How to sustain cooperation is a key challenge for any society. Different social organizations have evolved in the course of history to cope with this challenge by relying on different combinations of external (formal and informal) enforcement institutions and intrinsic motivation. Some societies...

Two issues related to mapping a multi-sector model into a reduced-form value-added model are often neglected: the composition of intermediate goods, and the distinction between the productivity indices for value added and for gross output. We illustrate their significance for growth accounting...

This paper contributes to the literature on both embodied technical progress and firm dynamics, by formulating an endogenous growth model where selection and imitation play a fundamental role in helping capital good producers to learn about the productivity of technologies embodied in new...

We develop a model that incorporates salient features of growth in modern economies. We combine the expanding-variety growth model through horizontal innovations with a hierarchy of basic and applied research. The former extends the knowledge base, while the latter commercializes it. Two-way...

This paper diagnoses the symptoms of the Dutch disease in a two-sector stochastic endogenous growth model. A productive, low skill-intensive primary sector causes the currency to appreciate in real terms, thus hampering the development of a high skill-intensive secondary sector and thereby...

We show that even in the absence of diminishing returns in production and technological spillovers, international trade leads to a stable world income distribution. This is because specialization and trade introduce de facto diminishing returns – countries that accumulate capital faster than...

The neoclassical growth model accords with empirical evidence on convergence if capital is viewed broadly to include human investments, so that diminishing returns to capital set in slowly, and if differences in government policies or other variables create substantial differences in...

This paper integrates in a unified and tractable framework some of the key insights of the field of international trade and economic growth. It examines a sequence of theoretical models that share a common description of technology and preferences but differ on their assumptions about trade...

This paper examines how economic stratification affects inequality and growth over time. It studies economies where heterogenous agents interact through local public goods or externalities (school funding, neighbourhood effects) and economy-wide linkages (complementary skills, knowledge...

While the "risk amelioration" literature suggests that risk sharing channels savings into risky but productive technologies and hence favours growth, models focused on precautionary savings reverse this conclusion. We solve, by means of numerical techniques, a model based on human capital...