Conventional R&D-based growth theory argues that productivity growth is driven by population growth but the data suggest that the erstwhile positive correlation between population and productivity turned negative during the 20th century. In order to resolve this problem we integrate R&D-based...

We show that in a large class of distributed optimal control models (DOCM), where population is described by a McKendrick type equation with an endogenous number of newborns, the reproductive value of Fisher shows up as part of the shadow price of the population. Depending on the objective...

The purpose of this article is to identify the role of population size, population growth and population ageing in models of endogenous economic growth. While in exogenous growth models demographic variables are linked to economic prosperity mainly via the population size, the structure of the...

This article introduces a social planner version of a model central to the New Economic Geography for explicitly answering whether the symmetric equilibrium outcome of the decentralized market economy is socially desirable. We find that savings incentives are too weak, resulting in an...

We study socially vs. individually optimal lifecycle allocations of consumption and health care, when individual health expenditure curbs own mortality but also has a spillover effect on other persons' survival. Such spillovers arise, for instance, when health care activity at aggregate level...

Persistent low fertility rates lead to lower population growth rates and eventually also to decreasing population sizes in most industrialized countries. There are fears that this demographic development is associated with declines in per capita GDP and possibly also increasing inequality of the...

The reproductive value (see Fisher 1930) arises as part of the shadow price of the population in a large class of age-structured optimal control models.

Conventional R&D-based growth theory suggests that productivity growth is positively correlated with population size or population growth, an implication which is hard to see in the data. Here we integrate micro-founded fertility and schooling into an otherwise standard R&D-based growth model....