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The paper offers the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of dynamics of economic growth slowdown for India at the sub-national level covering the period 1993–2013. In light of India’s regional diversity and variation in terms of gross regional domestic product (GRDP) per capita, the purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the growth dynamics at the sub-national level. The paper aims to answer two questions: first, are determinants of economic slowdown likely to differ across income groups? Second, what are the probabilities that the sub-national economies in India will experience a growth slowdown in the near future?

The paper undertakes a comprehensive analysis of growth slowdown for 106 Asian developing economies encompassing the national economies in ASEAN and the sub-national economies in Greater China, Indonesia and India. To be sure, the authors are not making any direct comparison to countries at different stages of economic development; rather, the comparison is between economies/sub-national economies that fall in the same income category. The authors construct income group-specific logistic model to identify the relevant determinants of growth slowdown and use Bayesian model averaging techniques as a robustness check. The authors also compute economy-specific predictive probabilities of growth slowdown over the period 2012–2017.

The empirical results show that a growth slowdown in various income groups tends to be associated with different sets of determinants, although broadly, across all income groups, the occurrence of growth slowdown is positively associated with higher GRDP per capita. The average predictive probability of growth slowdown for India’s sub-national economies is 0.43, indicating that, on average, India’s sub-national economies have a 43 per cent chance of experiencing growth slowdown in the 2012–2017 period. Overall, the prospects of the sub-national economies of India are less worrying than that of Greater Chinese economies but bleaker than the outlook for economies in ASEAN and Indonesia.

The research contributes to the understandings of growth dynamics, especially the issue of growth slowdown, in India. This paper differs from the existing literature on growth dynamics by being India centric and analysing the issue of growth slowdown at the sub-national level. Despite a steady increase in the level of GRDP per capita for the sub-national economies of India since 1993, significant disparities still exist across economies. Identifying determinants of growth slowdown and subsequently computing predictive probabilities serves as early warning signs for policy-makers and generates insights on how development policy can be shaped.

This study aims to examine the economic factors that determine innovation pattern in centralized and decentralized economies and organizations.

Empirical evidence on innovation in the centralized economy of the Soviet Union is reviewed. Existing theoretical literature in this area relies on the incentives of decision-makers in centralized organizations and on the concept of soft budget constraint in centralized command economies and hard budget constraint in market economies. This study advocates applying the hierarchy/polyarchy model of innovation screening to explain the pattern of innovation in centralized economic systems.

Screening and development of innovation projects can be organized in a centralized or decentralized fashion. The differences in innovation between centralized and decentralized economic systems may be explained by elements of the principal-agent theory, the soft budget constraint model, and the theory of decision-making in hierarchies and polyarchies. Empirical evidence shows a sharp slowdown in both innovation and economic growth in the Soviet economy following the economic decision-making reform of 1965. The theoretical explanation most consistent with this evidence is the hierarchy decision-making model.

Comparisons of innovation in centralized and decentralized economies traditionally relied on decision-makers' incentives and the concept of soft budget constraint. Upon analysis of empirical evidence from the centralized Soviet economy, this study advocates explaining innovation patterns based on decision-making theory of hierarchy.

More and more statistics have repeatedly shown that as the economic development has entered the New Normal, the Chinese fiscal system has experienced tremendous changes. Although chance cannot be ruled out, much of those changes indicate trends, and they can even be said to be the result of the law of economic development. These trends and changes have repeatedly demonstrated that, as a reflection and an inevitable result of the economic developing speed shift, structural adjustment and energy conversion, the Chinese fiscal system, far from the conventional operating state, has progressed on a new path. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper systematically analyzes several new trends and changes in the Chinese fiscal system under the New Normal. First, revenue growth has experienced a sharp downward trend, while the tax elasticity coefficient has declined rapidly. Second, fiscal expenditure has risen against the tendency, while the rigidity of expenditure has kept on increasing.

Considering the present fiscal and taxation system reform with the analysis above, it can be seen that if the reform’s progress for the past two years is slower than expected – thus, preventing the effects of all aspects from a timely achievement – then, in the recent period, the agreement on the fiscal and taxation system reform will be reached and challenges entirely different from the past, including sharp slowdown in revenue growth rate, fiscal expenditure rising against trend and increases in fiscal deficit and government debts will be faced. The factors encouraging the reform are gathering gradually. The growth of the strength to push the reform forward is speeding up. And the pace of the reform in relevant areas is quickening.

