Knowledge that Transforms

Catch-up in total factor productivity (TFP) among the group of seven was evident between 1870 adn 1979, though much slower before 1938 than after 1950. Capital:labor ratios also converged over the long period, though the process was much stronger after 1960. TFP catch-up is found to be positively associated with capital:labor growth and strongest when capital intensity is growing most rapidly. The United States overtook the United Kingdom in technological leadership in 1900 when its capital:labor growth was more than three times higher. The steady deterioration in the United Kingdom's relative TFP since 1900 and the United States' since 1950 are both associated with low rates of capital formation.

This paper presents new evidence on the effects of immigration based on changes in the distributions of wages in 24 major [U.S.] cities during the 1980s....We...concentrate on measuring the effects of immigration at the lower tail of the wage distribution. In particular we ask whether recent declines in the real earnings of the least-skilled workers in the U.S. economy are related to immigration. Our empirical analysis reveals large differences across cities in the relative growth rates of wages for low- and high-paid workers. Nevertheless these differences bear little or no relation to the size of immigrant inflows. (EXCERPT)

This paper provides evidence on immigrants performance and impact in the U.S. labor market. We document that new immigrants do bring fewer marketable skills to the United States than did earlier cohorts and that changes in the source countries of recent immigrants account for all of this decline in immigrant quality. We find no important evidence that quality has declined within immigrant ethnic groups. We also show that immigrants assimilate rapidly in the U.S. market (10 years of U.S. experience offsets most of the earnings disadvantage of new immigrants) and that assimilation is more rapid for groups who start with lower initial wages. (EXCERPT)

Diffusion of Development: The Late-Industrializing Model and Greater East Asia Author(s): Alice H. Amsden Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 81, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred and Third Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1991), pp. 282-286 Published by: American Economic Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2006870 Accessed: 15/01/2010 13:30

I describe a simple two-stage mechanism, the compensation mechanism, that implements efficient allocations in economic environments involving externalities. The compensation mechanism can be used to solve a wide variety of externalities problems, including the standard problem of public goods provision. It requires that that the agents know the magnitudes of the benefits and costs that they impose on other agents, but will also work with naive agents who follow a simple tatonnement.