Different goods are produced by different sectors in an economy. The fact that sectors use different production technologies is named technology-bias. The technology-bias is well documented and has important theoretical implications for economic growth and unemployment. We provide a theoretical...

The paper is devoted to a critical analysis of a number of key theories by Gary S. Becker. It is commonly believed that his main accomplishment lies in the extension of the scope of an economic analysis to include numerous traditionally considered as non-economic phenomena. This extension,...

In a Kaleckian distribution and growth model with workers’ debt we examine the short- and long-run effects of three stylized facts of ‘finance-dominated capitalism’: a fall in animal spirits of the firm sector with respect to real investment in capital stock, re-distribution of income at...

Is it true that communist countries had well-developed human capital, or is it just a myth? What were human capital stocks at the beginning of transition to market economy? What happened to human capital formation during the transition? We attempt to answer these questions using evidence from...

This paper explores the existence of rational bubbles in the pricing of an asset that pays no dividend. I find that when "the spirit of capitalism" is introduced into a growth model, rational bubbles do exist provided that the marginal benefit from holding wealth is nontrivial relative to the...

With the exception Brander and Drazen (2008), who use a comprehensive cross-country database consisting of both developed and developing countries, the hypothesis that rapid growth helps incumbents win elections has been tested exclusively for the developed countries (e.g., Ray Fair 1978). But...

What is the level of accumulated human capital in an economy in transition? Does education determine labour income in transition economies? In this study we try to answer these questions using data on 148,942 employees in 13 economic activities in Bulgaria. In the first place, we refer to the...

Zak & Knack (2001) demonstrate that interpersonal trust substantially impacts economic growth, and that sufficient interpersonal trust is necessary for economic development. To investigate the ability of policy-makers to affect trust levels, this paper builds a formal model characterizing public...

In our recent paper, (Reinhart and Reinhart, 2010) we examine the behavior of real GDP (levels and growth rates), unemployment, inflation, bank credit, and real estate prices in a twenty one-year window surrounding selected adverse global and country-specific shocks or events. In this note, we...

We reconstruct a dataset used by Persson and Tabellini (AER, 1994) to test the robustness of their finding that inequality reduces income growth, but only in democracies. We find that their result is highly sensitive to the use of data sources on both democracy and inequality. When we substitute...