Due to the increasing importance of human capital for economic growth, this article aims to clarify the relationship between economic growth and human capital by concentrating on the growth effects of an average number of brands in the economy. An endogenous growth model where branding emerges as the “growth engine” of the economy is followed by a quantitative analysis regarding the relationship between brands and economic growth. The findings suggest that developing countries should shift from traditional mass production to high value-added production, such as brand development, to achieve a similar economic performance in developed countries.

In this paper we build an endogenous growth model in which the informal economy is subject to a cash-in-advance constraint along with physical capital accumulation and consumption. In this setting, we find that inflation generally adversely affects long-run growth. However; this effect strongly interacts with the size of the informal economy. Specifically, the negative effect becomes milder (and can even be positive) under the presence of a large informal economy. Moreover, using an annual cross-country panel data set of 161 countries over the period 1950-2010 we also provide some empirical support for the mechanism of our theory.

A vast literature exists on the determinants of inflation in developed countries whereas the one in emerging markets and developing countries has gained attention at the beginning of 1990s. In this respect, the current paper overviews the empirical studies in order to provide underlying knowledge and common facts on this topic that are valuable for further research and policymakers. The patterns emerge from the results of the existing literature can be summarized as follows. First, inflation is mainly a monetary phenomenon either due to direct or indirect drivers in these countries. However, the significance of the effects from the monetary aggregates are dependent on the countries and periods under study. Secondly, inflation persistence is a major determinant in explaining inflation, suggesting a backward-looking behavior in inflation dynamics for these countries. Lastly, the importance of domestic determinants in understanding inflation has shifted towards external ones implying a greater role for global determinants in the last two decades.