Constant returns to scale economies and increasing growth rates

This thesis consists of three independent papers examining the reasons wealthier countries seem to grow more rapidly. A simple constant returns to scale growth model with multiple sectors is used to address this phenomenon. This model shows that increasing growth rates might be illusory because most output data are compiled in terms of constant prices and this method produces data sets that tend to accelerate regardless of whether there is any real acceleration in the economy. Increasing real growth rates might also be real if preferences are such that agent choose to spend a higher proportion of their income on goods which are produced by an industry in which technological progress is relatively easy. It is unnecessary that to invoke increasing returns to explain the data.;The first paper deals with historical data, the second with international data, and the last with the complications introduced by international trade.