Economics: Research Guide

This paper studies the intricate relationship between investments in the rule-of-law capital and phys- ical production capital within a dynamic model of optimal growth and development. It highlights the mutual influence between institutional changes, such as those in the rule of law, property rights, and legislation systems, and economic performance over time and across different nations. Notably, it sheds light on how the escalating expenses associated with upholding the rule of law, coupled with the swift erosion of rule-of-law capital, can impede long-term economic growth and development. Conversely, the escalating costs and rapid depreciation of physical capital accumulation can signific..

The Spanish encomienda, a colonial forced-labour institution that lasted three centuries, killed many indigenous people and caused others to flee into nomadism. What were its long-term effects? We digitize a great deal of historical data from the mid-1500s onwards and reconstruct the Spanish conquerors’ route through Colombia using detailed topographical features to calculate their least-cost path. We show that Colombian municipalities with encomiendas in 1560 enjoy better outcomes today across multiple dimensions of development than those without: higher municipal GDP per capita, tax receipts, and educational attainment; lower infant mortality, poverty, and unsatisfied basic needs; larger..

Despite women’s increased participation in the labour market significantly contributing to past economic growth, persistent gender gaps across OECD labour markets hinder full realization of the potential gains of women’s economic participation. This paper analyses the economic implications of these gaps and evaluates the potential for future growth through greater gender equality in labour market outcomes. Utilising two methodological frameworks, the paper first employs growth accounting to measure the contribution of women's employment to past economic growth. The paper then uses a simplified version of the OECD Long-Term Model in conjunction with projections on future labour force dyna..

The Spanish encomienda, a colonial forced-labour institution that lasted three centuries, killed many indigenous people and caused others to flee into nomadism. What were its long-term effects? We digitize a great deal of historical data from the mid-1500s onwards and reconstruct the Spanish conquerors’ route through Colombia using detailed topographical features to calculate their least-cost path. We show that Colombian municipalities with encomiendas in 1560 enjoy better outcomes today across multiple dimensions of development than those without: higher municipal GDP per capita, tax receipts, and educational attainment; lower infant mortality, poverty, and unsatisfied basic needs; larger..

The article investigates the long-term economic effects of immigrant diversity. Focusing on the large immigration wave experienced by Brazil at the turn of the twentieth century, we ask whether municipalities in the State of São Paulo that received a population of immigrants characterized by a more diverse mix of origin countries ended up having better long-term economic outcomes. To identify causal effects, we leverage on unique historical individual-level data in immigrants arriving in São Paulo between 1880 and 1920, and develop an instrumental variable strategy that combines time variation in the composition of immigrants arriving from overseas with the timing of the railway network ex..

Does capital accumulation increase labor demand and wages? Neoclassical production functions, where capital and labor are q-complements, ensure that the answer is yes, so long as labor markets are competitive. This result critically depends on the assumption that capital accumulation does not change the technologies being developed and used. I adapt the theory of endogenous technological change to investigate this question when technology also responds to capital accumulation. I show that there are strong parallels between the relationship between capital and wages and existing results on the conditions under which equilibrium factor demands are upward-sloping (e.g., Acemoglu, 2007). Extendi..

I study Schumpeterian growth under Variable Demand Elasticity preferences in a canonical Two-R&D-sector model with both vertical and horizontal innovation. Within this framework, I show how the departure from the traditional CES specification alters both the positive and normative characteristics of the Schumpeterian growth dynamics: (a) for a sufficiently high population growth rate relative to the innovation opportunity, there is a balanced growth path -"BGP"- of drastic innovation where the innovation size is determined by the population growth rate, that is growth is semi-endogenous. However, for a sufficiently low population growth rate, the model economy converges to the limit values o..

This lecture explores the evolution of economics as a discipline during 1870-1920, focusing on the critical question of wealth creation from knowledge. It highlights the tension between understanding economic structures and their transformative growth, with special attention to Alfred Marshall and Joseph Schumpeter's insights on the evolving nature of capitalism and innovation's role in economic development. By contrasting their views — Schumpeter's emphasis on disruptive innovation and Marshall's on gradual change — the lecture underscores the significance of innovation and knowledge in driving economic transformation. This discussion aims to illuminate the complex relationshi..

We analyze how output and wages behave under different scenarios for technological progress that may culminate in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), defined as the ability of AI systems to perform all tasks that humans can perform. We assume that human work can be decomposed into atomistic tasks that differ in their complexity. Advances in technology make ever more complex tasks amenable to automation. The effects on wages depend on a race between automation and capital accumulation. If automation proceeds sufficiently slowly, then there is always enough work for humans, and wages may rise forever. By contrast, if the complexity of tasks that humans can perform is bounded and full automa..

In the actienent worls of different tribes, languagias and slightly cultivated landscapes Empires had a role of the crude tool to forse changes: concentrations of rents, with the focus on infrastructure (roads, dumbs, canals), fortifications, cult centers and palaces. Concentration of investments went to dominationg tribe at the expence of taxes from all nations inside the states. Empires sped up the exchange of information, innovations, common languages. Critical view of empires as aggressive force led to focus on political and military role of empires and low attention economic aspects of their activity. Some coefficient of usefulness between hostile creation and destruction of empires may..

