We develop an overlapping generations model, where firms (as consumers) have a two-period life, investing in R&D during the first period and competing in the product market in the second period. The number of firms is endogenously determined and the set of successful firms by a Bernoullian...

This paper shows that the development from an agricultural regime through industrialization to a manufacturing regime occurs simultaneously to the demographic transition and the change in labor structure towards an increasing fraction of skilled labor due to technological progress. The...

For a given technology, two ways are available to achieve low polluting emissions: reducing production per capita or reducing population size. This paper insists on the tension between the former and the latter. Controlling pollution either through Pigovian taxes or through tradable quotas...

The Ramsey model of economic growth is revisited from the point of view of viability. A viable state is a state from which there exists at least one tra jectory that remains in the set of constraints of minimal consumption and positive wealth. Viability is presented with a constraint of minimal...

In this paper, we study the implications of assuming different technologies for physical capital accumulation and consumption. More precisely, we assume that physical capital accumulation is relatively more energy-intensive than consumption. We conclude that this hypothesis, together with the...

The special functions are intensively used in mathematical physics to solve differential systems. We argue that their use should be most useful in economic dynamics, notably in the assessment of the transition dynamics of endogenous growth models. We illustrate our argument on the Lucas-Uzawa...

Corruption is thought to prevent poor countries from catching-up. We analyze one channel through which corruption hampers growth: public investment can be distorted in favor of specific types of spending for which rent-seeking is easier and better concealed. To study this distortion, we propose...

Introducing fertility choice into an R&D-based semi-endogenous growth model makes it possible for the economy's long-run growth rate to be again fully endogenously determined. A positive growth rate along the balanced growth path requires a certain knife-edge assumption, though. In the usual...