China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

Malaria is the primary cause of death among children and a barrier to childhood human capital accumulation in sub-Saharan Africa. The macroeconomics literature thus far concludes that eradicating malaria would mainly increase populations but not substantially raise living standards. This paper...

Using an endogenous-growth, overlapping-generations framework in which human capital is the engine of growth, we trace the dynamic evolution of income and fertility distributions and their interdependencies over three endogenous phases of economic development. In our model, heterogeneous...

This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in...

We analyze the economic consequences for less developed countries of investing in female health. We do this through developing and calibrating a novel micro-founded dynamic general equilibrium model in which parents trade off the number of children against investments in their education and in...

We analyze the economic consequences for less developed countries of investing in female health. In so doing we introduce a novel micro-founded dynamic general equilibrium framework in which parents trade off the number of children against investments in their education and in which we allow for...

We analyze the economic consequences for less developed countries of investing in female health. In so doing we introduce a novel micro-founded dynamic general equilibrium framework in which parents trade off the number of children against investments in their education and in which we allow for...

Individuals' choices of educational content are often shaped by the political economy of government policies that determine the incentives to acquire various skills. We first present a model to show how differences in educational content emerge as an equilibrium outcome of private decisions and...

Beyond years of schooling, educational content can play an important role in the process of economic development. Individuals ́choices of educational content are often shaped by the political economy of government policies that determine the incentives to acquire various skills. We first...

This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in...