In this study, we analyze the effects of labor shortage in China on the direction of innovation in the US by incorporating production offshoring into a North-South model of directed technical change. We �find that if offshoring is present (absent) in equilibrium, then a decrease (an increase)...

We consider a situation where the relatively ‘poor’ are concerned about their relative income status with respect to a relevant reference group. Such a concern is explicitly introduced in a utility function to study the consumption and saving behavior of the poor in terms of a static and...

The existing literature on poverty has discussed about the conflict between income-based measure and nutrition-based measure. However, the role of social inequality in influencing individual’s consumption and inducing greater consumption of the so called status good has been relatively...

The conflict between the income based and nutrition based estimates of poverty is a widely debated issue in economic literature. This paper, using a two commodity framework, attempts to show that in presence of inequality, a status driven utility function can reconcile the conflict between the...

We develop a dynamic model to analyze the sources and the evolution of social participation and social capital in a growing economy characterized by exogenous technical progress. Starting from the assumption that the well-being of agents basically depends on material and relational goods, we...

In modern societies individuals often try to alleviate their personal damages from environmental degradation by increasing their consumption of private goods. Although this “self-protective” behavior is very frequent in industrial economies, insufficient attention has been paid to its...

We set up a theoretical framework to analyze the possible role of economic growth and technical progress in the erosion of social capital. Under certain parameters, the relationship between technical progress and social capital can take the shape of an inverted U curve. We show the circumstances...

In presence of inequality a status driven utility function reconciles the conflict between income based and nutrition based measures of poverty. Moreover, it can explain why the poor tend to save less, an established empirical fact in the developing countries. The result is independent of the...

Inspired by the Chinese experience, we develop a Schumpeterian growth model of distance to frontier in which economic growth in the developing country is driven by domestic innovation as well as imitation and transfer of foreign technologies through foreign direct investment. We show that...

This study develops an R&D-based growth model with vertical and horizontal innovation to shed some light on the current debate on whether patent protection stimulates or stifles innovation. We analyze the effects of patent protection in the form of blocking patents. We show that patent...