This paper develops a new open-economy endogenous growth model where technology diffusion allows for a stable and non-degenerate world income distribution. In accordance with the empirical literature, I find that country characteristics such as the social infrastructure, the degree of openness,...

We consider a small open economy in which the level of public education funding is determined by popular vote. We show that growth can be enhanced by the introduction of pay-as-you-go pensions even if the growth rate of aggregate wages falls short of the interest rate. The reason is that the...

Using a two-sector endogenous growth model, this paper explores how productivity shocks in the goods and human capital producing sectors contribute to explaining aggregate cycles in output, consumption, investment and hours. To contextualize our findings, we also assess whether the human capital...

By merging individual data on valuable patents granted in Prussia in the late nineteenth century with county level information on literacy and income tax revenues we show that increases in the stock of human capital not only improved workers' productivity but also accelerated innovative...

This paper investigates the Becker-Woessmann (2009) argument that Protestants were more prosperous in nineteenth-century Prussia because they were more literate, a version of the Weber thesis, and shows that it cannot be sustained. The econometric analysis on which Becker and Woessman based...

This paper combines the standard incomplete markets model of uninsurable idiosyncratic risks and borrowing constraints with the Arrow/Romer approach to endogenous growth to analyze the interaction of risk, growth, and inequality, the latter also endogenously determined in equilibrium. We derive...

We study the effects of an annuity market imperfection on individual agents' labour supply and retirement decisions and on the macroeconomic growth rate in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth. We model imperfect annuities by introducing a load factor on the interest rate...

This article analyzes the effect of migration from a less advanced economy to a more advanced economy on economic growth. The analysis is performed in a two-country growth model with endogenous fertility, in which congestion diseconomies are incorporated. The model shows that out-migration...

We study the role of endogenous healthcare choices by households to extend their expected lifetimes on economic growth and welfare in a decentralized overlapping generations economy with the realistic feature that households' savings are held in annuities. We characterize healthcare spending in...