An annual sequence of wages in England starting in 1245 is used. It is shown that a standard AK-type growth model with capital externality and stochastic productivity shocks is unable to explain important features of the data. Random returns to scale are then considered. Moderate episodes of...

This paper proposes a structural approach to growth modeling relying on random return scale. An RBC-like model in which return to scale may be strictly increasing or decreasing depending on shocks is explicitly derived. We show that relevant component of usual macroeconomic models (including...

Evidence from English real wages and real land rents for the period 1500-1800 are used to evaluate the impact of temperature and precipitations on under-developed economies. Estimating key parameters of an AK-growth model, we extract Total Factor Productivity (TFP hereafter) shocks and estimate...