This paper provides a theory that explains the cross-country distribution of average years of schooling, as well as the so called human capital premium puzzle. In our theory, credit frictions as well as differences in access to public education, fertility and mortality turn out to be the key...

We study the shape of the aggregate production function in the presence of land-intensive agriculture. The traditional Cobb-Douglas formulation is corrected to include a "diversification component." The implied TFP differences across countries are larger than what Solow residuals suggest.

Using a class of endogenous growth models that exhibit international spillovers, we show that most of the cross-country differences in output per worker are explained by barriers to the accumulation of rival factors (physical and human capital) rather than by barriers to the accumulation of...

Many economic and non-economic variables such as income, wealth, firm size, or city size often distribute Pareto in the upper tail. It is well established that Gibrat's law can explain this phenomenon, but Gibrat's law often does not hold. This note characterizes a class of processes, one that...

The main lotteries individuals face during their lifetime are country and family of birth. How much consumption growth would a newborn sacrifice to avoid these lotteries? We find that he may be willing to sacrifice a large fraction, if not all, to avoid them. Critical elements for the results...

This paper explores the quantitative implications of a class of endogenous growth models for cross-country income differences. These models exhibit international spillovers, no scale effects and conditional convergence, and thus they overcome some difficulties faced by the early generation of...

This paper uses a two-sector general equilibrium model to analyse both steady-state and stochastic dynamic effects of two real exchange rate targeting policies: a constant-target, and a band-target rule. In the model, targeting is implemented by imposing a stochastic fully-rebatable tax on the...

Life expectancy around the world has increased substantially since 1970. In contrast, consumption per capita has fallen in some countries, remained stagnant, or sharply increased in others. What are the welfare gains of the systematic increase in life expectancy around the world? How does a...

Most education around the globe is public. Moreover, invest rates in education as well as schooling attainment differ substantially across countries. We contruct a general equilibrium life-cycle model that is consistent with these facts. We provide simple analytical solutions for the optimal...

This paper studies fertility decisions in an Aiyagari-Huggett economy extended to include endogenous fertility. The challenge is to explain both why fertility decreases with income, and why there is intergenerational persistence of inequality. The model features non-isoelastic altruism,...