In a two-country Schumpeterian growth model, we study the incentives for basic research investments by governments in a globalized world. We find that a country's basic research investments increase with the country's level of human capital and decline with its own market size. This may explain...

The aim of this paper is to identify possibilities for guiding policy in the area of basic research. We provide an extended review of basic research and offer new insights on its linkages to key economic variables and economic growth. After defining what basic research is, we identify and...

Intergenerational inequality and old-age poverty are salient issues in contemporary China. China's aging population threatens the fiscal sustainability of its pension system, a key vehicle for intergenerational redistribution. We analyze the positive and normative effects of alternative pension...

This paper extends the standard growth regression model by adding an assumption that a country follows the global technology frontier either fully or partially. This additional assumption changes significantly the growth regression model and its results in three main ways. First, it shows that...

We estimate the effect on economic development of China's industrial policy, in particular, the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZ). We use data from a panel of 276 Chinese cities and prefectures from 1988 to 2010. Our difference-in-difference estimator exploits the variation in the...

We discuss the two-way link between culture and economic growth. We present a model of endogenous technical change where growth is driven by the innovative activity of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is risky and requires investments that affect the steepness of the lifetime consumption profile....

We analyse an economy where managers engage both in the adoption of technologies from the world frontier and in innovation activities. The selection of high-skill managers is more important for innovation activities. As the economy approaches the technology frontier, selection becomes more...

The paper surveys the evidence on British economic growth performance since the war. It is shown that the hypotheses proposed by Bacon and Eltis, Kaldor and Thirlwall to account for slow growth are inadequate and that supply side problems leading to poor productivity performance are the most...

In this paper we examine the persistent effects of past wages of displaced workers on the probability of finding a new job and on wages in the new job. We use a new database looking at the post-displacement experience of a sample of Belgian workers who have lost their jobs because of a sizeable...