This paper uses a new database to establish two findings covering the first globalization boom before World War I, the second since World War II, and the autarkic interlude in between. First, there is strong evidence supporting a Tariff-Growth Paradox: protection was associated with fast growth...

This paper studies a growth model that is able to match several key facts of economic history. For thousands of years, the average standard of living seems to have risen very little, despite increases in the level of technology and large increases in the level of the population. Then, after...

Human capital is almost always identified as a crucial ingredient for growing economies, but empirical investigations of cross-national growth have done little to clarify the dimensions of relevant human capital or any implications for policy. This paper concentrates on the importance of labor...

In many models, economic growth is driven by people discovering new ideas. These models typically assume either a constant or a growing population. However, in high income countries today, fertility is already below its replacement rate: women are having fewer than two children on average. It is...

This paper examines the potential impact of artificial intelligence (A.I.) on economic growth. We model A.I. as the latest form of automation, a broader process dating back more than 200 years. Electricity, internal combustion engines, and semiconductors facilitated automation in the last...

In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity. We present a wide range of evidence from various industries, products, and firms showing that...

We provide evidence that the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth reflects a causal effect of cognitive skills and supports the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking student achievement across countries, over...

We study the evolution of market-oriented policies over time and across countries. We consider a model in which own and neighbors' past experiences influence policy choices, through their effect on policymakers' beliefs. We estimate the model using a large panel of countries. We find that there...

The "Easterlin paradox" suggests that there is no link between a society's economic development and its average level of happiness. We re-assess this paradox analyzing multiple rich datasets spanning many decades. Using recent data on a broader array of countries, we establish a clear positive...

Over the past 60 years, the U.S. financial sector has grown from 2.3% to 7.7% of GDP. While the growth in the share of value added has been fairly linear, it hides a dramatic change in the composition of skills and occupations. In the early 1980s, the financial sector started paying higher wages...