Regional economic development in Europe: the role of total factor productivity. Regional Studies. This paper documents the fact that the large and persistent differences in economic development across subnational regions in European Union countries can largely be attributed to differences in total factor productivity (TFP). Applying the technique of development accounting, the paper decomposes differences in output per worker across 257 European Union regions into a component due to the local availability of production factors and a component due to TFP. As the analysis reveals, TFP differences are large even within countries, and are strongly related to economic geography and historical development paths. This suggests limited interregional diffusion of technology and of efficient production practices. L'aménagement du territoire en Europe: le rôle de la productivité globale des facteurs. Regional Studies. Cet article démontre que les importants écarts de développement économique qui persistent à travers les régions infranationales situées dans les pays-membres de l'Union européenne s'expliquent dans une large mesure par les écarts de productivité globales des facteurs (PGF). En appliquant la méthode de la comptabilité de développement (development accounting), on décompose les écarts de rendement par travailleur selon 257 régions de l'Union européenne en une composante relative à la disponibilité locale des facteurs de production et une deuxième composante qui s'explique par la PGF. Comme laisse voir l'analyse, les écarts de PGF s'avèrent importants même au sein des pays, et se rapportent étroitement à la géographie économique et aux sentiers de développement historiques. Cela laisse supposer une diffusion interrégionale limitée de la technologie et des procédés de production efficaces. MOTS-CLÉSaménagement du territoire; productivité globale des facteurs; comptabilité de développement; régions européennes

We investigate the link between culture and regional economic development within European countries. Considering a variety of cultural values, we provide evidence that it is the degree of diversity in these values at the regional level that strongly correlates with economic performance, rather than the prevalence of specific values. In particular, we show that greater value diversity is negatively associated with regional economic performance within countries, which also relates to lower institutional quality and poorer public goods provision. These patterns are robust even when diversity is measured on the basis of values expressed by emigrants residing outside their region of origin.

We investigate theoretically and empirically the relationship between capital taxation and economic growth. Using a long crosscountry panel data set going back to 1965 and employing a variety of econometric techniques, we document that greater reliance on capital taxation, measured in different ways, is not negatively associated with growth rates. Exploring potential heterogeneity in this relationship across countries, we find that capital taxation and growth rates tend to be positively related for developed countries, but for developing countries the relationship is in most cases statistically insignificant. To rationalize these empirical findings we propose a multicountry innovation-based growth model where innovations spill over from leading to lagging economies. In the context of this model we demonstrate that positive rates of capital taxation can increase the long-run growth rate in leading economies where the engine of growth is domestic innovation activity. However, this is not the case in lagging economies where growth is driven by imitation of existing innovations from the technology frontier.

The typical narrative regarding the evolution of world trade prior to World War II refers to a secular rise starting around 1870 and a subsequent collapse beginning in 1914. This narrative, however, is based on measures of trade openness that do not fully take into account purchasing power di¤erences across countries. Due to lack of alternative data, the measures employed in the existing literature are typically based on non-PPP-adjusted trade data denominated by PPP-adjusted GDP data. The present paper seeks to resolve this inconsistency by constructing new trade share estimates for 62 countries, representing 90% of world GDP, for the period from 1870 to 1949. Our estimates combine historical import and export …gures with non-PPP-adjusted GDP values that we estimate via the "short-cut" method. Our estimates con…rm qualitatively the narrative of a dramatic rise and fall of world trade over this period. Yet, they indicate that this rise and fall was quantitatively much more pronounced. We …nd that trade shares were on average 38% higher than previously documented, while the world's level of trade openness in 1913 was comparable to that in 1974.

We explore the impact of the international epidemiological transition on educational attainment of males and females over the second half of the twentieth century. Using an instrumental variables strategy that exploits pre-existing variation in mortality rates across infectious diseases and gender differences in the responsiveness to the method of disease control, we document that health improvements associated with the transition led to larger gains in life expectancy for females due to their stronger immune response to vaccination. These relative gains were associated with greater increases in the educational attainment of females compared to males and account for a large share of the reduction in the education gender gap that took place over this period.