Economic Quarterly

In this article, we document three remarkable facts about the distribution of output per worker (labor productivity) across countries between 1960 and 1996. First, there is a large disparity in labor productivity across countries in the world. Second, disparity has increased substantially since the mid-1980s. Third, there is substantial mobility of individual countries within the distribution of labor productivity over time. We identify and document a number of individual growth experiences, seeking to expand the set of development facts that would aid in developing theory and policies to improve economic performance in the world.