世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

Output per worker varies enormously across countries. Why? On an accounting basis, our analysis shows that differences in physical capital and educational attainment can only partially explain the variation in output per worker--we find a large amount of variation in the level of the Solow residual across countries. At a deeper level, we document that the differences in capital accumulation, productivity, and therefore output per worker are driven by differences in institutions and government policies, which we call social infrastructure. We treat social infrastructure as endogenous, determined historically by location and other factors captured in part by language.

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Why Do Some Countries Produce so Much More Output Per Worker than Others

Does finance affect economic growth? A number of studies have identified a positive correlation between the level of development of a country's financial sector and the rate of growth of its per capita income. As has been noted elsewhere, the observed correlation does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. This paper examines whether financial development facilitates economic growth by scrutinizing one rationale for such a relationship; that financial development reduces the costs of external finance to firms. Specifically, we ask whether industrial sectors that are relatively more in need of external finance develop disproportionately faster in countries with more developed financial markets. We find this to be true in a large sample of countries over the 1980s. We show this result is unlikely to be driven by omitted variables, outliers, or reverse causality.

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Financial Dependence and Growth

Output per worker varies enormously across countries. Why? On an accounting basis our analysis shows that differences in physical capital and educational attainment can only partially explain the variation in output per worker—we find a large amount of variation in the level of the Solow residual across countries. At a deeper level, we document that the differences in capital accumulation, productivity, and therefore output per worker are driven by differences in institutions and government policies, which we call social infrastructure. We treat social infrastructure as endogenous, determined historically by location and other factors captured in part by language. In 1988 output per worker in the United States was more than 35 times higher than output per worker in Niger. In just over ten days the average worker in the United States produced as much as an average worker in Niger produced in an entire year. Explaining such vast differences in economic performance is one of the fundamental challenges of economics. Analysis based on an aggregate production function provides some insight into these differences, an approach taken by Mankiw, Romer, and Weil [1992] and Dougherty and Jorgenson [1996], among others. Differences among countries can be attributed to differences in human capital, physical capital, and productivity. Building on their analysis, our results suggest that differences in each element of the production function are important. In particular, however, our results emphasize the key role played by productivity. For example, consider the 35-fold difference in output per worker between the United States and Niger. Different capital intensities in the two countries contributed a factor of 1.5 to the income differences, while different levels of educational attainment contributed a factor of 3.1. The remaining difference—a factor of 7.7—remains as the productivity residual. * A previous version of this paper was circulated under the title ‘‘The Productivity of Nations.’’ This research was supported by the Center for Economic Policy Research at Stanford and by the National Science Foundation under grants SBR-9410039 (Hall) and SBR-9510916 (Jones) and is part of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s program on Economic Fluctuations and Growth. We thank Bobby Sinclair for excellent research assistance and colleagues too numerous to list for an outpouring of helpful commentary. Data used in the paper are available online from http://www.stanford.edu/,chadj.

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Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

countries. Relative to the social need, there is a dearth of research and development (RD if a desired vaccine is developed, an advance purchase commitment would be an extremely costeffective expenditure from a public health perspective, saving more lives than virtually any comparable health expenditure. Rachel Glennerster, Michael Kremer, and Heidi Williams

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Creating Markets for Vaccines

The views expressed in this volume are those held by each contributor and are not necessarily those of the Officers and Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences or its Project on Universal Basic and Secondary Education.

Michael Kremer

Papers

Creating Markets for Vaccines

Improving education through assessment, innovation, and evaluation

Wage Inequality and Segregation

Teacher Incentives in Developing Countries: Recent Experimental Evidence from Kenya. Working Paper 2008-09.

Encouraging Private Sector Research for Tropical Agriculture