We examine the contribution of human capital to economy-wide technological improvements through the two channels of innovation and imitation. We develop a theoretical model showing that skilled labor has a higher growth-enhancing effect closer to the technological frontier under the reasonable...

Although developing countries face a drastic increase in their greenhouse gas emissions, mitigation actions against climate change do not rank high among their priorities. The obvious reason lies in the necessity for them to continue the development process, which is characterised by pressing...

The relationship between economic growth and pollution is very complex, depending upon a host of different factors. Thus the study of this phenomenon represents a challenging endeavor. While most economics papers begin with theory and support that theory with econometric evidence, the literature...

Environmental policy affects the distribution of market shares if intermediate goods are differentiated in pollution intensity. When innovations are environmental friendly, a tax on emissions skews demand towards new goods, which are the most productive. In this case along a balanced growth path...

The long-run evolution of per-capita income exhibits a structural break often associated with the Industrial Revolution. We follow Mokyr (2002) and embed the idea that this structural break reflects a regime switch in the evolution of technological knowledge into a dynamic framework, using Airy...

Evolutionary and environmental economics have a potentially close relationship. This paper reviews past and identifies potential applications of evolutionary concepts and methods to environmental economics. This covers a number of themes: resource use and ecosystem management; growth and...

The analysis in this paper shows that unpredictable variations in economic productivity may have a positive or negative effect on the average growth rate of output. This theoretical ambiguity result is not solely determined by the value of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (of...

We propose a theoretical model/framework for the analysis of the concomitant effects of structural changes in both production and consumption, on long run economic growth and income distribution. To accomplish with such a broad aim, we develop an evolutionary model with agentbased...

The paper, as such a draft of a chapter for the second edition of the 'Handbook of Economic Socielogy', Edited by Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg, is meant to offer some sort of roadmap accross a few fields of investigation concerning the relationships between technological learning and...