We estimate the multiplier by relying on differences in spending in infrastructure across Italian provinces and an instrument identifying investment changes that are large and exogenous to local cyclical conditions. We derive our instrument from the an Italia law mandating the interruption of...

This paper analyzes a model of economic growth that explains differences in economic structure across countries. It highlights the interplay between productivity, talents utilization and entrepreneurship incentives. The paper has two main results. First, it argues that when measuring human...

The share of skilled workers in urban populations has steadily increased since 1970 in US metropolitan areas, but more in some cities than in others. A higher concentration of skills is a sought after asset for cities as it affects population growth positively, also when the initial share is...

This paper develops a growth theory that accounts for the evolution of trade policy, underlying internal class conflicts, and global income divergence over the last few centuries. By analyzing political responses to the distributional effects of international trade, this paper finds a prominent...

Economic growth is driven by structural change. Structural change doer not come without a cost, the most evident social cost being high and persistent unemployment. This paper develops an economy with an endogenously expanding service sector, where the constant flow of workers in and out of...

Cross-country evidence is presented on resource dependence and the link between volatility and growth. First, growth depends negatively on volatility of unanticipated output growth independent of initial income per capita, the average investment share, initial human capital, trade openness, the...

The rapid rise of Chinese exports over the past two decades has raised concerns for manufacturing employment in high-income countries. Spill-overs beyond manufacturing are an important issue given the large size of the non-traded sector in modern economies and household imperfect spatial...

The level of urbanization has increased by over 5 percentage points per decade outside the developed world since 1960. Rapid urbanization was accompanied by fast economic growth and job creation in most parts of the world. However, notably Africa (and Latin America after 1980) has had a...

We study the dynamic Ramsey problem of finding optimal public debt and linear taxes on capital and labor income within a tractable infinite horizon model with incomplete markets. With zero public expenditure and debt, it is optimal to tax the risky labor income and subsidize capital, while a...