Many developing countries are plagued by persistent inequality in income distribution. While a growing body of economic-demographic literature emphasizes differential fertility channel, this paper investigates differential child mortality - differences in child mortality across income groups -...

Social institutions undoubtedly affect a country's economy. But how does this effect operate and how much does it matter for economic development? Using network analysis tools, we explore how different social structures might affect a country's rate of technological progress. The network model...

Does the pattern of social connections between individuals matter for macroeconomic outcomes? If so, where do these differences come from and how large are their effects? Using network analysis tools, we explore how different social network structures affect technology diffusion and thereby a...

We develop a tractable general theory for the study of the economic and demographic impact of epidemics. In particular, we analytically characterise the short and medium term consequences of epidemics for population size, age pyramid, economic performance and income distribution. To this end, we...

The relationship between per capita income and a number of pollution indicators has been found to display an inverted U-shaped or downward-sloping pattern. Corruption may affect this relationship in two distinct ways: by raising pollution at given income levels (direct effect) and by reducing...

We build a model of conflict in which two groups contest a resource and must decide on the optimal allocation of labor between fighting and productive activities. In this setting, a diaspora emanating from one of the two groups can get actively involved in the conflict by transferring financial...

This paper proposes and empirically validates four theories of why legal origin influences growth and welfare through finance. It is a natural extension of "Law and finance: why does legal origin matter?" by Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt and Ross Levine (2003). We find only partial support...

This paper presents the new dynamic spatial general equilibrium (DSGE) model – RHOMOLO, which is built to support the EU policy design by undertaking holistic, micro-founded and disaggregated policy impact assessment. The RHOMOLO model is based on the theories of general equilibrium,...

Along the development path, countries experience large transformations in their economic structure as productive resources move towards different economic activities. ''Modern economic growth'' is also associated with a self-sustained process of technical change which leads to the emergence of...

In France, firms that have 50 employees or more face substantially more regulation than firms that have less than 50. As a result, the size distribution of firms is visibly distorted: there are many firms with exactly 49 employees. We model the regulation as the combination of a sunk cost that...