Altruistic parents choose fertility and consumption by maximizing a dynastic utility f unction. The maximization implies an arbitrage condition for consumpt ion across generations and equality between the benefit from an extra child and the child-rearing cost. These conditions imply that fertil...

This paper considers specialization and the division of labor. A more extensive division of labor raises productivity because returns to the time spent on tasks are usually greater to workers who concentrate on a narrower range of skills. The traditional discussion of the division of labor...

Our analysis treats advertisements and the goods advertised as complements in stable metautility functions, and generates new results for advertising by building on and extending the general analysis of complements. By assimilating the theory of advertising into the theory of complements, we...

The authors model a consumer's efforts to reduce the discount on future utilities. Their analysis shows how wealth, mortality, addictions, uncertainty, and other variables affect the degree of time preference. In addition to working out many implications of the model, the authors discuss...

For ninety-eight countries in the period 1960-85, the growth rate of real per capita GDP is positively related to initial human capital (proxied by 1960 school-enrollment rates) and negatively related to the initial (1960) level of real per capita GDP. Countries with higher human capital also...