Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide explanation for the economic development of the earliest Islamic state. It focuses on the role of human capital as the most important element of this model and focuses on four dimensions of development of human personality in Islam: the...

Entrepreneurship contributes to business dynamics in all economies, and the individual benefits of starting a business are clear. Nonetheless, access to business start-ups may not be available to all people because of resource constraints. Using a unique new data set for the United States, we...

Growth of human capital, defined as the change in the fraction of a metropolitan area's labor force with a bachelor's degree, is typically viewed as generating a number of desirable outcomes, including economic growth. Yet, in spite of its importance, few empirical studies have explored why some...

For the first time, nationally representative data on women's employment histories are used to study the gap between women's and men's pay in Great Britain. It is decomposed into a gap attributable to gender differences in human capital characteristics (such as education, work experience, and...

We study the formation of human capital and its transmission across generations when a society is assailed by an epidemic disease such as AIDS. We establish that the disease can severely retard economic growth, even to the point of leading to an economic collapse. We also show that the epidemic...

An incomplete markets life-cycle model with indivisible labour makes career lengths and human capital accumulation respond to labour tax rates and government supplied non-employment benefits. We compare aggregate and individual outcomes in this individualistic incomplete markets model with those...