The topic of this paper has been inspired by something of particular interest to Michael Mussa, something to which he made major and important contributions while at the IMF. The biannual World Economic Outlook, published since the 1980s under the auspices of the Research Department, has, as its...

In this paper we attempt to describe the general picture reasons behind the world population explosion during the 20th century. In general we comment that if, according to some, at the end of the 20th century there were too many people, this was has a consequence of scientific innovation,...