This paper focuses on the role of R&D efforts – both domestic and foreign – and human capital investments to the development of national productivity. As technology is also embodied in human capital, the paper empirically investigates the significance of labour mobility as an effective...

Does emigration really drain human capital accumulation in origin countries? This paper explores a unique household survey purposely designed and conducted to answer this specific question for the case of Cape Verde. This is allegedly the African country suffering from the largest "brain drain",...

In my first paper I examine the impact of short-term economic shocks on physician migration using a new panel dataset on physician migration from 31 African countries to the US and the UK. I estimate distributed-lag regressions of log migration on economic growth, I also instrument for growth...

In this paper we develop a neoclassical growth model that aggregates different types of labor skills from strict complementarity to perfect substitution. After having derived general balanced growth conditions and developed explicit growth paths for capital and aggregate labor force, the model...

The aim of this doctoral thesis is to look at the worldwide relevance of high-value patents granted in Germany between the enactment of the first nationwide German patent law in 1877 and 1932. This patent act enabled both, national and foreign patentees to reap the fruits of their intellectual...

For researchers studying the economic development of nations, the availability of human capital data is crucial. Economists making efforts to examine the impact of human resources on economic development before the end of World War II often face massive problems. Methods of collecting data,...

This Ph.D. dissertation studies innovation in Germany from 1877 to 1914. The German patents that had survived for at least ten years are used as a proxy of innovation. The introduction briefly outlines the issues to be investigated. The first chapter examines the successive waves of...