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

The long-run evolution of per-capita income exhibits a structural breakoften associated with the Industrial Revolution. We follow Mokyr (2002) and embedthe idea that this structural break reflects a regime switch in the evolution of technologicalknowledge into a dynamic framework, using Airy...

Since little is known about the degree of bias in estimated fixed effects in panel data models, we run Monte Carlo simulations on a range of different estimators. We find that Anderson-Hsiao IV, Kiviet’s bias-corrected LSDV and GMM estimators all perform well in both short and long panels...

This research develops an expanded unified growth theory that incorporates the endogenous accumulation of physical capital, population, human capital, and technology. The model incorporates a complementarity between physical capital and human capital and can be extended to a multi-country...

This study provides a unied growth theory to correctly predictthe initially negative and subsequently positive relationship between child mortalityand net reproduction observed in industrialized countries over the courseof their demographic transitions. The model captures the intricate...

This article investigates economic performance when enforceable propertyrights are missing and basic needs matter for consumption. It suggests anew view of the so-called voracity eect according to which windfall gains inproductivity induce behavior that leads to lower economic growth. Takinginto...

We find a U-shaped relation between happiness and religiosity in cross-country panel dataafter controlling for income levels. At a given level of income, the same level of happinesscan be reached with high and low levels of religiosity, but not with intermediate levels. A risein income causes an...

Unied growth theory predicts that the timing of the fertility transitionis a key determinant of contemporary comparative development, as itmarks the onset of the take-o to sustained growth. Neoclassical growth theorypresupposes a take-o, and explains comparative development by variationsin...

We analyze the cross-national distribution of GDP per capita and its evolutionfrom 1970 to 2003. We argue that peaks are not a suitable measure for distinctgrowth regimes, because the number of peaks is not invariant under strictlymonotonic transformations of the data (e.g. original vs. log...

We analyse the relationship between the debt to GDP ratio and real per capita GDP growth for the euro area members by distinguishing between periods of sustainable and non-sustainable debt. Thresholds are theory-based and depend on the macroeconomic framework. If the interest rate exceeds...