A key aspect of generating new ideas is drawing from different elements of past knowledge and combining them into a new idea. In such a process, the diversity of ideas plays a central role. This paper examines the empirical question of how the internet affected the diversity of new research by...

During industrialization, Protestants were more literate than Catholics. This paper investigates whether this fact may be led back to the intrinsic motivation of Protestants to read the bible and whether other education motives were involved as well. We employ a historical data set from...

Growth is associated with (i) shifts in the sectoral structure of the economy, (ii) changes in relative prices and (iii) the Kaldor facts. Moreover, (iv) cross-sectional data shows systematic differences in the expenditure structure across income groups. This paper presents a growth model which...

A key aspect of generating new ideas is drawing from different elements of preexisting knowledge and combining them into a new idea. In such a process, the diversity of ideas plays a central role. This paper examines the empirical question of how the internet affected the diversity of new...

Sectoral data features (i) changing relative expenditures of different sectors, (ii) non-constancy in relative prices and (iii) long-run trends in relative TFP growth rates across sectors. We provide a tractable theory of industry directed technical change, which is able to reconcile these...

This paper examines under which conditions religious denomination affects public spending on schooling and educational performance. We employ a unique data set which covers, inter alia, information on numerous measures of public school inputs in 169 Swiss districts for the years 1871/72, 1881/82...

This paper presents a tractable endogenous two-sector growth model with non-Gorman intra-temporal preferences and directed technical change. One of the two consumption goods is a necessity, whereas the other is a luxury. If the economy starts with a low initial knowledge stock, households are...

In the course of growth, sectoral data features (i) changing relative expenditures of different sectors, (ii) non-constancy in the growth rates of relative prices and (iii) shifting relative TFP growth rates of sectors. This paper presents a simple model of directed technical change, which is...

type="main" xml:lang="en" <p>During industrialization, Protestants were more literate than Catholics. This paper investigates whether this fact may be led back to the intrinsic motivation of Protestants to read the bible and to what extent other education motives might have been involved as well....</p>

U.S. data reveal three facts: (1) the share of goods in total expenditure declines at a constant rate over time, (2) the price of goods relative to services declines at a constant rate over time, and (3) poor households spend a larger fraction of their budget on goods than do rich households. I...