We consider the relative contributions of changing technology and institutions for economic growth through the investigation of a natural experiment in history: the almost simultaneous introduction of the automatic cream separator and the cooperative ownership form in the Danish dairy industry...

Economic historians have stressed that income convergence was a key feature of the 'OECD-club' and that globalization was among the accelerating forces of this process in the long-run. This view has however been challenged, since it suffers from an ad hoc selection of countries. In the paper, a...

We document empirically that rich countries are more politically cohesive than poorer countries. In order to explain this regularity, we provide a model where political cohesion is linked to the emergence of a fully functioning market economy. Without market exchange, the welfare of inherently...

Empirically, a higher frequency of lightning strikes is associated with slower growth in labor productivity across the 48 contiguous US states after 1990; before 1990 there is no correlation between growth and lightning. Other climate variables (e.g., temperature, rainfall and tornadoes) do not...

I reconsider the empirical relationship between business cycles and economic growth and pose the question: How long are business cycles when we try to distinguish between business cycles and economic growth? There is a common held view - a myth - that the cyclical component has a period up to...

While a political consensus has emerged to increase aid flows to Sub-Saharan Africa, empirical studies of the effectiveness of aid in stimulating growth and reducing poverty have yet to yield conclusive results. The present paper takes a different approach. Using the standard neoclassical growth...

This paper provides a unified growth theory, i.e. a model that explains the very long-run economic and demographic development path of industrialized economies, stretching from the pre-industrial era to present-day and beyond. Making strict use of Malthus’ (1798) so-called preventive check...

We study the hypothesis that there is a connection between business cycles and economic growth. If economic growth and business cycles were completely independent of each other, then changes in the growth rate would be unrelated to dates of business cycle turning points (apart from pure...

We analyse the Granger-causal relationships between foreign direct investment (FDI) and GDP in a sample of 31 developing countries covering the period 1970-2000. Using estimators for heterogeneous panel data we find bi-directional causality between the FDI/GDP ratio and the level of GDP. FDI is...

This study provides a unified growth theory to correctly predict the initially negative and subsequently positive relationship between child mortality and net reproduction observed in industrialized countries over the course of their demographic transitions. The model captures the intricate...