The evidence that earnings rise with firm size and that human capital affects earnings based on labour market data are two of the most robust empirical findings in economics. In contrast the evidence for scale economies in firm data is very weak. The limited direct evidence of human capital on...

Do openness to trade and higher levels of human capital promote faster productivity growth? That they do is a key implication of several versions of endogenous growth theory. To answer the question we use panel data on 93 countries spanning the 1970-2000 period. Controlling for fixed effects as...

Three dimensions of the performance of firms in Ghana’s manufacturing sector are investigated in this paper: their technology and the importance of technical and allocative efficiency. We show that the diversity of factor choices in not due to a non-homothetic technology. Observable...

Schooling is typically found to be highly correlated with individual earnings in African countries.  However, African firm or sector level studies have failed to identify a similarly strong effect for average worker schooling levels on productivity.  This has been interpreted as evidence that...

In human capital intensive industries where it is difficult to contract upon the training effort of skilled agents a socially suboptimal level of training may occur. We show how partnership organisations can overcome this problem by tying human and financial capital. Partnerships are opaque so...

Important gaps remain in the understanding of the economic consequences of civil war.  Focusing on the conflict in Rwanda in the early 90s, and using micro data to carry out econometric analysis, this paper finds that households and localities that experience more intense conflict are lagging...

The article aims to present and discuss estimates of levels of human and social capital in Italy's regions over the long term, i.e. roughly from the second half of the nineteenth century up to the present day.  The results are linked to newly available evidence for regional value added in order...

A positive correlation between relative position and the neurotransmitter serotonin exists in non-human primates, within an optimal range. This paper explores the reasons of this correlation. The main function of serotonin appears cognitive: it determines how optimally agents perceive and behave...

Why might there be a long-run trade-off between growth and unemployment? In general equilibrium, the returns on the factors of production are interdependent. This paper develops a model where the determination of the wage is central to the evolution of these incentives. The incentive to hire...

The rapid rise in schooling in developing countries in recent decades has been dramatic. However, many cross-country regression analyses of the impact of schooling on economic growth find low and insignificant coefficients. This empirical `puzzle` contrasts with theoretical arguments that...