The optimal reaction to a pending productivity shock of which the expected arrival time increases with global warming is to accumulate more precautionary capital to smooth consumption and to levy a carbon tax, proportional to the marginal hazard of a catastrophe, to curb the risk of climate...

We construct a simple model where political elites may block technological and institutional development, because of a ‘political replacement effect.’ Innovations often erode elites’ incumbency advantage, increasing the likelihood that they will be replaced. Fearing replacement, political...

An unstable macroeconomic environment is often regarded as detrimental to economic growth. Among the sources contributing to such instability, the literature has assigned most of the blame to political issues. This paper empirically tests for a causal and negative long-term relationship between...

This paper models technology adoption as replacing workers by machines, which perform the same job in the production process. The paper shows that such modelling of technology adoption affects significantly the analysis of economic growth. This model can explain large and persistent...

This Paper investigates how the legal framework not only affects the amount of external financing available, but also firms’ resource allocation among different types of assets. Using a simple model, we show that in a weaker legal environment a firm will get less financing, and thus invest...

The effects of the quality of institutions on economic development and comparative advantage have been so far investigated separately. This paper proposes a theoretical framework in which trade patterns and growth rates are jointly determined by international differences in contract enforcement...

This paper develops a dynamic continuous-time model in which international risk sharing can yield substantial welfare gains through its positive effect on expected consumption growth. The mechanism linking global diversification to growth is an attendant world portfolio shift from safe, but...

How many years will the average transition economy need to reach the income level of the average OECD country? The favoured methodology in use to answer such questions is referred to as the BLR approach, because it uses specifications from Barro, and Levine and Renelt. The literature has so far...