This paper studies the effect of structural change on the historical path of aggregate labor productivity growth for a large sample of European countries, and it builds a quantitative multi-sector growth model to analyze the potential impact that structural change may have on future productivity...

This paper studies structural change in production networks for intermediate inputs (input-output network) and new capital (investment network). For each network, we document a declining fraction of production by goods sectors and a rising fraction of production by services sectors. We develop a...

The commonly-used satellite images of nighttime lights fail to capture the true brightness of most cities. We show that night lights are a reliable proxy for economic activity at the city level, provided they are first corrected for top-coding. We present a stylized model of urban luminosity and...

We study the implications of two historical institutions, direct British rule, and the heterogeneous land tenure institutions implemented by the British, on disparity in present day development using district level data from India. Using nightlights per capita as a proxy for district level per...

This paper studies when religion can hamper diffusion of knowledge and economic development and through which mechanism. I examine Catholicism in France during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914). In this period, technology became skill-intensive, leading to the introduction of...

We explore the relationships between subjective well-being and income, as seen across individuals within a given country, between countries in a given year, and as a country grows through time. We show that richer individuals in a given country are more satisfied with their lives than are poorer...

The empirical literature on economic growth and development has moved from the study of proximate determinants to the analysis of ever deeper, more fundamental factors, rooted in long-term history. A growing body of new empirical work focuses on the measurement and estimation of the effects of...

This paper examines whether growth regressions should incorporate dualism and structural change. If there is a differential across sectors in the marginal product of labour, changes in the structure of employment can raise aggregate total factor productivity. The paper develops empirical growth...

This paper studies structural change in production networks for intermediate inputs (input-output network) and new capital (investment network). For each network, we document a declining fraction of production by goods sectors and a rising fraction of production by services sectors. We develop a...

This paper discusses the recent literature on the role of the state in economic development. It concludes that government incentives to enact sound policies are key to economic success. It also discusses the evidence on what happens after episodes of economic and political liberalizations,...