Institutions either promote or constrain economic performance, but which part of institutions does so, and why do economies sharing similar institutions sometimes perform differently? This paper applies a novel model that is capable of separating infrastructural and superstructural effects of...

In the recent growth literature, the accumulation of human capital and R&D have gained a central role. This study tries to narrow the bridge between the fields of regional convergence theory, economic growth and human capital. Unlike traditional economic growth theories, which tend to focus on...

I estimate a life cycle model of consumption choice with unemployment risk. Employed individuals face the risk of losing their job. Unemployed agents receive job random offers of different quality, which they can accept or reject. Following the loss of a job and during unemployment, an agent’s...

Luego de examinar el marco teórico y conceptual de la teoría del crecimiento y del comercio internacional, se mide la eficacia de la apertura comercial impulsada por el TLCAN para fomentar el intercambio comercial. Asimismo, se evalúan los efectos de éste en el crecimiento económico de los...

In the contemporary economic literature and academic environments, one encounters increasing interest in the role assigned to human skills and new technologies to interpret economic incidents and formulate viable development policies. In other words, there seems to be a shift in interest from...

The framework of a general equilibrium heterogeneous agent model is used to study the optimal design of an unemployment insurance (UI) scheme and the voting behaviour on unemployment policy reforms. In a first step, the optimal defined benefit and defined replacement ratio UI systems are...

This paper is part of a project that attempts to reveal the way labour market institutions, human capital and labour productivity are interconnected. First we discuss two approaches in the human capital theory, stressing some difficulties that could be solved if the approaches are combined. It...

This paper offers two main contributions. First, it shows how the Baxter and Jermann (1997) claim that, once we consider human capital risk, the international diversification puzzle is worse than we think, is based on an econometric misspecification rejected by the data. Second, it outlines how,...

This research argues that the rapid expansion of international trade in the second phase of the industrial revolution has played a significant role in the timing of demographic transitions across countries and has thereby been a major determinant of the distribution of world population and a...