The volatility of unanticipated output growth in income per capita is detrimental to long-run development, controlling for initial income per capita, population growth, human capital, investment, openness and natural resource dependence. This effect is significant and robust over a wide range of...

This research argues that variations in the interplay between cultural assimilation and cultural diffusion have played a significant role in giving rise to differential patterns of economic development across the globe. Societies that were geographically less vulnerable to cultural diffusion,...

This chapter reviews the literature that tries to explain the disparity and variation of GDP per worker and GDP per capita across countries and across time. There are many potential explanations for the different patterns of development across countries, including differences in luck, raw...

According to increasing marginal tendency to tax avoidance, we establish a dynamic theoretical model, which illustrates an inverted U-curve relationship between economic growth and income inequality in the long run. This finding stands in sharp contrast to the Kuznets curve—whereby inequality...

We analyze the role of the Scientific Revolution in the takeoff to sustained economic growth. Basic scientific knowledge is a necessary input in the production of applied knowledge, which, in turn, fuels productivity growth and leads to rising incomes. Subsequently, rising incomes instigate a...

We investigate the effect of higher education on the evolution of inequality. In so doing we propose a novel overlapping generations model with three social classes: the rich, the middle class, and the poor. We show that there is an initial phase in which no social class invests in higher...

Romania's economic growth is a target that can be achieved only within the accordance of all the economic sectors with the Europe 2020 Strategy. As provided in the Convergence Programme 2014-2020, this objective entails a series of steps that Romania must rigorously follow in order to be able to...