There is a large literature on the role infrastructure plays in economic development, but few papers document the causal effect of infrastructure on the sustainability of natural resources. We examine the effect of the arrival of two new national highways on ground water levels in a small...

The circular economy is a strategy to avoid depletion of natural resources and to mitigate climate changes. With the current level of technology, circularity does not allow for economic growth. However, our cultures are centered on the idea of progress and competition. Without growth, it will be...

O'donoghue and Zweimuller (2004, J. of Econ. Growth), a seminal work, showed that broadening leading breadth in patent protection can stimulate innovation. However, the empirical literature has consistently found skeptical results on the positive effect. To fill the gap, we build another...

Disruptive technological changes, including carbon capture and storage, can have macroeconomic rebound effects that pose a threat to long term environmental sustainability when not accompanied by pollution taxes. The paper demonstrates that when the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is...

This paper explores how Singapore’s recent environmental initiatives and policies, notably the Green Plan 2030, may affect the country’s future economic growth and predicts whether or these initiatives are, in the long-term, economically beneficial, along with what ethical considerations...

Empirical tests in the 1990s found little evidence of poor countries catching up with rich - unconditional convergence - since the 1960s, and divergence over longer periods. This stylized fact spurred several developments in growth theory, including AK models, poverty trap models, and the...

This paper evaluates the impact of slowing economic growth on labor market dynamism and misallocation. It provides a model of endogenous growth via imitation in a frictional labor market. The framework accounts for rich data on worker job-to-job transitions as well as stochastic and lifecycle...

This paper develops a North-South quality-ladder model with northern innovative R&D, southern adaptive R&D and imitative R&D to analyze the effects of tariffs on innovation, technology transfer, relative wage and welfare. We find that increasing southern tariff decreases the relative wage...