-country panel data on income inequality to estimate the private return and GDP data to estimate the social return. The results show …

Maximin) criterion, and, second, the Sustainable Growth Optimization criterion, that maximizes the utility of the first … generation subject to a given future rate of growth. We apply these criteria to our calibrated model via a novel algorithm … reference ones. On the other hand, higher growth rates require substantial increases in the fraction of labor devoted to …

that leads to the stabilization of concentrations at 450 ppm. (2) North and South converge to a path of sustained growth at … year while South’s rates of growth are markedly higher. The transition paths require a drastic reduction of the share of … education in South. Surprisingly, in order to sustain North’s utility growth rate, some output must be transferred from South to …

analyze the effects of franchise changes on economic growth. We identify in the social structure of society an explanation for … the connection between enfranchisement and growth: When (1) there exist an economic conflict among the elite, (2) landed … classes are not politically strong, and (3) there exists a critical mass of industrial workers, we observe both growth and …

Many political economic theories use and emphasize the process of voting in their explanation of the growth of Social … Security, government spending, and other public policies. But is there an empirical connection between democracy and Social … Security policy. We find little partial effect of democracy on the size of Social Security budgets, on how those budgets are …

unequal society. A majoritarian democracy redistributes resources from the collectivity toward relatively few people, and has … a relatively small government and low level of taxation. A consensual democracy redistributes resources toward a broader … turns out to be preferred by society when ex ante income inequality is relatively low, while a majoritarian system is chosen …

authors have found empirical evidence that ethnic fractionalization has a negative effect on growth. One mechanism that can … incidence of civil conflicts is very weak. Although ethnic fractionalization may be important for growth, we argue that the …