We explore the relation between fertility and the business cycle in Latin American countries taking advantage of the existing cross-country and within-country differences in both fertility and macroeconomic conditions. First, we use a panel of 18 nations for over 45 years to study how different...

In EU countries, opening up of telecommunications markets and regulations have helped to reduce the price of digital services which is an important quasi-input factor in all firms. Integrating the use of telecommunications in a macroeconomic production function is the analytical starting point...

This paper examines to what extent recent empirical evidence can collectively and systematically substantiate the claim that entrepreneurship has important economic value. Hence, a systematic review is provided that answers the question: What is the contribution of entrepreneurs to the economy...

We construct an endogenous growth model that includes a cultural variable along the dimension of individualism-collectivism. The model predicts that more individualism leads to more innovation because of the social rewards associated with innovation in an individualist culture. This cultural...

The innovative approach presented introduces a modified neoclassical growth model which includes a new bias of technological progress in a quasi-endogenous growth model in which part of labor is used in the research & development sector. The combination of a macroeconomic production function and...

Most of the countries of the OECD are still suffering from the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) (or as the Americans call it the Great Recession), but the Australian economy appears to be powering ahead. It is a miracle economy! Unlike most of the OECD countries, Australia did not even have a...

Australia is experiencing its largest mining boom for more than a century and a half. This paper explores, from a national perspective, important economic differences that arise when a mining boom, such as the current one, is generated by export price increases (trading gains) rather than export...

Intangible knowledge capital (IKC) - technology produced by workers but not embodied in them - can offset the "middle income trap" as China exhausts the benefits of international technology transfer. IKC is productivity-enhancing among Chinese enterprises - more so in domestically owned than in...

There exists a persistent disagreement in the literature over the effect of business cycles on economic growth. This paper offers a solution to this disagreement, suggesting that volatility carries a positive direct effect, but also a negative indirect effect, operating through the insurance...

Using newly collected national and sub-national data and historical case studies, this paper argues that differences in innovative capacity, captured by the density of engineers at the dawn of the Second Industrial Revolution, are important to explaining present income differences, and, in...