Cultural transmission arguably plays an important role in the determination of many fundamental preference traits (e.g., discounting, risk aversion and altruism) and most cultural traits, social norms, and ideological tenets ( e.g., attitudes towards family and fertility practices, and attitudes...

This paper summarizes findings reported in a forthcoming NBER volume entitled 'Generational Accounting Around the World.' This volume includes generational accounting studies for 17 countries. The findings are shocking. The world's leading industrial powers - the U.S., Japan, and Germany - all...

Social security system old age insurance systems are devices for the sharing of income risks of elderly people with others. Risks can be shared intergenerationally (with the young of the same country), intragenerationally (with other elderly of the same country), or internationally (with...

Following on Keynes's Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, this paper develops conjectures about the world we will leave to our grandchildren. It starts by outlining the 10 most important trends that have defined our economic, social, and political lives over the last 100 years. It then...

PPP-based national accounts have become an important part of the database for macroeconomists, development economists, and economic historians. Frequently used global data come from the Penn World Table (PWT) and the World Bank's World Development Indicators; a substantial fraction of the world...

Globalization, in the form of financial flows, which is always advantageous on an aggregative level, typically creates winners and losers, if left exclusively to market forces. The paper demonstrates that typical welfare-state redistribution policies, governed by a majority of the population,...

We meta-analyze for impact and cost-effectiveness 94 studies from 47 conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs in low- and middle-income countries worldwide, focusing on educational outcomes that include enrollment, attendance, dropout and school completion. To conceptually guide and interpret...