We document the behavior of income per capita in Argentina subsequent to independence and the civil wars of the mid-19th century. We first decompose the data to isolate low frequency behavior and show that, with significant departures over some periods of time, income per capita grew, on...

In this paper we show how risk free bonds of different maturities can be used to replace state contingent debt in a general equilibrium dynamic optimal taxation problem. In particular, we show that if the state of the economy can only take a finite number N of values each period, then the...

We review new theories of learning that posit specific, distinct roles for the learner or innovator and their intellectual environment. We consider applications to the dynamics of individual earnings over the life cycle, the diffusion of knowledge within an organization and firm dynamics, and...

How should industrial policies be directed to reduce distortions and foster economic development? We study this question in a multi-sector model with technology adoption, where the production of goods and modern technologies features rich network structures. We provide simple formulas for the...

Structural change involves a broad set of trends: (i) sectoral reallocations, (ii) rich movements of productive activities between home and market, and (iii) an increase in the scale of productive units. After extending these facts, we develop a model to explain them within a unified framework....

This paper quantifies the roles of increases in the demand for skill-intensive output, the efficient scale of service production, and female labor supply in the growth of services. We extend the Buera and Kaboski (2012a,b) model to a two-person household, incorporating a joint decision on home...