We use the largest common factor in 14 items reported in the World Values Surveys as a robust measure of religiosity. This measure is held to identify the importance of religion in all aspects of people's life. The level of religiosity differs by about 50 percentage points between rich and poor...

There are two conditions that are important to investigate the stability problem when considering the long-term cooperative agreements: the dynamic stability (time consistency), and strategic stability. This paper presents the results based on the profit distribution procedure (PRP), which...

Even though the current crisis is clearly global, much of the analysis and many of the policy proposals have a single country viewpoint, particularly in the case of the United States. Explanations concentrate, for example on the financial system and on population-wide indebtment. Here we examine...

In this paper we use an OLG model where agents are heterogeneous within each generation, differing in their impatience rate. We show that the effects of a capital-using technological change are not symmetric between agents and can cause a reduction in consumption. The asymmetry in impatience...

We analyze the effects of demographic change on medium- and long-run economic growth by setting forth an R&D-based growth model including an endogenous demographic structure. The model framework is consistent with the experience of industrialized countries, where declines in mortality are...

This paper first sets an equation for the average intelligence of a country or a human group, which is determined by genetic factors and other variables where education is one of them. Another equation representing a production function of education depends upon intelligence and different...

This paper is concerned with the role of firm heterogeneity under credit constraints for economic growth. We focus on firm size, innovativeness and credit constraints in a semi-endogenous growth model reflecting recent empirical findings on firm heterogeneity. It allows for an explicit solution...

What determines whether a country is better at using some technologies than others? A widely held view is that a country’s ability to absorb and implement technologies is tied to its human capital. In this paper, we construct a novel specification of technology that incorporates this idea....

The complex matrix of retirement policy trade-offs – encompassing elements of paternalism, market failure, and overlaying incentives in a life-cycle context – have received much attention in the literature. But the issue of whether publicly-funded retirement provision should be means-tested,...

This paper explores the interrelations between economic growth, international trade and environmental degradation both theoretically and empirically. Panel data from developed and developing countries for the period of 1980 to 2003 is used and previous critique, especially on the econometric...