The Grand Transition (GT) view claims that economic development is causal to institutional development, and that many institutional changes can be understood as transitions occurring at roughly the same level (zones) of development. The Primacy of Institutions (PoI) view claims that economic...

We reconsider the effects of long-run economic growth on relative factor prices across cones of specialization. We model economic growth as exogenous technical change. Allowing for capital biased technical change with a sector bias and for endogenous commodity prices, we find that economic...

Einfache Lehrbuchmodelle liefern widersprüchliche Aussagen zu den Wirkungen eines arbeitssparenden technischen Fortschritts auf die Löhne. Ein Modell der offenen Volkswirtschaft mit zwei Diversifizierungskegeln zeigt verschiedene Möglichkeiten auf, wie der arbeitssparende technische...

While it is largely uncontroversial that human capital can be considered as one of the shaping factors of economic growth, no agreement exists on the specific role of human capital formation. Competing theories all stressing different aspects of human capital formation are not in short supply,...

We consider whether Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are mainly poor because they are governed worse than other countries, as suggested by recent studies on the supremacy of institutions. Our empirical results show that the supremacy of institutions does not hold. SSA countries appear to face...

Translated to a cross-country context, the Solow model (Solow, 1956) predicts that international differences in steady state output per person are due to international differences in technology for a constant capital output ratio. However, most of the cross-country growth literature that refers...

Some recent empirical studies deny any direct performance effects of measures of geography and conclude that institutions trump all other potential determinants of development. For given effects of institutional quality, our empirical results indicate quantitatively important direct negative...

Despite abundant microeconomic level evidence, the role of human capital in economic development has not been well documented at the macroeconomic level. Up to now, many empirical macro studies lack a consistent theoretical foundation. In addition, the wide range of published results seems to...

Globalization improves the prospects for developing countries (DCs) to catch up economically with industrialized countries. Depending on economic policies with respect to openness and factor accumulation, globalization may increase capital and technology flows to DCs, thereby generating a higher...