In 1995, less than 500 million people traveled abroad. In 2011, 980 million people traveled to a foreign country. Tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the world economy and it is estimated that it grew at a rate of 4.4% in 2011. This paper examines the postulate that tourism is the...

Recent research on the intertemporal dynamics of poverty using microeconomic data often hints at the existence of poverty traps, where some find themselves trapped at a low-level stable equilibrium while others enjoy a higher stable equilibrium. Without a sizable positive shock to well-being,...

The demographic transition is introduced into the otherwise standard Ramsey model to generate multiple equilibria, poverty traps, and demography-driven cycles. The model is calibrated for global data to explore the demographic conditions under which multiplicity is realized. Three cases arise,...

In this paper, I merge two theories -- theory of "passionate individuals" by Gumilev(1989) and Memetics by Dawkins(1976) - to develop a formal growth theory that states that societies become more developed when their members have more intrinsic motivation to solve problems of social importance...

This paper examines asset dynamics for husband-owned, wife-owned, and jointly owned assets, using unique longitudinal survey data from rural Bangladesh. Nonparametric and parametric methods are used to examine the shape of the dynamic asset frontier, the number of equilibria, and whether land...

In a three period overlapping generations model with child labour, exogenous increases in child health endowments increase child labour and fertility. On the other hand, cash transfer and compulsory education funded through foreign aid have a negative effect on child labour. Foreign aid has a...

We use panel data from the 2002-2007 period to analyze poverty dynamics in rural Mexico. The poverty measures show almost three fifths of the surveyed households experienced poverty at least once, while one fifth were cataloged as chronically poor. Additionally, asset accumulation dynamics show...

We examine the constitutional design required for democratic societies to overcome poverty traps. Restricting agenda setting by ensuring subsistence levels of consumption and applying simple majority voting as a decision rule will not enable a society to overcome poverty. We show that a...

This paper reexamines an important early contribution to the growth literature highlighted in 2000 by Cannon in the American Economic Review: "The production function in allocation and growth: A synthesis" by Marvin Frankel in 1962. First this contribution provides a formal proof in the...

Drawing on four generations of poverty measurement, this paper uses panel data from the 2002-2007 period to analyze rural poverty in Mexico. The results show that almost three fifths of the surveyed households experienced poverty at least once, while one fifth was persistently poor. While these...