We argue theoretically and document empirically that aging leads to greater (industrial) automation, and in particular, to more intensive use and development of robots. Using US data, we document that robots substitute for middle-aged workers (those between the ages of (36 and 55). We then show...

Several recent theories emphasize the negative effects of an aging population on economic growth, either because of the lower labor force participation and productivity of older workers or because aging will create an excess of savings over desired investment, leading to secular stagnation. We...

We exploit differences in European mortality rates to estimate the effect of institutions on economic performance. Europeans adopted very different colonization policies in different colonies, with different associated institutions. In places where Europeans faced high mortality rates, they...

Existing studies establish a strong cross-country correlation between income and democracy but do not control for factors that simultaneously affect both variables. We show that controlling for such factors by including country fixed effects removes the statistical association between income per...

We document substantial within-country (cross-municipality) differences in incomes for a large number of countries in the Americas. A significant fraction of the within-country differences cannot be explained by observed human capital. We conjecture that the sources of within-country and...

Many technologies used by the LDCs are developed in the OECD economies and are designed to make optimal use of the skills of these richer countries' workforces. Differences in the supply of skills create a mismatch between the requirements of these technologies and the skills of LDC workers, and...

Many technologies used by the LDCs are developed in the OECD economies, and as such, are used to make optimal use of the skills of these richer countries' workforces. Due to differences in the supply of skills, some of tasks performed by skilled workers in the OECD economies will be carried out...

Many technologies used by the LDCs are developed in the OECD economies, and as such, are designed to make optimal use of the skills of these richer countries' workforces. Due to differences in the supply of skills, some of the tasks performed by skilled workers in the OECD economies will be...

Despite the rapid pace of innovation in information and communications technologies (ICT) and electronics, aggregate US productivity growth has been disappointing since the 1970s. We propose and empirically explore the hypothesis that slow growth stems in part from an unbalanced sectoral...