We analyze the joint dynamics of religious beliefs, scientific progress and coalitional politics along both religious and economic lines. History offers many examples of the recurring tensions between science and organized religion, but as part of the paper’s motivating evidence we also...

One of the most striking regularities of the growth process is the massive reallocation of labor from agriculture into industry and services. Balanced growth models are commonly used in macroeconomics because they are consistent with the well-known Kaldor facts about economic growth. These...

This paper reports on the progress made by the literature about economic growth in answering the question "Why do Growth Rates Differ? " It reviews that we currently know about the mechanics of growth miracles and poverty traps, as well as the tentative policy advice that these mechanics suggest.

Australia is experiencing its largest mining boom for more than a century and a half. This paper explores, from a national perspective, important economic differences that arise when a mining boom, such as the current one, is generated by sustained export price increases (trading gains) rather...

In this paper, we study some continuous-time cash-in-advanced models in which interest rate smoothing is optimal. We consider both deterministic and stochastic models.

A prototypical vintage capital model of economic growth is developed, where the decision to replace old technologies with new ones is modeled explicitly. Technological change is investment specific. Depreciation in this environment is an economic , not a physical concept.

How much technological change progress has there been in structures? An attempt is made to measure this using panel data on the age and rents of buildings. The data are interpreted with the help of a vintage capital model where buildings are replaced with some chosen periodicity. The key is a...