity prices have created some fiscal space that can be used for growth enabling infrastructure and safety nets. As South Asia undergoes structural transformation, the region is well positioned to bounce back with global economic recovery.


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Global Inequality Recalculated : the Effect of New 2005 PPP Estimates On Global Inequality
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Year: 2009 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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The results of new direct price level comparisons across 148 countries in 2005 have led to large revisions of purchasing power parity exchanges rates, particularly for China and India. The recalculation of international and global inequalities, using the new purchasing power parity rates, shows that inequalities are substantially higher than previously thought. Inequality between global citizens is estimated at 70 Gini points rather than 65 as before. The richest decile receives 57 percent of global income rather than 50 percent.


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Distortions To Agricultural Incentives in Australia Since World War II
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Year: 2008 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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Australia's lackluster economic growth performance in the first four decades following World War II was in part due to an anti-trade, anti-primary sector bias in government assistance policies. This paper provides new annual estimates of the extent of those biases since 1946 and their gradual phase-out during the past two decades. In doing so it reveals that the timing of the sector assistance cuts was such as sometimes to improve but sometimes to worsen the distortions to incentives faced by farmers. The changes increased the variation of assistance rates within agriculture during the 1950s and 1960s, reducing the welfare contribution of those programs in that period. Although the assistance pattern within agriculture appears not to have been strongly biased against exporters, its reform has coincided with a substantial increase in the export orientation of many farm industries. The overall pattern for Australia is contrasted with that revealed by comparable new estimates for other high-income countries.


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More Growth Or Fewer Collapses ? : A New Look At Long Run Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa
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Year: 2007 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,

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Low and highly volatile growth define Africa's growth experience. But there is no evidence that growth volatility is associated to long term economic performance. This result may be misleading if it suggests that volatility is not important for economic and social progress. In this paper we use a variant of the method developed by Hausmann, Pritchett, and Rodrik (2005) to identify both growth acceleration and deceleration episodes in Africa between 1975 and 2005. The authors find that Africa has had numerous growth acceleration episodes in the last 30 years, but also nearly a comparable number of growth collapses, offsetting most of the benefits of growth. Had Africa avoided its growth collapses, it would have grown 1.7 percent a year instead of 0.7 percent, and its GDP per capita would have been more than 30 percent higher in 2005. The authors also find that growth accelerations and decelerations have an asymmetric impact on human development outcomes. Finally, our results suggest that it is easier to identify the likely institutional and policy origins of growth decelerations than of growth accelerations.

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