Why are certain movies more successful in some markets than others? Are the entertainment products we consume reflective of our core values and beliefs? These questions drive our investigation into the relationship between a society’s oral tradition and the financial success of films. We combine a unique catalog of local tales, myths, and legends around the world with data on international movie screenings and revenues. First, we quantify the similarity between movies’ plots and traditional motifs employing machine learning techniques. Comparing the same movie across different markets, we establish that films that resonate more with local folklore systematically accrue higher revenue and..

This paper investigates the long-term impact of climate change on Indian economic growth, both at aggregate and dis-aggregated levels across regions and sectors. A simple Ramsey model is built to show that the resource abundance, climatic exposure, and state capacity affecting the rate of resource mobilisation for productivity and efficiency improvement determine regional growth. A crosssectional augmented auto-regressive distributed lag model (CS-ARDL), addressing endogeneity, heterogeneity, and cross-sectional dependence with stochastic trends, employed in 29 major states from 1980 to 2019, confirms a significant and negative impact of temperature rise on total factor productivity and the ..

This study investigates the conflicting effects of a debt-financed fiscal policy on endogenous growth in an overlapping generations model with public capital and debt. Although an accumulation of public capital enhances the production efficiency of private capital, it also impedes private capital accumulation by distorting savings allocations through public debt issuance. With a low deficit ratio, the fiscal policy brings new equilibria to an unstable economy. Meanwhile, a debt-financed fiscal policy with a higher deficit ratio causes a fiscal collapse and secular stagnation.

This paper delves into the theoretical underpinnings of how freedom, grounded in the rule of law and property rights, shapes wealth accumulation and economic growth. By integrating liberty into the neoclassical growth model, we introduce the innovative concepts of "liberty consumption" and "liberty capital" and define utility and production functions on them. Through theoretical analysis and simulations, we ascertain that a robust preference for liberty nurtures sustained prosperity and heightened productivity. However, in scenarios where the costs associated with liberty consumption are substantial and liberty capital depreciates rapidly—indicating an environment inhospitable or cons..

We revisit the efficiency-equity trade-off of optimal tax theory by emphasizing the consequences of increased progressivity on growth. We use an endogenous growth framework that considers both the decision to become a researcher and the effort established entrepreneurs make to improve their products. We find that the optimal level or progressivity is lower than the current one but that welfare gains are moderate – CEV ≈ 0.5%. However, if one disregards the growth impact one would prescribe a substantially higher level of progressivity at significant welfare cost – CEV ≈ −9%.

Relying on low frequency econometric methods, a new simple procedure to assess international income convergence is introduced. It implements the long-run forecasting definition and discards short and medium-term information contents of the data as these may produce misleading evidence. Robustness to non-stationarities is achieved using first differences of (logged) per capita incomes. Application to a selected sample of 90 different countries provides mixed but generally more positive evidence than most previous studies. Nevertheless, it casts many doubts on the inevitability of income convergence, at least in practically relevant time frames and as worldwide phenomenon.

The recent sad news about the Robert Solow’s decease has motivated a review of his most celebrated contribution to Economics, his model of economic growth. In this paper, I illustrate its versatility and usefulness by combining it with the problem that endemic diseases has for the economic performance of most emerging economies. The literature about economic development have examined this problem with particular emphasis on the necessary sanitary measures to raise the level of health. These measures have been advocated on the basis that they will have big positive effects on productivity, real wages and per capita GDP. To illustrate to our undergraduate students both, the value of health f..

The rise of fintech is revolutionizing the financial landscape, with products and companies advancing innovative technologies to improve and automate financial services. In this paper, I use a novel dataset and implement a dynamic modelling to investigate the relationship between fintech and economic growth in a panel of 198 countries over the period 2012–2020. This cross-country approach—utilizing direct measures of fintech and dealing with potential endogeneity—provides interesting empirical insights. First, the impact magnitude and statistical significance of fintech on real GDP per capita growth depend on the type of instrument (digital lending vs. digital capital raising). While d..

We analyze the policy trade-offs facing fiscal policy in a dynamic growth model with au-tomation, education choice, and human capital formation. Although beneficial for economic growth, automation contributes to wage inequality. When human capital formation is affected by government spending, fiscal policy can enhance welfare through a coordinated increase in labor and robot taxes. The composition of taxes financing spending on transfers and educa-tion is key in determining the effects on economic growth and inequality, as the robot tax is the more redistributive instrument. We calibrate our model to the US economy and determine the welfare-maximizing tax policy. Optimality requires an initi..

Patents applied by private firms occasionally cite scientific papers. We regard these citations as a signal that the research project of the applying firms involves basic research, and examine the relationship between basic research and firm performance. Firms conducting basic research are more likely to earn higher profit margins, while no monotonic relationship is observed between basic research and sales size. We then construct an endogenous growth model incorporating the basic research investment by heterogeneous firms. Firms' decisions regarding basic research depend on firm size, the necessity for basic research for developing their products, and the degree of knowledge spillover from ..

