We take Gary Becker's child quantity-quality trade-off hypothesis to the historical record, investigating the causal link from family size to the literacy status of offspring using data from Anglican parish registers, c. 1700-1830. Extraordinarily forhistorical data, the parish records enable us...

In this study we investigate the causal impact of increasing adult longevity on higher education. We exploit the fourth stage of the epidemiological transition, i.e. the unexpected decline of deaths from heart attack and stroke in the 1970s as a large positive health shock that affected...

Why does the rate of population growth decline in the face of economic growth? We show that growing product variety may induce a permanent reduction in the demand for children and a continuous rise in income and consumption.

This paper is a study of Danish aid policy from the early 1960s to 1995. It includes (i) a review of officially stated aims and criteria, (ii) a descriptive analysis of actual behaviour in international comparative perspective, (iii) a review of the theoretical and empirical aid allocation...

We analyze development trajectories of early civilizations where population size and technology are endogenous, and derive conditions under which such societies optimally “switch” from anarchy to hierarchy – when it is optimal to elect and support a ruler. The ruler provides an efficient...

This paper traces the origins of World Bank indicators of debt distress and their employment as HIPC sustainability targets. These targets are interpreted as ‘switching values’, below which countries are (on average) expected to avoid debt service problems, but as such, they do not take into...

A comparative analysis of 15 developing countries shows that, during the 1990s, indirect taxes, tariffs, and exchange rates significantly discriminated against agriculture in only one country (Malawi), was largely neutral in five (Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Zimbabwe), provided...

Malthus’ (1798) population hypothesis is inconsistent with the demographic transition and the concurrent massive expansion of incomes observed among industrialised countries. This study shows that eliminating the income-effect on the demand for children from the Malthusian model makes it...

This paper considers the relationship between external aid and development in Mozambique from 1980 to 2004. The main objective is to identify the specific mechanisms through which aid has influenced the developmental trajectory of the country and whether one can plausibly link outcomes to aid...

Time-budget studies done among contemporary primitive people suggest that the first farmers worked harder to attain subsistence than their foraging predecessors. This makes the adoption of agriculture in the Stone Age one of the major curiosities in human cultural history. Theories offered by...