How does factor accumulation affect the pattern of international specialization and returns to capital? We provide a new integrated treatment to this question using a panel of 44 developing and developed countries over the period 1976-2000. We confirm the Heckscher-Ohlin prediction that, with...

This research explores the origins of loss aversion and the variation in its prevalence across regions, nations and ethnic group. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the evolution of loss aversion in the course of human history can be traced to the adaptation of...

This research suggests that a Darwinian evolution of entrepreneurial spirit played asignificant role in the process of economic development and the dynamics of inequality withinand across societies. The study argues that entrepreneurial spirit evolved non-monotonicallyin the course of human...

This paper introduces a novel approach for dealing with the curse of dimensionality in thecase of large linear dynamic systems. Restrictions on the coefficients of an unrestricted VARare proposed that are binding only in a limit as the number of endogenous variables tends toinfinity...

We investigate the positive and normative consequences of child-labor restrictions foreconomic aggregates and welfare. We argue that even though the laissez-faire outcome maybe inefficient, there are usually better policies to cure these inefficiencies than the impositionof a child-labor ban...

This paper analyzes the effect of firing costs on aggregate productivity growth. For thispurpose, a model of endogenous growth through selection and imitation is developed. It isconsistent with recent evidence on firm dynamics and on the importance of reallocation forproductivity growth...

This paper provides a unified theory of the economic and demographic transition. Individualsmake optimal decisions about fertility, education of their children and the type and intensity ofthe investments in their own education. These decisions are affected by different dimensionsof mortality...

Skill-biased technical change is usually interpreted in terms of the efficiency parameters ofskilled and unskilled labor. This implies that the relative productivity of skilled workerschanges proportionally in all tasks. In contrast, we argue that technical changes also affectthe curvature of...

Several countries have recently abolished or significantly reduced their taxes on bequests.Bequest taxes, on the other hand, were among the first to be introduced when modernsystems of taxation were developed at the end of the nineteenth century. We propose anexplanation for these facts which is...

The theory of endogenous technical change has deeply contributed to our understanding ofthe fundamental sources of economic growth and development. In this chapter we surveyimportant contributions in the field by focussing on the basic structure of endogenous growthmodels with horizontal as well...