Do intermediate goods help explain relative and aggregate productivity differences across countries? Three observations suggest they do: (i) intermediates are relatively expensive in poor countries; (ii) goods industries demand intermediates more intensively than service industries; (iii) goods...

Specializing in tourism is an option available to a number of less developed countries and regions. But is it a good option? To answer this question, we have compared the relative growth performance of 14 “tourism countries” within a sample of 143 countries, observed during the period...

In the current age of trade and financial openness, local economies in developing countries are becoming increasingly exposed to external investments. The objective of the proposed two-sector model with environmental externalities is to provide an insight into the interaction between external...

Vulnerability to scarcity or to reduction of natural capital depends on defensive substitution possibilities that, in turn, are affected by the availability of other productive factors. However, in several developing countries asset distribution tends to be highly skewed. Taking into ac- count...

We provide econometric evidence that relative per capita GDP and relative unemployment rates are the main determinants of migration flows across Italian regions from 1970 to 2002. The empirical analysis is based on an accurate study of the dynamic properties of the series. In fact, we deal with...

This paper examines the macroeconomic effects of an environmental tax reform in a growing economy. A model of endogenous growth based on human capital accumulation is used to numerically simulate the growth effects of different environmental tax reforms and compute their impact on welfare in the...

This paper looks at the interplay between human capital and innovation in the presence of climate and educational policies. Using recent empirical estimates, human capital and general purpose R&D are introduced in an integrated assessment model that has been extensively applied to study climate...

Given disparate beliefs about economic growth, technical change and damage caused by climate change, this paper starts with the seeming impossibility of determining a unique time profile of the social costs of carbon as a benchmark for climate negotiations and for infrastructure decisions that...

Is pollution a dirty word? To answer this question we develop an endogenous growth model à la Rebelo (1991) where dirtiness becomes a fundamental choice variable for the economy to grow. Conclusions to our analysis say that a positive sustainable economic growth is attainable only if polluting...

WITCH – World Induced Technical Change Hybrid – is a regionally disaggregated hard-link hybrid global model with a neoclassical optimal growth structure (top-down) and a detailed energy input component (bottom-up). The model endogenously accounts for technological change, both through...