The role of agricultural productivity in economic development is addressed in a two-sector model of endogenous growth in which a) preferences are non-homothetic and the income elasticity of demand for the agricultural good is less than unitary, and b) the engine of growth is learning-by-doing in...

We construct a model of growth based on endogenous technological change in a small, open economy. Entrepreneurs develop new intermediate products whenever the present value of potential profits exceeds the cost of R&D. Diversity of intermediates contributes to total factor productivity in the...

This paper examines the effects of taxation of human capital, physical capital and foreign assets in a multi-sector model of endogenous growth. It is shown that in general the growth rate is reduced by taxes on capital and labor (human capital) income. When the government faces no borrowing...

Most trade-and-growth studies focus on the growth effects of autarky-to-free-trade changes, rather than those of incremental liberalizations. This paper characterizes how the strength and sign of openness-and-growth links depend upon the nature and level of trade barriers. For most types of...

This paper uses an open economy DSGE model to explore how trade openness affects the transmission of domestic shocks. For some calibrations, closed and open economies appear dramatically different, reminiscent of the implications of Mundell-Fleming style models. However, we argue such stark...

This paper examines whether the sector bias of skill-biased technical change (sbtc) explains changing skill premia within countries in recent decades. First, using a two-factor, two-sector, two-country model we demonstrate that in many cases it is the sector bias of sbtc that determines sbtc's...

This paper proposes a new and unified explanation for the following trends observed over the last 25 years: (1) the increased returns to education, (2) the slow measured growth in TFP in an economy undergoing massive changes in its methods of production, and (3) the poor wage performance,...

A satisfactory account of the postwar growth experience of the United States should be able to come to terms with the following three facts: 1. Since the early 1970's there has been a slump in the advance of productivity. 2. The price of new equipment has fallen steadily over the postwar period....

Is financial innovation necessary for sustaining economic growth? To address this question, we build a Schumpeterian model in which entrepreneurs earn profits by inventing better goods and profit-maximizing financiers arise to screen entrepreneurs. The model has two novel features. First,...

This paper revisits the important ideas proposed by Atkinson and Stiglitz's seminal 1969 paper on technological change. After linking these ideas to the induced innovation literature of the 1960s and the more recent directed technological change literature, it explains how these three...