Do populations grow as countries become richer? In this paper we estimate the effects on population growth of shocks to national income that are plausibly exogenous and unlikely to be driven by technological change. For a panel of over 139 countries spanning the period 1960-2007 we interact...

R&D-based growth theory suggests that a larger population size raises either the long-run rate of economic growth (“strong scale effect”) or the level of per capita income (“weak scale effect”), with far-reaching policy implications. However, for modern times there is little empirical...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...

We study the development of teenage fertility in East and West Germany using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) and from the German Mikrozensus. Following the international literature we derive hypotheses on the patterns of teenage fertility and test whether they are relevant in the...

In this document, we consider the effects of a land reform on economic and demographic growth by a family-optimization model with sharecropping, endogenous fertility and status seeking. We show that tenant farming is the major obstacle to escaping the Malthusian trap with high fertility and low...

The paper provides an analysis of the recent immigration history of New Zealand and Australia. It starts with a description of the quantitative dimension of immigration: how many immigrants entered the two countries, and what was the contribution of external migration to population growth. Next,...

Pakistan's education system faces long-standing problems in access, quality, and equal opportunity at every level: primary and secondary schools, higher education and vocational education. In spite of recent encouraging trends, such as the rapid spread of private schooling and an expansion of...

Globally installed wind power capacity has grown tremendously since 2000. This study focuses on the local economic impacts of wind power deployment. A theoretical model shows that wind power deployment is not necessarily driven by locally-accruing economic payoffs, but also by other factors such...