We present a growth model where agents divide time between rent seeking in the form of resource competition and working in a human capital sector. The latter is interpreted as trade or manufacturing. Rent seeking exerts negative externalities on the productivity of human capital. Adding shocks,...

The institution of slavery is found mostly at intermediate stages of agricultural development and less often among hunter-gatherers and advanced agrarian societies. We explain this pattern in a growth model with land and labour as inputs in production and an endogenously determined property...

Since the middle ages, when Europe was still at a Malthusian stage of development, interpersonal violence has been in steady decline, and institutions and norms limiting violence – in particular property rights – have expanded. Here we put forward a Malthusian model of violence where these...

The effects of political fragmentation on long-run development seem to have changed over the course of human history. Technological leaders used to be empires, but the Industrial Revolution started in the fragmented Europe. This paper sets up a model to help us think about this puzzle. There are...

Abstract: The long-run growth model of Galor and Weil (AER 2000) is examined quantitatively. We first give parametric forms to some functions which were only given on general form in the original article. We then choose numerical parameter values in line with calibrations of related long-run...