We introduce relative concerns in the form of conspicuous consumption in a standard economic geography model a la Krugman. The primary intuition is that conspicuous consumption imposes a negative externality on some agents and generates a centrifugal force. We show that this is not always the...

Since World War II, mortality has decreased in the developing world. This paper explores the effects of this mortality fall on economic and demographic growth by a family-optimization model, in which fertility is endogenous and relative wealth yields utility because of status-seeking. The main...

This paper addresses the dynamics of income inequality, both within and across countries. In an endogenous growth model with North-South trade, the dynamics of income inequality depend on the ability of workers to adapt to new technologies, captured by the quality of education. For developing...

We introduce a new time series measure of the extent of federal regulation in the U.S. and use it to investigate the relationship between federal regulation and macroeconomic performance. We find that regulation has statistically and economically significant effects on aggregate output and the...

This document considers an economy with many regions and two engines of growth: horizontal R&D, which increases the number of polluting product lines; and vertical R&D, which improves productivity in these lines. Pollution in any region decreases welfare in all regions. Any group of regions can...

In this paper we present a novel methodology for estimating the determinants of distribution dynamics and discuss an application to the distribution dynamics of (labour) productivity across a large sample of countries. We perform a Monte Carlo study of methodology taking as base Mankiw et al....

This paper studies optimal fiscal policy, in the form of taxation and the allocation of tax revenues between infrastructure and environmental investment, in a general-equilibrium growth model with endogenous subjective discounting. A green spending reform, defined as a reallocation of government...

We study the effects of corruption on economic growth in a framework that includes corruption as part of the institutional setting of countries. Using a formal growth framework where corruption affects labor inputs and the provision of public goods, we find that particularly in situations where...