Despite similar levels of per capita income, education and technology, the development of labour income shares in OECD countries has displayed different patterns since 1960. The paper examines the role of demography in this regard. We first use a standard overlapping generations model to derive...

Behavioral reactions to terrorism may be displayed in different ways. While some individuals react by holding back on their financial and charitable activities following stressful events, others may express more generosity by increasing their giving due to solidarity and empathy with the...

This paper explores the possible presence of a causal relationship from income to population. With this aim, US data at different geographical levels have been analyzed using a dynamic panel data estimation framework. The results obtained suggest that the more dissagregated the data the stronger...

This paper assesses whether the sensitivity of bilateral trade volumes to various trade cost factors is constant or varies across countries. It utilizes a random coeffcients model and analyses a cross-sectional sample of bilateral trade data for 96 countries in 2005. We expect the elasticity of...

This research presents the first evidence that moderate fecundity had maximized long-run reproductive success in the human population. Using a reconstructed genealogy for nearly half a million individuals in Quebec during the 1608-1800 period, we find that while a high fecundity was associated...

Economic explanations for the fertility transition focus on the role of returns to schooling, especially for women, which have encouraged women to obtain more education and facilitated the rise in women's wages relative to men's. The private opportunity costs of children have therefore...

In this paper we investigate the causal effect of life expectancy on economic growth by explicitly accounting for the role of the demographic transition. In addition to focusing on issues of empirical identification, this paper emphasizes the role of the econometric specification. We present a...

Our societies are witnessing a steady increase in longevity. This demographic evolution is accompanied by some convergence across countries, whereas substantial longevity inequalities persist within nations. The goal of this paper is to survey some crucial implications of changing longevity on...

Successful economic development is usually characterized by two salient phenomena: industrialization and demographic transition. Chronologically both events happen so closely to each other that historians and economists alike suspect that they are interrelated. This paper develops a theory for...

This paper uses an overlapping generations model with international labor mobility and a politically responsive fiscal policy to examine aging in developed and developing regions. Migrant workers change the political structure composed of young and elderly voters in both labor-receiving and...