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Less developed countries are confronted with the problem of choosing among the different options of available technologies those that will lead them to the achievement of their economic and social goals faster. A review of the electronic revolution currently taking place in developed countries and throughout the world is presented and its impact upon manufacturing and process industries assessed. This electronic revolution has also made easier the application of management science in designing and controlling, in an optimum way, the different transformation systems and subsystems in a country. The problems of its implementation in less developed countries are briefly reviewed. A number of issues related to the transfer of technology from the developed to the less developed countries are discussed.

The different applications of the lognormal model in describing the distribution of various populations from both the biophysical and socioeconomic spheres are reviewed. A discussion then follows of the underlying causal relationships which seem to govern the behavior of these populations. They seem to be, firstly, the existence of a large number of members in the population; and secondly, competition among the members for a common resource. Finally, the usefulness of the model as a general model describing such populations is discussed.

There are several factors which account for the inefficiencies observed in the educational system of a less developed country. Some of these factors, with particular reference to the educational system of Greece, are briefly mentioned in this paper. However, the main objective of the paper is to show how the application of goal programming could be of assistance to the educational administrators in the country with respect to determining: (1) how to allocate the available resources among the different subsystems of the educational system and among the different components within each subsystem; (2) the quality level of education that the country can afford; and (3) the financial sacrifices necessary for different levels of improvement.

This paper aims to investigate whether empirical evidence for scale economies can be found across countries and if so, whether this evidence varies across the stage of development.

The paper uses statistical methods to make comparisons between countries.

The empirical results suggest overall evidence towards aggregate increasing returns across all samples. Within the Cobb‐Douglas framework, stronger evidence for aggregate increasing returns is found among samples depicting economies in the early stages of development. The CES framework in turn supports aggregate scale economies for advanced economies, while unitary elasticity of substitution cannot be rejected for less developed economies, giving further support for the Cobb‐Douglas estimates.

Given that evidence for scale economies is found within different estimation frameworks for different groups of economies, comparative judgment is prevented. The results nevertheless provide evidence on the overall relevance of scale economies within and across groups of economies, while also giving a clear indication of the relevance of stage of development in economic growth and development analysis.

The most fundamental insight of the empirical results presented in this paper is that there is no reason to assume that the determinants of growth or the parameters guiding economies' adjustments towards their steady states or growth paths will be similar for economies at different stages of development, given their significant structural differences, whether in terms of production structures and characteristics or consumption patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the properties of the variable elasticity of substitution (VES) production function, and examine the dynamics of growth associated with it.

The VES production function is incorporated into an otherwise standard Diamond overlapping generations model.

Depending on parameter combinations, the economy can achieve a unique and stable steady state akin to that observed in the Solow-Swan model, reach a poverty trap or transition towards an upper bound of per capita capital stock. A special case of the VES production function is also consistent with unbounded growth.

The paper is theoretical in nature. Further empirical analysis could shed deeper insights into the results presented in this study.

The VES production function, when applied to the context of the Diamond model, can capture a variety of growth experiences observed in the empirical literature.

In the context of the Diamond model, a higher value of a particular parameter in the production function leads to greater intergenerational income and consumption inequality. Hence, the study provides a potential explanation for intergenerational inequalities observed in practice.

The study demonstrates the empirical value of the VES production function in explaining observed differences in factor shares, rewards and elasticities within and between countries over time.

Although the importance of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour (σ) has been recognized in many areas in economics, this parameter has not received enough attention in economic growth. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent development in the importance of σ in economic growth.

This paper specifically reviews the possibility of perpetual growth and slowdown, and the asymptotic behaviour of the balanced growth path for different values of σ. It also reviews the determinants of the aggregate σ.

Based on the empirical evidence that the value of σ significantly departs from the Cobb‐Douglas value of unity, the paper recommends employing the constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function in both theoretical and empirical growth research.

This paper offers a new perspective on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour due to its evaluation of various factors, methods and approaches.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the elasticity of substitution (ES) varies between developed and developing countries.

The author derives the growth regressions from the Solow model under the constant elasticity of substitution production function by using the first-order Taylor series expansion and estimate them for each country group classified based on time-varying behavior of income per worker using the data-driven algorithm.

The ES is not unitary and varies among country groups. Developed countries generally have a higher ES than developing countries.

For the first time, the author uses the first-order Taylor series expansion to linearize the steady-state value of income per worker, as the author considers this approach to be relatively more straight-forward and tractable. Furthermore, the author estimates the equations using both cross-section and panel data techniques and employs the data-driven algorithm proposed by Phillips and Sul (2007) to classify countries.

We employ various local generalizations of the Solow growth model that model parameter heterogeneity using human development at the beginning of the period with adult literacy rates and life expectancy at birth as a proxy. The model takes the form of a semiparametric varying coefficient model along the lines of Hastie and Tibshirani (1992). The empirical results show substantial parameter heterogeneity in the cross-country growth process, a finding that is consistent with the presence of multiple steady-state equilibria and the emergence of convergence clubs.

I construct a set of dynamic macroeconomic models to analyze the effect of unskilled immigration on wage inequality. The immigrants or their descendants do not remain unskilled – over time they may approach or exceed the general level of educational attainment. In the baseline model, the economy's capital supply is determined endogenously by the savings behavior of infinite-lived dynasties, and I also consider models in which the supply of capital is perfectly elastic, or exogenously determined. I derive a simple formula that determines the time discounted value of the skill premium enjoyed by college-educated workers following a change in the rate of immigration for unskilled workers, or a change in the degree or rate at which unskilled immigrants become skilled. I compare the calculations of the skill premiums to data from the US Current Population Survey to determine the long-run effect of different immigrant groups on wage inequality in the United States.

The link between the magnitude of a bandwidth and the relevance of the corresponding covariate in a regression has recently garnered theoretical attention. Theory suggests that variables included erroneously in a regression will be automatically removed when bandwidths are selected via cross-validation procedure. However, the connections between the bandwidths of the variables that are smoothed away and the insights from these same variables when properly tested for statistical significance have not been previously studied. This paper proposes a variety of simulation exercises to examine the relative performance of both cross-validated bandwidths and individual and joint tests of significance. We focus on settings where the hypothesis of interest may focus on a single data type (e.g., continuous only) or a mix of discrete and continuous variables. Moreover, we propose an extension of a well-known kernel smoothing significance test to handle mixed data types. Our results suggest that individual tests of significance and variable-specific bandwidths are very close in performance, but joint tests and joint bandwidth recognition produce substantially different results. This underscores the importance of testing for joint significance when one is trying to arrive at the final nonparametric model of interest.