We investigate the effect of higher education on the evolution of inequality. In so doing we propose a novel overlapping generations model with three social classes: the rich, the middle class, and the poor. We show that there is an initial phase in which no social class invests in higher...

We assess the impact of population structure on economic growth. Following recent research, we focus on the generational turnover as a key driver of consumption growth. We characterize the impact of the average birth and death rates on the generational turnover, depending on the age-profile of...

We analyze the impact of increasing longevity on technological progress within an R&D-based endogenous growth framework and test the model's implications on OECD data from 1960 to 2011. The central hypothesis derived in the theoretical part is that - by raising the incentives of households to...

Growth and democracy (subjective indexes of political freedom) are analyzed for a panel of about 100 countries from 1960 to 1990. The favorable effects on growth include maintenance of the rule of law, free markets, small government consumption, and high human capital. Once these kinds of...

Although a large literature argues that European settlement outside of Europe shaped institutional, educational, technological, cultural, and economic outcomes, researchers have been unable to directly assess these predictions because of an absence of data on colonial European settlement. In...