This note extends the theory of optimal aging and death (Dalgaard and Strulik, 2010) towards uncertain death. Specifically, it is assumed that at any age the probability to survive depends on the number of health deficits accumulated. It is shown that the results in Dalgaard and Strulik (2011)...

This study presents a novel view on education and health behavior of individuals constrained by aging bodies. The aging process, i.e. the accumulation of health deficits over time, is built on recent insights from gerontology. The loss of body functionality, which eventually leads to death, can...

We set up a three-period overlapping generation model in which young individuals allocate their time to schooling and work, healthy middle aged individuals allocate their time to leisure and work and their income to consumption and savings for retirement, and old age individuals live off their...

We hypothesize that the timing of the fertility transition is an important determinant of comparative physiological development. In support, we provide a model of long-run growth, which elucidates the links between population size, average body size and income during development....

This paper proposes a theory for the social evolution of obesity. It considers a society, in which individuals experience utility from consumption of food and non-food, the state of their health, and the evaluation of their appearance by others. The theory explains why, ceteris paribus, poor...

In the present paper we advance a theory of pre-industrial growth where body size and population size are endogenously determined. Despite the fact that parents invest in both child quantity and productivity enhancing child quality, a take-off does not occur due to a key physiological check: if...

This paper introduces the Small World model (Watts and Strogatz, Nature, 1998) into the theory of economic growth and investigates how increasing economic integration affects firm size and effciency, norm enforcement, and aggregate economic performance. When economic integration is low and local...

This paper develops a bio-economic Malthusian growth model. By integrating recent research on allometric scaling, energy consumption, and ontogenetic growth we provide a model where subsistence consumption is endogenously linked to body mass and fertility. The theory admits a two-dimensional...

Household poverty is a powerful motive for child labor and working frequently comes at the expense of schooling for children. Accounting for these natural links we investigate whether and when there is an additional role for community norms and how the social evaluation of schooling evolves over...

This article investigates economic performance when enforceable property rights are missing and subsistence needs matter. It shows that if per capita income is sufficiently high, a windfall gain in productivity triggers behavior that leads to higher growth (the normal reaction). The same shock...