We present a growth model where agents divide time between rent seeking in the form of resource competition; and working in a human capital sector, interpreted as trade or manufacturing. Rent seeking exerts negative externalities on the productivity of human capital, generating multiple steady...

We construct a model in which a number of equally powerful ethnic groups compete for power by engaging in civil war. In non-redistributive equilibrium, ethnically homogeneous and ethnically diverse countries face a lower probability of civil war than countries with a moderate degree of ethnic...

We set up a model of economic and demographic long-run development, where inequality in income and reproductive success (polygynous mating) plays a central role. The model generates a slow and gradual compression of the income gap between landholders and landless, together with rising levels of...

We set up a stochastic open-economy growth model with endogenous fertility and mortality. A three-country version of the model is calibrated to pre-industrial mortality data from England, France and Sweden. By fitting parameters to match observed rates of correlation in mortality rates, the...

The institution of slavery is found mostly at intermediate stages of agricultural development, and less often among hunter-gatherers and advanced agrarian societies. We explain this pattern in a growth model with land and labor as inputs in production, and an endogenously determined property...

These are the stylized facts of long-run economic and demographic development, as described by Galor and Weil (AER 1999, 2000): Under an initial Malthusian Regime the growth rates of population and per-capita income are both low. Then follows a Post-Malthusian Regime, with higher growth rates of...