This paper develops a model in which the interaction of entrepreneurial investments and power of the owners of land or other natural resources determines structural change and economic development. A more equal distribution of natural resources promotes structural change and growth through two...

Economic development in Latin America has trailed most other world regions over the past four decades despite its relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle can be resolved by considering the actual learning as expressed in tests of cognitive skills, on which...

China's rapid growth was fueled by substantial physical capital investments applied to a large stock of medium skilled labor acquired before economic reforms began. As development proceeded, the demand for high skilled labor has grown, and, in the past decade, China has made substantial...

This paper shows that within-country happiness inequality has fallen in the majority of countries that have experienced positive income growth over the last forty years, in particular in developed countries. This new stylized fact comes as an addition to the Easterlin paradox, which states that...

New institutionalism has had considerable success during the last decade in shepherding the debate on sustained economic development. If the sociopolitical, legal and economic transformations in the Anglo-Saxon world in the last three decades prove anything, however, it is that the late Mancur...

We present a model in which two of the most important features of the long-run growth process are reconciled: the massive changes in the structure of production and employment; and the Kaldor facts of economic growth. We assume that households expand their consumption along a hierarchy of needs...

We study a multi-sector model of growth with differences in TFP growth rates across sectors and derive sufficient conditions for the coexistence of structural change, characterized by sectoral labor reallocation, and balanced aggregate growth. The conditions are weak restrictions on the utility...

We document the nature of structural changes in employment to understand jobless growth in Irish Manufacturing in the aftermath of EEC/EU membership, 1972-2003. By 1972, forty years of protectionism and fifteen years of export promotion induced the coexistence of large exporting plants with...

In this paper we study the social, demographic and economic origins of social security. The data for the U.S. and for a cross section of countries make it clear that urbanization and industrialization are strongly associated with the rise of social insurance. We describe a model economy in which...

The process of economic development is characterized by substantial rural-urban migrations and a decreasing share of agriculture in output and employment. The literature highlights two main engines behind this process of structural change: (i) improvements in agricultural technology combined...