This paper explores the role of mortality in the long transition from Malthusian stagnation to sustained economic growth. An endogenous child mortality rate that varies inversely with parents’ standard of living is added to the framework in Galor and Weil (AER 2000). In our version of the...

Malthus' (1798) population hypothesis is inconsistent with the demographic transitions and the massive income expansion observed among industrialised countries. The current study shows that eliminating the income-effect on the demand for children from Malthus' theory makes consistent with...

The classical story of industrialization always begins with agriculture: the modernization of rural institutions, involving both the enclosure of 'open fields' and a shift from peasant farming to larger scale capitalist farming, generates a rise in agricultural productivity, which in turn fuels...