This paper uncovers a counter-intuitive effect of international trade on female labor shares: whenever trade expands, sectors intensive in female labor, female labor shares drop and vice versa. According to our key assumption a rising capital labor ratio closes the gender wage gap. The paper’s...

This paper examines a developing economy by a family-optimization model in which the number of children is a normal good in preferences. Trade liberalization generates two effects: an income effect, which raises population growth in the short run; and a gender wage effect, which decreases that...

This work focuses on a temporary guest-worker-type migration of individuals from the middle class of the wealth distribution. The article demonstrates that the possibility of a low-skilled guest-worker employment in a higher wage foreign country lowers the relative attractiveness of the skilled...

Within the causal structure of economic development, we can distinguish between short-term and long-term causal links. In particular, this study examines long-term short-term causal relations in economic development. We construct a balanced panel for 72 countries over the period from 1980 to...

Recent growth theories have utilized the Ben-Porath (1967) mechanism according to which prolonging the period in which individuals may receive returns on their investment spurs investment in human capital and cause growth. An important, though sometime implicit implication of these models is...

We extend the efficiency wage model of Shapiro and Stiglitz to account for the observation that workers’ effort has a tendency to fall when they approach the end of their employment contract. In particular, we find that the efficiency wage increases when the end of term approaches for a given...

How to best utilize the wide range of estimates of elasticities that characterize econometric literature when using calibrated models is the issue we address here through a blending of econometrics and calibration into calibmetrics. Econometrically generated literature based elasticity...

Since World War II, mortality has decreased in the developing world. This paper explores the effects of this mortality fall on economic and demographic growth by a family-optimization model, in which fertility is endogenous and relative wealth yields utility because of status-seeking. The main...

We analyze the effects of demographic change on medium- and long-run economic growth by setting forth an R&D-based growth model including an endogenous demographic structure. The model framework is consistent with the experience of industrialized countries, where declines in mortality are...

This research advances an evolutionary growth theory that captures the pattern of life expectancy in the process of development, shedding new light on the sources of the remarkable rise in life expectancy since the Agricultural Revolution. The theory suggests that social, economic and...