This paper aims to account for varying economic performances and political stability under dictatorship. We argue that economic welfare and social order are the contemporary relevant factors of political regimes’ stability. Societies with low natural level of social order tend to tolerate...

This paper examines the existence condition of a balanced growth path in an overlapping generations model in which production uses three inputs, physical capital, human capital and land, with increasing returns to scale. Human capital is the engine of economic growth. It is shown that, unlike...

In a two- region model, we formalize Kindleberger’s idea that wealth breeds first more wealth, and then decline : when one region leads, its inhabitants develop consumption habits incompatible with the necessary investment in knowledge to remain the leader. This gives the other region a window...

We here consider how Chinese firms adjust to higher minimum wages and how these affect aggregate productivity, exploiting the 2004 minimum-wage reform in China. We find that higher city-level minimum wages reduced the survival probability of firms which were the most exposed to the reform. For...

This paper uses Belgian firm-level data, covering the 1998-2006 period, to assess the impact on TFP growth of key labour force structural changes: ageing, feminisation and rise of educational attainment. Based on a Hellerstein-Neumark analytical framework, our work shows that an ageing workforce...

This paper investigates the problem of an "optimum population" concerning age structures in a 3-period OLG-model with endogenous fertility and longevity. The first-best solution for a number-dampened total social welfare function, including Millian and Benthamite utilitarianism as two extreme...

This paper shows that differences in fertility across European countries mainly emerge in the transition from the first to the second child and that childcare services enabling women to work are an important determinant for this transition to occur. The theoretical framework proposed accounts...

In several OECD countries age-targeted wage subsidies have been introduced to increase the employment of older workers, but evidence on their effectiveness is scarce. This paper examines the effects of a permanent wage cost subsidy in Belgium on the employment rate, working time and hourly wage....

We study the impact of graduating in a recession in Flanders (Belgium), i.e. in a rigid labor market. In the presence of a high minimum wage, a typical recession hardly influences the hourly wage of low educated men, but reduces working time and earnings by about 4.5% up to twelve years after...

Beyond natural sterility, there are two main types of childlessness: one driven by poverty and another by the high opportunity cost to child-rearing. We argue that taking childlessness and its causes into account matters for assessing the impact of development policies on fertility. We measure...