My dissertation consists of two essays aimed at examining how cross-country differences in policies that act as barriers to capital accumulation and technology adoption, can account for the large and persistent cross-country differences in income per capita. My first chapter shows that barriers...

This paper studies how differences in the size of barriers to capital accumulation can account for differences in long run economic development paths. In this model barriers affect both the beginning date and the pace of the modern economic growth. A fundamental property of the model is that...

What factors underlie industry differences in research intensity and productivity growth? We develop a multi-sector endogenous growth model allowing for industry specific parameters in the production functions for output and knowledge, and in consumer preferences. We find that long run industry...