This paper provides a unified theory of the economic and demographic transition. Individuals make optimal decisions about fertility, education of their children and the type and intensity of the investments in their own education. These decisions are affected by different dimensions of mortality...

This paper presents a microfounded theory of long-term development. We model the interplay between economic variables, namely the process of human capital formation and technological progress, and the biological constraint of finite lifetime expectancy. All these processes affect each other and...

Countries often spend billions on university research. There is growing interest in how to assess whether that money is well spent. Is there an objective way to assess the quality of a nation's world-leading science? I attempt to suggest a method, and illustrate it with modern data on economics....

How should the productivity of research universities be measured? This task is difficult but important. The recent Research Excellence Framework in the UK, which was based on peer review, suggests that there has been a marked improvement in UK academic research in economics and in many other...