This paper argues that individuals concerns for relative position contribute to the emergence of development traps. It demonstrates that changes in the mean and the distribution of income qualitatively modify individual’s reference group by affecting the magnitude of the reference standard....

This paper analyses the relations between poverty, inequality and economic growth in Brazil. First of all, based on recent research, it shows characteristics and historical evolution of inequality and poverty. These characteristics are not novelty to specialized research, but drawing them as...

Economic growth does not necessarily ensure environmental sustainability for a country. The relationship between the two is far more complicated for developing countries like India, given the dependence of a large section of the population on natural resources. Under this backdrop, the current...

Recent theoretical contributions assert that income inequality impacts negatively human capital accumulation, and consequently long-run growth. Galor and Zeira (1993) show that such a relationship works primarily through financial constraints, while de la Croix and Doepke (2003) demonstrate that...

This paper uses panel data from Japan to decompose productivity growth measured by the growth of output per labor unit into three components of efficiency improvement, capital accumulation and technological progress. It then examines their determinants through a dynamic panel model. In...

This paper estimates with the least trimmed least squares (LTS) a specification suitable to estimate the permanent growth effects of human capital, using educational attainment (H) as a proxy. Our results show that H has significant permanent growth effects but these are much smaller than in...

This paper provides a simple theory to study how the allocation of public funds between primary and higher education affects human capital accumulation. The allocation is endogenously determined through majority voting. Public funding for higher education is not supported when a majority is...

When President Felipe Calderón took office he declared a war on drug lords, thus initiating a war of attrition which has claimed more than 40,000 lives in the last 5 years. In this chapter I document how this escalation of violence has led Mexicans living close to the northern border to migrate...

This paper studies regional convergence and spatial dependence of homicides and personal injuries in Colombia. In particular, through the lens of both classical and distributional convergence frameworks, two spatial scales are contrasted: municipalities and states. For both homicides and...

When President Felipe Calderón took office he declared a war on drug lords, thus initiating a war of attrition which has claimed more than 40,000 lives in the last 5 years. In this chapter I document how this escalation of violence has led Mexicans living close to the northern border to migrate...