This article investigates economic performance when enforceable property rights are missing and subsistence needs matter. It shows that if per capita income is sufficiently high, a windfall gain in productivity triggers behavior that leads to higher growth (the normal reaction). The same shock...

This paper proposes a model that links households and firms, as usual, by markets for factors and goods and, additionally, by a banking sector that channels households' funds to firms and eliminates idiosyncratic risk. In equilibrium, agency costs and tax benefits of corporate debt are...

Leicht ist man geneigt, zu glauben, daß die Begeisterung über die Fußball-WM im Zusammenspiel mit jüngsten politischen Kampagnen ("Du bist Deutschland") und aktuellen patriotismusfördernden Publikationen (Matussek, 2006, Langenscheidt, 2006) tatsächlich eine Wesensveränderung bei einer...

A neoclassical growth model is augmented by a corporate sector, financial intermediation, and a set of tax rates. In this setting, capital structure is determined by the interplay between an advantage of debt finance resulting from the tax system and a disadvantage resulting from asymmetric...

This paper investigates the impact of subsistence consumption and extrinsic and intrinsic causes of child mortality on fertility and child expenditure. It offers a theory for why mankind multiplies at higher rates at geographically unfavorable, tropical locations. Placed into a macroeconomic...

This paper proposes a theory for the gradual evolution of knowledge diffusion and growth over the very long run. A feedback mechanism between capital accumulation and the ease of knowledge diffusion explains a long epoch of (quasi-) stasis and an epoch of high growth linked by a gradual economic...