This paper aims at analyzing the implications of individuals' consumption jealousy on the dynamic structure of a two-sector model economy. We find that status-seeking substantially influences both, the long-term properties and the adjustment behavior of the model. Depending on the status motive,...

Estimates of the effect of education on GDP (the social return) have been hard to reconcile with micro evidence on the private return to schooling. We present a simple explanation combining two ideas: imperfect substitution and endogenous skill-biased technological progress and use cross-country...

This paper links the two fields of 'development traps' and 'brain drain'. We construct a model which integrates endogenous international migration into a simple growth model. As a result the dynamics of the economy can feature some underdevelopment traps: an economy starting with a low level of...

Does a country?s level of unemployment have an impact on the long-run growth rate? Incorporating unemployment into a generalised augmented Solow-type growth model, yields some answers to this question. In particular, we show that the impact of unemployment on productivity growth heavily depends...

Regional output per worker has converged in China in the era of market socialism since 1978. The estimated speed of convergence is about 2 percent. This speed of convergence can be explained by an open economy neoclassical growth model in the tradition of Robert Solow. My empirical results show...

We estimate the relative roles of factor inputs and productivity in explaining the level of economic development, which is measured as output per worker. For a large sample of countries, we show that alternative identifying productivity assumptions and alternative measures of human capital have...

While it is largely uncontroversial that human capital can be considered as one of the shaping factors of economic growth, no agreement exists on the specific role of human capital formation. Competing theories all stressing different aspects of human capital formation are not in short supply,...

The role of human capital has so far not been well documented at the macroeconomic level. Many empirical studies lack a consistent theoretical foundation and there are measurement problems due to a very narrow concept of human capital focusing on formal education. Future empirical research...

Unified Growth Theory uncovers the forces that contributed to the existence of multiple growth regimes and the emergence of convergence clubs. It suggests that differential timing of take-offs from stagnation to growth segmented economies into three fundamental regimes: slow growing economies in...