We extend the Lucas' 1988 model introducing two classes of agents with heterogeneous skills, discount factors and initial human capital endowments. We consider two regimes according to the planner's political constraints. In the first regime, that we call meritocracy, the planner faces...

To examine how human capital accumulation influences both economic growth and income inequality, we carefully endogenize the demand and supply of skills. We explicitly introduce the costs and externalities in education, and examine how both relate to learning-by-doing and R&D intensity. In...

Estimates of the effect of education on GDP (the social return) have been hard to reconcile with micro evidence on the private return to schooling. We present a simple explanation combining two ideas: imperfect substitution and endogenous skill-biased technological progress and use cross-country...

When types of workers are imperfect substitutes, the Mincerian rate of return to human capital is negatively related to the supply of human capital. We work out a simple model for the joint evolution of output and wage dispersion. We estimate this model using cross-country panel data on GDP and...