At least one of every five marriages is consanguineous (between couples who are second cousins or closer) in the Middle East and North Africa, and the rate is higher than 50 percent in some parts of the world. Consanguineous marriage generates serious health problems for the offspring and...

The approach put forward in this article is based on Schumpeter`s idea of creative destruction, the competitive process by which entrepreneurs are always looking for new ideas that will render their rivals` ideas obsolete. I present a model in which the rate of economic growth is sensitive to...

This paper is dating from 1995, when it has been presented at the Ragnar Frisch Centennial Memorial Conference in Oslo. It has never been published before.In this paper for the first time the Cantril ladder question data have been employed in the way which later has become known as happiness...

I show how the influences of unskilled immigration, differential fertility between immigrants and the local indigenous population, and incentives for investment in human capital combine to predict the decline of the West. In particular, indigenous low-skilled workers lose from unskilled...

This article analyzes the consequences of integration in public education. I show that the flight from the integrated multicultural public schools to private education increases private educational expenditures and, as a result, decreases fertility among more affluent parents whose children...

Using data from national socio-economic panel surveys in Australia, Britain and Germany, this paper analyzes the effects of individual preferences and choices on subjective well-being (SWB). It is shown that, in all three countries, preferences and choices relating to life goals/values,...

A standard approach to estimating structural parameters in life-cycle models imposes sufficient assumptions on the data to identify the "age profile" of outcomes, then chooses model parameters so that the model's age profile matches this empirical age profile. I show that this approach is both...

In empirical research it is common practice to use sensible rules of thumb for cleaning data. Measurement error is often the justification for removing (trimming) or recoding (winsorizing) observations whose values lie outside a specified range. We consider a general measurement error process...

This paper studies how an institution such as markets affects the evolution of mankind. My key point is that the forces of natural selection are made weaker because trade allows people to specialize in those activities where they are strong, and to offset their weaknesses by purchasing adequate...

This paper analyses the economic issues associated with human cloning and new reproductive technologies. We analyze the incentives for human cloning and its implications for the long run distribution of skills and income. We analyse models of human cloning for different motives, focusing on...