Education and Growth: A Simple Model with Complicated Dynamics

We construct a simple model of education and growth in which young adults (children) spend a fraction of their time and old adults (parents) spend a fraction of their income on education. Both a strategic complementarity and an intergener- ational externality in the creation of human capital are present. The interactions between each pair of consecutive generations lead to rich dynamics. We show that multiple growth equilibria arise, some of them periodic and some aperiodic. We also ?nd a negative correlation between volatility and growth, without a one-way causal relationship between the two being, necessarily, present. Rather this negative correlation is driven by the structural characteristics of the economy.