The authors present a model of endogenous growth in which the main engine of economic development is knowledge. Using a two-sector closed economy model that comprises of a conventional goods-producing sector and a research and development sector, their model incorporates two key aspects of...

Why do economies exhibit sustained growth in per capita income? This paper argues that endogenous fertility and increasing returns to scale are the fundamental ingredients in understanding endogenous growth. Endogenous fertility leads the scale of the economy to grow over time. Increasing...

Why do economies exhibit sustained growth in per capita income? This paper argues that endogenous fertility and increasing returns to scale are the fundamental ingredients in understanding endogenous growth. Endogenous fertility leads the scale of the economy to grow over time. Increasing...

Formal theories of economic growth, including newly popular models of "endogenous" growth, rely on a conception of knowledge as explicit and costlessly transferable. Once created, knowledge can spill easily into the hands of others at zero marginal cost, a process of "spillover" that is the...

In neoclassical theory, knowledge generates increasing returns-and therefore growth-because it is a public good that can be costlessly reused once created. In fact, however, much knowledge in the economy is actually tacit and not easily transmitted-and thus not an obvious source of increasing...