This paper simulates the impact of the AIDS epidemic on future living standards in South Africa. I emphasize two competing effects. On the one hand, the epidemic is likely to have a detrimental impact on the human capital accumulation of orphaned children. On the other hand, widespread community...

In a partially reformed economy, distortions beget distortions. Segments of the economy that are freed from centralized control respond to the rent-seeking opportunities implicit in the remaining distortions of the economy. The battle to capture, and then protect, these rents leads to the...

The influence of Joseph Schumpeter's notion of 'creative destruction' may have led to an overemphasis on substitution between technologies in recent models of endogenous innovation. Historical examples of technological change suggest that new technologies may just as frequently complement older...

This paper documents the fundamental role played by factor accumulation in explaining the extraordinary postwar growth of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Participation rates, educational levels, and (excepting Hong Kong) investment rates have risen rapidly in all four economies....

Using an endogenous growth model in which learning by doing, although bounded in each good, exhibits spillovers across goods, this paper investigates the dynamic effects of international trade. Examining the interaction of a LDC and a DC, the latter distinguished by a higher initial level of...

Using population and product consumption data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, I construct comparable measures of inequality and migration for 65 countries, including some of the poorest countries in the world. I find that the urban-rural gap accounts for 40% of mean country inequality...