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This paper implements a panel approach to investigate the empirical relevance of 'Thirlwall's Law', which states that long-run growth must be consistent with balance of payments (BOP) equilibrium and is, thus, determined on the demand side. Building on ARDL modelling, mean-group and pooled mean-group estimation methods, we use annual data over the 1960-2010 years for a panel of 22 OECD countries and find significant support for the 'Law'. Next, we also explore empirically the hypothesis that the BOP-constrained growth rate ( )

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This paper analyses the performance of Indonesia's economy since the early 1980s using Thirlwall's balance-of-payments-constrained (BoPC) growth model, estimated in state-space form to take account of the varying nature of the income elasticities of demand for exports and imports. Results indicate that after peaking in the mid 1980s at above 10 percent, Indonesia's BoPC growth rate has declined significantly, to about 3 percent in recent years. This is the result of changes in the three components of this growth rate: the income elasticities of demand for exports and imports, and the growth rate of world income, all three significantly lower. Especially worrisome for Indonesia's future is the decline in the income elasticity of demand for exports, a variable that summarizes the non-price competitiveness of its exports. This is the consequence of the lack of progress in upgrading the export basket and increasing its sophistication, with natural resources and low value-added manufacturing still dominating the country's exports. Focusing on the two income elasticities, the analysis shows that their determinants are variables that proxy the economy's structural changes (for example, the manufacturing employment share) and within-sector productivity growth (for example, complexity of the economy, gross fixed capital formation as a share of GDP).

Following Leon-Ledesma and Thirlwall (2002a), this paper examines the hypothesis that the natural rate of growth of the Italian regions is endogenous to and positively affected by the actual growth rate. Relying on fixed-effects and SUR estimation techniques and using annual data for the 20 Italian regions over the period 1977-2003, we find strong support for the endogeneity hypothesis suggesting that faster actual growth raises the natural rate of growth of the average Italian region by about 3-3.7 percentage points. Furthermore, in line with recent findings in the literature, our analysis provides evidence of asymmetries in Okun's Law. In particular, the asymmetric Okun coefficient in the high-growth regime turns out to be positive in several cases, implying the unemployment rate may become pro-cyclical when actual growth rises above a certain threshold rate.endogenous growth, Okun's Law, Italian regions,