Proxies that measure the effect of World War II on a country's capital stock are used as instruments for estimating standard cross-country growth regressions. The war's destruction should offer a natural experiment that allows us to consistently estimate the speed at which productivity growth converges to its long-run path. This paper presents evidence that convergence rates are approximately 4% to 6% per annum, substantially larger than conventional wisdom.

This content is only available as a PDF.
© 2002 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2002
You do not currently have access to this content.