Political competition between European countries has often been viewed as being a stimulus to the innovation process and part of the reason why Europe was the first region of the world to experience sustained growth. Countries that fell behind their rivals technologically and economically became...

The endogenous growth models of the early 1990's predicted scale effects: larger population - more resources devoted to R&D - faster productivity growth. As pointed out by Jones (1995) this prediction is not consistent with the experience of industrialized countries like the U.S. over the...

This paper argues that some governments adopt growth-reducing policies due to the rational self-interest of the political elites. The model takes a rent-seeking government that can block innovation, and incorporates it into a Schumpeterian growth model. The quality of a country's institutions is...