The effect of human capital on growth and development has been somewhat neglected in economic literature. However, evidence has suggested the importance of engineering and technical skills to economic growth. Simultaneously, European Commission and OECD has presented data that reveal the...

The years following the Second World War were those of the greatest economic growth that Europe had ever seen. If the countries of the Iberian Peninsula, neutral in the conflict and ruled by dictatorial regimes, enjoyed that growth and had participated in the convergence phenomenon, Ireland,...

Research and Development (R&D) endogenous growth models predict and most evidence show that investment in R&D increases with economic development. We consider the type of human capital mainly used in research labs and show that the richest countries are investing proportionally less than middle...

We may distinguish between two concepts of technology: a theoretical level of technology (that is, a technology possibilities frontier) and a level of technology in practice (that is, ready to use in production technology). Having these two concepts in mind, the paper develops an intertemporal...

Asset prices are forward looking. This evidence implies that prices of financial assets are essentially determined by the traders expectations about future prices. Another evidence about asset prices is that these do not seem to follow a predictable pattern over time; we observe periods of high...

A simple economic activity location rule is considered. Under this rule, one regards that location decisions depend on the presence or the absence of agglomeration economies. Considering a three-location economy, the system that is built leads, under certain conditions, to a saddle-path...

Economic phenomena are interrelated. From a growth perspective, time analysis concerning the choices of present and future consumption and the choices between the allocation of scientific resources should be combined with a space analysis regarding the dissemination of economic activity through...

Resources used in scientific activities are, as any other, scarce. Hence, the economic system has, in every time moment, to choose how to allocate technological inputs. A technology choices model is developed, where scarce scientific resources are alternatively allocated to basic science...

Agent heterogeneity has been used in recent economic literature to justify nonlinear dynamics for the time paths of aggregate economic variables. In this paper, the mechanism through which heterogeneous agents leads to chaotic motion is explained. Adding to a system with initial behavior...

Research activities have uncertain outcomes. The question asked in this paper is whether or not this uncertainty can be a central piece on the explanation of long run consumption growth paths. More specifically, we inquire how the existence of different research projects, with different degrees...