This article analyzes the effect of free public education on fertility, private educational investments and human capital accumulation at different stages of economic development. The model shows that when fertility is endogenous parental human capital levels are crucial for implications of free...

The empirical literature finds mixed evidence on the existence of positive productivity externalities in the host country generated by foreign multinational companies. We propose a novel mechanism, which emphasizes the role of local financial markets in enabling foreign direct investment (FDI)...

Pressure from abroad to revalue China’s currency appears to associate its rapid economic growth with the likelihood of a real appreciation. In a world of open economies and differentiated traded goods, however, development-related productivity and endowment growth shocks tend to cause real...

More education is good for growth but what kind of education? This paper tries to contribute to this discussion along two dimensions. We try to disentangle the relative growth returns of primary, secondary and tertiary education, while at the same time accounting for heterogeneity in the...

We construct an otherwise standard general equilibrium model of economic growth and endogenously chosen fiscal policy, in which individuals compete with each other for extra fiscal transfers and two political parties compete with each other for staying in power. The main prediction is that...

This paper proposes a new variable based on patent data to proxy for productive entrepreneurship. Data on self-employment is used as an alternative proxy. In particular, the paper studies the impact of entrepreneurship on economic growth by using these two measures. The study considers 22 OECD...

This paper decomposes the resource curse and its potential reversal in three important dimensions; type of resource, type of institutional measure, and time. Studying components of primary exports we find that the curse is (to various degrees) present for all components but that its possible...

Since World War II, mortality has decreased in the developing world. This paper explores the effects of this mortality fall on economic and demographic growth by a family-optimization model, in which fertility is endogenous and relative wealth yields utility because of status-seeking. The main...

We introduce a new time series measure of the extent of federal regulation in the U.S. and use it to investigate the relationship between federal regulation and macroeconomic performance. We find that regulation has statistically and economically significant effects on aggregate output and the...

This paper is concerned with the role of firm heterogeneity under credit constraints for economic growth. We focus on firm size, innovativeness and credit constraints in a semi-endogenous growth model reflecting recent empirical findings on firm heterogeneity. It allows for an explicit solution...