A fundamental question in social sciences relates to the effect of wealth inequality on economic growth. Yet, in tackling the question, researchers have had to use income as a proxy for wealth. We derive a global measure of wealth inequality from Forbes magazine’s listing of billionaires and...

This paper deals with the relationship between decentralisation, regional economic development, and income inequality within regions. Using multiplicative interaction models and regionally aggregated microeconomic data for more than 100,000 individuals in the European Union (EU), it addresses...

The concepts of s-convergence, absolute b-convergence and conditional b-convergence are discussed in this paper. The concepts are applied to a variety of data sets that include a large cross section of 110 countries, the sub-sample of OECD countries, the states within the United States, the...

This paper studies the role of internal migration in income convergence across regions in Japan. Neoclassical theory predicts that migration should have been an important source of convergence, but regression results suggest otherwise. The paper investigates the possibility that this discrepancy...

After arguing that the concepts of b-convergence and s-convergence are independently interesting, this paper extends the empirical evidence on regional growth and convergence across the United States, Japan, and five European nations. We confirm that the estimated speeds of convergence are...

This paper revisits demographic dividend issues after almost two decades of debate. In 1998, David Bloom and Jeffrey Williamson used a convergence model to estimate the impact of demographic-transition-driven age structure effects and calculated what the literature has come to call the...

This paper first draws on a unique data set, hojok (household registers), to estimate numeracy levels in Korea from the period 1550–1630. We add evidence from Japan and China from the early modern period until 1800 to obtain a human capital estimate for East Asia. We find that numeracy was...

The British Industrial Revolution triggered a reversal in the social order whereby the landed elite was replaced by industrial capitalists rising from the middle classes as the economically dominant group. Many observers have linked this transformation to the contrast in values between a...

This paper presents a unified theory that provides an intertemporal reconciliation between conflicting viewpoints about the effect of inequality on economic growth. It argues that the replacement of physical capital accumulation by human capital accumulation as a prime engine of economic growth...

This Paper develops a theory of fertility and child educational choice that offers an explanation for the persistence of poverty within and across countries. The joint determination of the quality (education) and quantity of children in the household is studied under the key assumption that...