What determines the direction of technological progress is one of the central questions that economics needs to answer. By introducing a small but fundamental generalization of Acemolgu (2002) the current paper points out the key determinants of that direction. The extended model argues that...

This paper examines the effect of agricultural development on a country's overall development and growth experience. In most poor countries, large fractions of land, labor, and other productive resources are devoted to producing food for subsistence needs. This food problem can delay a country's...

Distortions in private investment due to credit frictions, and in public investment due to corruption and bureaucratic inefficiencies, have both been suggested as important factors in accounting for the cross-country per capita income distribution. We introduce two modifications to the standard...

The marginal product of human capital in Mankiw, Romer, and Weil's [1992] augmented Solow model measures the direct and two external effects of human capital created from schooling on national income. If this model is valid, its estimates of the share of this marginal product accruing to workers...

For analyzing the impact of climate change and of international climate policies on the international division of labor and on regional welfare the use of a disaggregated multi–sectoral, multi–regional dynamic computable general equilibrium model is appropriate. This paper discusses the...

In an insightful and influential paper, Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992) have suggested that an augmented Solow growth model can account for 80% of the variation in output per capita across countries due to different steady-state growth paths that result from differences in saving rates, education,...

This paper notes that the Mankiw, Romer, and Weil formulation of the augmented Solow growth model has implications not only for the steady-state growth rates but also for how these growth rates would change if there are changes in fundamentals. The analysis supports several of Mankiw, Romer, and...

Why have some countries done so much better than others over the recent past? In order to shed new light on this issue, this paper provides a decomposition of the change in the distribution of output-per-worker across countries over the period 1960-98. The main finding of the paper is that most...

This research argues that variations in the interplay between cultural assimilation and cultural diffusion have played a significant role in giving rise to differential patterns of economic development across the globe. Societies that were geographically less vulnerable to cultural diffusion,...

Technology is a key element for long-term growth and economic development. Given the stark concentration of innovation activities in a few countries most countries have to rely on the international diffusion of newly developed technologies. Some countries may fail to successfully perform the...