Do high levels of human capital foster economic growth by facilitating technology adoption? If so, countries with more human capital should have adopted more rapidly the skilled-labor augmenting technologies becoming available since the 1970’s. High human capital levels should therefore have...

We present a novel argument demonstrating that when trade is characterized by uncertainty the comparative advantages doctrine is misleading and a positive level of diversification is growth enhancing. Applying a result developed in the mathematical biological literature, we show that, in...