The present paper shows empirically that the youth dependency ratio (the population below working age divided by the population of working age) reduces economic growth even after controlling for institutions. The institutional variable, the paper controls for, is the measure for institutions...

East Asians, especially South Koreans, appear to be preoccupied with their offspring's education---most children spend time in expensive private institutes and in cram schools in the evenings and on weekends. At the same time, South Korea currently has the lowest total fertility rate in the...

Mothers' longer time on parental leave after having children has been proposed as one reason for remaining gender inequalities in the labor market. This paper investigates the determinants of the unequal division of parental leave, specifically the argument that mothers take more parental leave...

Sustainable growth has emerged as a critical policy challenge worldwide. We investigate the influence of conventional gender norms on fertility and economic growth to explain the phenomena recently observed across high-income countries. To this end, we construct an overlapping generations model...

This work shows the asymmetric effect of the reduction in transportation costs across different sectors in the process of the Great Divergence. Specifically, the analysis indicates that reductions in transportation costs of industrial goods enhance convergence of the growth rates of trading...

The aim of this paper is to show possible consequences of changes in labor force participation of women and the connection between fertility and labor force participation on the future demographic and economic development in Germany. For this purpose a projection model based on micro-data...

This research develops an expanded unified growth theory that incorporates the endogenous accumulation of physical capital, population, human capital, and technology. The model incorporates a complementarity between physical capital and human capital and can be extended to a multi-country...

This paper uses cross-country panel data to estimate the agronomic inputs that lead to cereal yield improvements and the consequences for developing countries' processes of structural change. The results suggest a clear role for fertilizer, modern seeds and water in boosting yields. It then...

Within the causal structure of economic development, we can distinguish between short-term and long-term causal links. In particular, this study examines long-term short-term causal relations in economic development. We construct a balanced panel for 72 countries over the period from 1980 to...