In the face of those trends and changes, on the one hand, the authors should deeply understand and accurately grasp them through a comprehensive summary and systematic analysis. On the other hand, a series of conventional ideas, thoughts and strategies should be adjusted comprehensively and duly. Taking a train of new ideas, thoughts and strategies, the authors ought to actively adapt to and initiate a new Chinese fiscal structure under the New Normal of China’s economy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that are significant in contributing to the per capita income growth of countries that are experiencing or have experienced the lower-middle and upper-middle income traps.

The study comprises 85 countries over the period 1960 to 2017 spanning across three income groups: lower-middle, upper-middle and high. A panel data structure was used to run a fixed effect and random effect estimation on three models of income groups. The Hausman specification test, which was used for further statistical fitness, confirmed the appropriateness of fixed effect over the random in explaining the estimation of factor variables.

The results show that unemployment is a pervasive problem that negatively affect countries at all income levels. Foreign direct investment and population of dependents are associated with economic progression of countries that have experienced or are experiencing the lower-middle income trap. Furthermore, rising income inequality and foreign aid assistance are detrimental to countries that have experienced or are experiencing the upper-middle income trap. Moreover, income inequality, disproportionate urban population and rising dependent population are damaging for high income countries that never experienced any of the middle-income traps. Conversely, openness to trade, inflation and exchange rate volatility had limited capacity in explaining growth dynamics.

This study could not incorporate geopolitical, demographic, geographical and other such exogenous factors, which could have episodes of influences on the economic development of countries. These were outside the study's realm of quantitative analysis.

This paper contributes to existing literature by providing an empirical cross-sectional comparative analysis of countries belonging to different income groups. The prevailing literature lacks such a cross-tabulated presentation of factors affecting countries that avoided the middle income trap and those that could not.

The purpose of this paper is to present the argument that there exists a threshold limitation to new knowledge creation, associated with a global productivity growth slowdown, a global decline in research and development (R&D) productivity and a decline in the growth of globalisation.

Taking the form of a conceptual paper, this paper seeks to advance the polemic that despite discussions of a ‘fourth industrial revolution,’ there has been no substantive change in a global decline in productivity growth, particularly in developed countries. Specific threats are identified and related to the consequences of technological proliferation in the absence of an effective research response to address them. Certain theoretical propositions are derived, with the suggestion that novel theory promises a ‘fifth industrial revolution,’ one that might ultimately reverse the downward trend in global productivity growth.

Drawing on management theory, derivation of the theoretical propositions suggests the existence of a mechanism related to research productivity enhancement. Discussions suggest that this mechanism might ultimately explain how the R&D productivity decline, evident since the 1970s, may ultimately be reversed.

The paper seeks to provoke novel thinking about the consequences of a failure to develop a research agenda explicitly focused on the attainment of economies of scale in the research process itself.

In this chapter we develop a monthly output index of the U.S. transportation sector covering air, rail, water, truck, transit, and pipeline activities. We call it the transportation services index (TSI). Separate indexes for freight and passenger are also constructed. Before the development of TSI, there was no comprehensive monthly measure of the economic activity by all modes of transportation. Since policymakers are increasingly concerned about the critical role transportation plays in enabling economic growth, monitoring of TSI can provide them with insights about the current and future state of the economy. Fortunately we find that our monthly transportation services output index (TSI), which is based on a new measurement approach, matches very well with the annual transportation output figures produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Some analysis reported in this chapter indicate that the cyclical movements in the transportation output appear to be more synchronized with the growth slowdowns rather than full-fledged recessions of the U.S. economy. The index has led the turning points of the 6 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)-defined growth cycles over the period with an average lead-time of 6 months at peaks and 5 months at troughs.

Two issues have dominated the recent employment experience of the major industrial countries: first, the common rise in unemployment throughout the OECD; second, the diversity in the scale and content of that rise as between, on the one hand, the core of the European Union and Australia, and, on the other hand, North America. The growth and persistence of unemployment may be the result of the deregulation of global financial markets in the 1970s that has been followed by huge growth in short‐term capital flows. These flows have produced a significant increase in risk aversion in public sector and private sectors. This is the major source of deflationary pressures and persistent unemployment throughout the world. Those pressures could have been substantially mitigated if a key lesson had been drawn from the development of domestic financial markets – liberal markets are only efficient if they are efficiently regulated.