This note derives the Golden Rule of capital accumulation in a Chakraborty-type economy, i.e. a two-period OLG economy where longevity is endogenous. It is shown that the capital per worker maximizing steady-state consumption per head is inferior to the Golden Rule capital level prevailing under...

We propose four arguments favoring the idea that medical effectiveness, adult longevity and height started to increase in Europe before the industrial revolution. This may have prompted households to increase their investment in human skills as a response to longer lives and initiated the...

We study how mortality reductions and income growth interact, looking at their relationship prior to the Industrial Revolution, when income per capita was stagnant. We first present a model of individual medical spending giving a rationale for individual health expenditures even when medecine...

In this paper, we identify and quantify the role of international migration in the propagation of HIV across sub-Saharan African countries. We use a panel database on bilateral migration flows and HIV prevalence rates covering 44 countries over the nineties. Controlling for unobserved...

We study the impact of graduating in a recession in Flanders (Belgium), i.e. in a rigid labor market. In the presence of a high minimum wage, a typical recession hardly influences the hourly wage of low educated men, but reduces working time and earnings by about 4.5% up to twelve years after...

In December 2005, the Belgian government adopted the law on the Intergenerational Solidarity Pact (ISP) with the objective to increase the employment rate of the elderly. In order to meet that objective, several active ageing policies and reforms were taken. The aim of this paper is to...

Durant les années 1930, Hicks cherche à comprendre la crise à laquelle l’économie mondiale est confrontée. Mais à la différence de la plupart des économistes de l’époque, il tente de se représenter théoriquement la situation dans un cadre d’équilibre général walrassien. Le...

It is common practice to estimate the volatility-growth link by specifying a standard growth equation such that the variance of the error term appears as an explanatory variable in this growth equation. The variance in turn is modelled by a second equation. Hardly any of existing applications of...

We construct a vintage capital model à la Whelan (2002) with both exogenous embodied and disembodied technical progress, and variable utilization of each vintage. The lifetime of capital goods is endogenous and it relies on the associated maintenance costs. We study the properties of the...

Is the Great Depression amenable to real business cycle theory ? In the 1970s and 1980s Lucas and Prescott took an abstentionist stance. They admitted that, because of its exceptional character, an explanation of the Great Depression was beyond the grasp of the equilibrium approach to the...