We provide two ways to reconcile small values of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) that range between 0.35 and 0.5 with empirical evidence that the IES is large. We do this reconciliation using a model in which all agents have identical preferences and the same access to asset...

A recent literature in development economics has focused renewed attention on land redistribution. Driven in part by political events in countries like Zimbabwe, the literature has sought to understand the economic implications of land reform. Much of this literature focuses on credit market...

The purpose of the paper is to study the effects of labor market policies on the equilibrium rate of growth in the Grossman-Helpman model. For that purpose, the version of the their model developed by Klette and Kortum to explain the distribution of firm size is extended to allow for both...

The path of economic development for rich industrialized countries is typically to transit from farming to manufacturing to services. To do so requires corresponding productivity gains to pull the economy from one sector to the next one. For example, the US and Japan developed their...

This paper contributes to the literature comparing the relative performance of financial intermediaries and markets by studying an environment in which a trade-off between risk sharing and growth arises endogenously. Financial intermediaries provide insurance to households against a liquidity...

Recent growth papers have utilized the Ben-Porath 1967 mechanism according to which prolonging the period in which individuals may receive returns on their investment spurs investment in human capital and cause growth. Implicitly, one implication of these models is that total labor input over...

This paper analyzes optimal foreign aid policy in a neoclassical framework with a conflict of interest between the donor and the recipient government. Aid conditionality is modelled as a limited enforceable contract. We define conditional aid policy to be self-enforcing if, at any point in time,...

This paper studies how the world accommodates emerging giants. That is, as a large country embarks on a transition path that potentially takes it from being a relatively poor country to joining the ranks of the rich, how does the rest of the world adjust in reallocating its scarce resources?...