Persistent low fertility rates lead to lower population growth rates and eventually also to decreasing population sizes in most industrialized countries. There are fears that this demographic development is associated with declines in per capita GDP and possibly also increasing inequality of the...

The purpose of this article is to identify the role of population size, population growth and population ageing in models of endogenous economic growth. While in exogenous growth models demographic variables are linked to economic prosperity mainly via the population size, the structure of the...

We consider an endogenous growth model with Blanchard-Yaari-type overlapping generations that is built around four sectors: final and intermediate goods production, an R&D sector and a health care sector. Health care serves to lower mortality and morbidity, the latter being related to...

During recent years there has been an increasing awareness of the explanatory power of demographic variables in economic growth regressions. We estimate a new model of the effects of age structure change on economic growth. We use the new model and recent probabilistic demographic projections...

We assess the impact of population structure on economic growth. Following recent research, we focus on the generational turnover as a key driver of consumption growth. We characterize the impact of the average birth and death rates on the generational turnover, depending on the age-profile of...

Growth and democracy (subjective indexes of political freedom) are analyzed for a panel of about 100 countries from 1960 to 1990. The favorable effects on growth include maintenance of the rule of law, free markets, small government consumption, and high human capital. Once these kinds of...

During the Industrial Revolution technological progress and innovation became the main drivers of economic growth. But why was Britain the technological leader? We argue that one hitherto little recognized British advantage was the supply of highly skilled, mechanically able craftsmen who were...

From the perspective of conditional convergence, China's GDP growth rate since 1990 has been surprisingly high. However, China cannot deviate forever from the global historical experience, and the per capita growth rate is likely to fall soon from around 8% per year to a range of 3 4%. China can...

Evidence from a broad panel of countries shows little overall relation between income inequality and rates of growth and investment. However, for growth, higher inequality tends to retard growth in poor countries and encourage growth in richer places. The Kuznets curve-whereby inequality first...

For U.S. annual data that include WWII, the estimated multiplier for temporary defense spending is 0.4-0.5 contemporaneously and 0.6-0.7 over two years. If the change in defense spending is "permanent" (gauged by Ramey's defense-news variable), the multipliers are higher by 0.1-0.2. The...