We construct an endogenous growth model incorporating Nelson and Phelps' insight that human capital and technology are complementary. By assuming that new technologies can initially be operated by skilled labor only, we formalize the idea that the payoff to human capital is positive only if...

How does the size of the transfer system evolve in the short and in the long run? We construct a model where taxation is distortionary because it discourages capital accumulation. We compare the Ramsey allocation with the time-consistent allocation. The latter can be interpreted as the outcome...

Both empirical and theoretical evidence suggests that preference heterogeneity is a necessary feature of any model that is able to account for observed heterogeneity in wealth and lifetime income and consumption profiles. Why do tastes differ across people? We propose a framework in which people...

We construct a theory of intergenerational preference transmission that rationalizes the choice between alternative parenting styles (related to Baumrind 1967). Parents maximize an objective function that combines Beckerian and paternalistic altruism towards children. They can affect their...

We develop a theory of the intergenerational transmission of risk preferences. Parents can instill either risk tolerance or risk aversion in their children, and face both altruistic and paternalistic motives in this process. Risk-tolerant children are more likely to benefit from profitable but...

We study the effects of offshoring on wages, welfare and inequality through its impact on technology. To this end, we introduce directed technical change into a model of task-based production and offshoring. A unique final good is produced by combining a skilled and an unskilled intermediate...

China has been growing at a high rate and has at the same time accumulated a staggering foreign surplus. We construct a theory that explains these seemingly puzzling observations, while being consistent with salient features of the Chinese growth experience since 1992: high output growth,...

We discuss a unified theory of directed technological change and technology adoption that can shed light on the causes of persistent productivity differences across countries. In our model, new technologies are designed in advanced countries and diffuse endogenously to less developed countries....

We test the implications of the theory in the presence of political shocks affecting the taste for public consumption. Government debt is mean reverting and left-wing governments are predicted to accumulate less debt. Data from the US and from a panel of 21 OECD countries confirm the main...