This paper offers a thesis for why the US overtook the UK and other European countries in the 20th century in both aggregate and per capita GDP as a case study of recent models of endogenous growth, where "human capital" is the engine of growth. By human capital we mean an intangible asset, best...

We propose a novel framework to analyse the macroeconomic impact of non-communicable diseases. We incorporate measures of disease prevalence into a human capital augmented production function, which enables us to determine the economic costs of chronic health conditions in terms of foregone...

In a growth accounting context one usually constructs a quality adjusted index of labor services by aggregating over predefined groups of workers, using the groups' relative wage bills as weights. In this article we suggest a method based on decomposing individual predicted wages into a...

We investigate whether a causal interpretation of the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth is appropriate and whether cross-country evidence supports a case for the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking...

This paper provides estimates of the economic impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in China and India for the period 2012-2030. Our estimates are derived using WHO's EPIC model of economic growth, which focuses on the negative effects of NCDs on labor supply and capital accumulation. We...

Unlike physical capital, human capital has both embodied and disembodied dimensions. It can be perceived of as skill and acquired knowledge, but also as knowledge spillover effects between overlapping generations and across different skill groups within and across countries. We illustrate the...

We provide evidence that the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth reflects a causal effect of cognitive skills and supports the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking student achievement across countries, over...

Over the past 60 years, the U.S. financial sector has grown from 2.3% to 7.7% of GDP. While the growth in the share of value added has been fairly linear, it hides a dramatic change in the composition of skills and occupations. In the early 1980s, the financial sector started paying higher wages...

This paper offers a thesis as to why the US overtook the UK and other European countries in the 20th century in both aggregate and per-capita GDP, as a case study of recent models of endogenous growth where human capital is the "engine of growth". The conjecture is that the ascendancy of the US...