recent years, many central banks have placed increased emphasis on price stability. Monetary policy—whether expressed in terms of interest rates or growth of monetary aggregates—has been increasingly geared toward the achievement of low and stable inflation. Central bankers and most other observers view price stability as a worthy objective because they think that inflation is costly. Some of these costs involve the average rate of inflation, and others relate to the variability and uncertainty of inflation. But the general idea is that businesses and households are thought to perform poorly when inflation is high and unpredictable. The academic literature contains a lot of theoretical work on the costs of inflation, as reviewed recently by Briault (1995). This analysis provides a presumption that inflation is a bad idea, but the case is not decisive without supporting empirical findings. Although some empirical results (also surveyed by Briault) suggest that inflation is harmful, the evidence is not overwhelming. It is therefore important to carry out additional empirical research on the relation between inflation and economic performance. This article explores this relation in a large sample of countries over the last 30 years.

or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary.

We document five stylized facts of economic growth. (1) The “residual ” rather than factor accumulation accounts for most of the income and growth differences across nations. (2) Income diverges over the long run. (3) Factor accumulation is persistent while growth is not persistent and the growth path of countries exhibits remarkable variation across countries. (4) Economic activity is highly concentrated, with all factors of production flowing to the richest areas. (5) National policies closely associated with long-run economic growth rates. We argue that these facts do not support models with diminishing returns, constant returns to scale, some fixed factor of production, and that highlight the role of factor accumulation. Empirical work, however, does not yet decisively distinguish among the different theoretical conceptions of “total factor productivity growth.” Economists should devote more effort towards modeling and quantifying total factor productivity.

Economists have long been ambivalent about whether the discipline should focus on the analysis of markets or should be concerned with social interactions more generally. Recently the discipline has sought to broaden its scope while maintaining the rigor of modern economic analysis. Major theoretical developments in game theory, the economics of the family, and endogenous growth theory have taken place. Economists have also performed new empirical research on social interactions, but the empirical literature does not show progress comparable to that achieved in economic theory. This paper examines why and discusses how economists might make sustained contributions to the empirical analysis of social interactions.

This essay discusses the effect of technical change on wage inequality. I argue that the behavior of wages and returns to schooling indicates that technical change has been skill-biased during the past sixty years. Furthermore, the recent increase in inequality is most likely due to an acceleration in skill bias. In contrast to twentiethcentury developments, much of thr technical change during the early nineteenth century appears to be skill-replacing. I suggest that this is because the increased supply of unskilled workers in the English cities made the introduction of these technologies profitable. On the other hand, the twentieth century has been characterized by skillbiased technical change because the rapid increase in the supply of skilled workers has induced the development of skill-complementary technologies. The recent acceleration in skill bias is in turn likely to have been a response to the acceleration in the supply of skills during the past several decades.

Many economists and policy makers believe that education creates positive externalities. Indeed, average schooling in U.S. states is highly correlated with state wage levels, even after controlling for the direct e¤ect of schooling on individual wages. We use variation in child labor laws and compulsory attendance laws over time and across states to investigate whether this relationship is causal. Our results show private returns to education that are around 7 percent, and external returns to education that are in the neighbourhood of 1-2 percent and not signi…cantly di¤erent from zero.

numerous seminars, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. This project would not have been possible without the assistance of several individuals and organizations. MixMasterFlame and the FlameNap network shared P2P data with us, and BigChampagne LLC, the CMJ Network, Nathaniel Leibowitz, and Nevil Brownlee generously provided auxiliary data. We thank Keith Ross and David Weekly for assistance in understanding the KaZaA, OpenNap, and WinMX search protocols and database indices. Sarah Woolverton and Christina Hsiung Chen

Abstract. In this paper, I examine the spatial correlation of wages and consumer purchasing power across U.S. counties to see whether regional product-market linkages contribute to spatial agglomeration. First, I estimate a simple market-potential function, which is a reduced form for several economic geography models. In this specification, proximity to consumer markets determines nominal wages in a given location. Second, I estimate an augmented market-potential function derived from the Krugman model of economic geography. Parameter estimates for this model reflect the importance of scale economies and transport costs, the stability of spatial agglomeration patterns, and how these features evolve over time. The estimation results suggest that demand linkages between regions are strong and growing over time, but limited in geographic scope. Counties which are greater than 1000 kilometers in distance appear to have zero direct impact on the demand for a given county’s goods. Results for the augmented market-potential function are largely consistent with the Krugman model.

Abstract: This paper presents a simple R&D-driven endogenous growth model to shed light on some puzzling economic trends. The model can account for why patent statistics have been roughly constant even though R&D employment has risen sharply over the last 30 years. The model also illuminates why steadily increasing R&D effort has not lead to any upward trend in economic growth rates, as is predicted by earlier R&D-driven endogenous growth models with the “scale effect ” property.

Income convergence across countries turns on whether technological knowledge spillovers are global or local. I estimate the amount of spillovers from RD expenditures on a geographic basis, using a new data set which encompasses most of the world's innovative activity between 1970 and 1995.