We develop an overlapping generations endogenous growth model characterized by climate change, with the latter being specified as a fraction of output lost due changes in temperature anomalies. We show that growth dynamics arise in this model when changes in temperature anomalies is a positive function current economic growth, with this theoretical specification motivated through extensive empirical analyses involving 167 countries over a long span of historical data covering 1851 to 2018. In particular, two distinct oscillatory growth dynamics emerge: one convergent and the other divergent, contingent on the strength of the response of global warming, i.e., changes in temperature anomalies ..

We present an overview of selected contributions of the Journal of Mathematical Economics' authors in the last half century. We start with the classical optimal growth theory within a benchmark multisector model and outline the successive developments in the analysis of this model, including the turnpike theory. Different refinements of the benchmark are considered along the way. We after survey the abundant literature on endogenous fluctuations in two-sector models. We conclude with two strong trends in the recent growth literature: green growth and infinite-dimensional growth models.

This study investigates the effects of employment protection legislation (EPL) on entrepreneurship, firm dynamics, and economic growth in a general equilibrium model that incorporates endogenous Schumpeterian growth. The model implies that more stringent EPL encourages households to accumulate more firm-specific human capital, which raises the opportunity cost to start a business. Using Japanese firm- and household-level microdata to calibrate parameter values, the quantitative exercise reveals that EPL reform aimed at its elimination could stimulate entrepreneurship in the household sector, thus boosting economic growth through more creative destruction in the firm sector. A partial equilib..

South Korea’s economic growth (EG) miracle has been a source of discussion since the 1990s. The assumption of relatively equitable distribution of resources should be contested, as a growing base of evidence shows that human development (HD) and gender parity improvements are not automatic. To that effect, this dissertation asks the question of why the gender equality index (GEI), a subset of the historical index of human development (HIHD) lagged, despite GDP per capita and HIHD growth. It is hypothesised that the widening of the gender pay gap (GPG) during 1976-1996, was predominantly responsible for worsening the GEI, leading to the divergence between GDP, HIHD and GEI. The occupational..

We develop a novel method for assessing the effect of constraints imposed by spatially-fixed natural resources on aggregate economic output. We apply it to estimate and compare the projected effects of climate change and population growth over the course of the 21st century, by country and globally. We find that standard population growth projections imply larger reductions in income than even the most extreme widely-adopted climate change scenario (RCP8.5). Climate and population impacts are correlated across countries: climate change and population growth will have their most damaging effects in similar places. Relative to previous work on macro climate impacts, our approach has the advant..

We develop an endogenous growth model with heterogeneous firms facing financial frictions, where misallocation emerges explicitly as a crucial endogenous state variable and plays a significant role in driving economic growth through the valuation channel. The model illustrates that transient macroeconomic shocks affecting misallocation can yield persistent effects on aggregate growth. In equilibrium, slow-moving misallocation endogenously generates long-run uncertainty about economic growth by distorting innovation decisions. When agents hold recursive preferences, misallocation-driven low-frequency growth fluctuations result in substantial risk premia in capital markets and large losses in ..

This work studies a parabolic-ODE PDE's system which describes the evolution of the physical capital "$k$" and technological progress "$A$", using a meshless in one and two dimensional bounded domain with regular boundary. The well-known Solow model is extended by considering the spatial diffusion of both capital anf technology. Moreover, we study the case in which no spatial diffusion of the technology progress occurs. For such models, we propound schemes based on the Generalized Finite Difference method and proof the convergence of the numerical solution to the continuous one. Several examples show the dynamics of the model for a wide range of parameters. These examples illustrate the accu..

The demographic transition -the move from a high fertility/high mortality regime into a low fertility/low mortality regime- is one of the most fundamental transformations that countries undertake. To study demographic transitions across time and space, we compile a data set of birth and death rates for 186 countries spanning more than 250 years. We document that (i) a demographic transition has been completed or is ongoing in nearly every country; (ii) the speed of transition has increased over time; and (iii) having more neighbors that have started the transition is associated with a higher probability of a country beginning its own transition. To account for these observations, we build a ..

We develop a novel methodology that uses machine learning to produce accurate estimates of consumption per capita and poverty in 10x10km cells in sub-Saharan Africa over time. Using the new data, we revisit two prominent papers that examine the effect of institutions on economic development, both of which use “nightlights” as a proxy for development. The conclusions from these papers are reversed when we substitute the new consumption data for nightlights. We argue that the different conclusions about institutions are due to a previously unrecognized problem that is endemic when nightlights are used as a proxy for spatial economic well-being: nightlights suffer from nonclassical measurem..

This work presents the evolutionary growth theory, which studies the drivers and patterns of technological change and production together with the (imperfect) mechanisms of coordination among a multitude of firms. This requires to studies economies as complex evolving systems, i.e. as ecologies populated by heterogenous agents whose out-of-equilibrium local market interactions lead to the emergence of some collective order at higher level of aggregation, while the system continuously evolves. Accordingly a multi-country multi-industry agent-based model is introduced, where the restless competition of firms in international markets lead to the emergence of growth and persistent income diverge..