This paper investigates the impact of subsistence consumption and extrinsic and intrinsic causes of child mortality on fertility and child expenditure. It offers a theory for why mankind multiplies at higher rates at geographically unfavorable, tropical locations. Placed into a macroeconomic...

It is well known that the performance of simple models of economic growth improves substantially through the introduction of subsistence consumption. How to compute subsistence needs, however, is a difficult and controversially discussed issue. Here, I reconsider the linear (Ak) growth model...

This study provides a unified growth theory to correctly predict the initially negative and subsequently positive relationship between child mortality and net reproduction observed in industrialized countries over the course of their demographic transitions. The model captures the intricate...

The paper investigates an economy where parents observe wage rates, interest rates, and child mortality and decide about savings and the quantity and quality of their children. Expenditure on child quality causes human capital accmulation as an external effect. If mortality is high parents...

The present paper provides a new theory of capital accumulation and growth. While the law of motion for capital per worker is structurally identical to that of the neoclassical growth model (Solow, 1956), the underlying foundation is very different. In contrast to the Solow model, the purposed...

This paper investigates how social composition affects social conflict and economic development when property rights are unenforceable. Groups follow Markovian strategies for consumption and investment and may also spend effort in an resource appropriation contest. It is shown that conflict...

Successful economic development is usually characterized by two salient phenomena: industrialization and demographic transition. Chronologically both events happen so closely to each other that historians and economists alike suspect that they are interrelated. This paper develops a theory for...

This paper provides a unified growth theory, i.e. a model that explains the very long-run economic and demographic development path of industrialized economies, stretching from the pre-industrial era to present-day and beyond. Making strict use of Malthus' (1798) so-called preventive check...