This paper develops a two-sector R&D-based growth model with congestion effects from increasing urban population density. We show that endogenous technological progress causes structural change if there are positive productivity spillovers from the modern to the traditional sector and Engel’s...

Long run economic growth goes along with structural change. Recent work has identified explanatory factors on the demand side (non-homothetic preferences) and on the supply-side, in particular differential productivity growth across sectors and differences in factor proportions and capital...

Regional income disparities have increased in many European countries recently, even as national and supra-national policy instruments were created to correct them. To explain these evolutions, we develop a two-region, two-sector model with migration and public investment in infrastructure and...

This paper examines whether growth regressions should incorporate dualism and structural change. If there is a differential across sectors in the marginal product of labour, changes in the structure of employment can raise aggregate total factor productivity. The paper develops empirical growth...

This paper analyses the Balassa and Samuelson hypothesis in two groups of European countries: six New Member States (NMS) and six advanced EU-15 economies. It is found that the second stage of the hypothesis, which relates relative sector prices with the real exchange rate, does not hold...

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...

There is substantial consensus in the literature that positive uncertainty shocks predict a slowdown of economic activity. However, using U.S. data since 1950 we show that the macroeconomic response pattern to stock market volatility shocks has changed substantially over time. The negative...

The aim of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for 21 African countries over the period from 1970 to 2006, using recently developed panel cointegration and causality tests. The countries are divided into two groups:...