Recent studies conclude that human capital should be a high priority because it is a key growth input, particularly in an increasingly knowledge based economy and an important lever of social cohesion policy. However, existing studies focusing on cross-country growth performance have produced...

The importance of promoting innovation has been elevated up to a status of official standard since the Lisbon European Summit in 2000. Here research and development (R&D) was singled out as an essential element of the foundation on which innovation could be built. R&D has been a growing area of...

This paper deals with the relationship between innovation and economic growth in the context of developed world. After examining the correlation between economic growth and R&D (research and development) intensity, and given that the impact of R&D on economic growth is mediated by the rate of...

By means of an endogenous growth model of directed technical change with vertical and horizontal R&D, we study a transitional-dynamics mechanism that is consistent with the changes in the share of the high- versus the low-tech sectors found in recent European data. Under the hypothesis of a...

We propose a framework to solve dynamic nonlinear infinite-horizon models like those found in the standard economic growth literature. We employ a direct method to solve the underlying optimal control problem, something novel in the economic literature. Instead of deriving the necessary...

Although a myriad of important theoretical and empirical contributions on ageing populations exist, these contributions are diffuse and lack an integrated vision of the distinct mechanisms through which ageing populations impact on economic growth. As such, in this paper we survey the literature...

Despite the importance of human capital stock to the economic growth of countries, its analysis has been restricted to more developed countries or to cross-country samples from a set of countries. Due to a lack of estimates for this variable in less developed countries, it has not been possible...

In this paper, we examine the studies, since Adam Smith, on the impact of commercial and technological aspects, resulting from international trade, on the physical accumulation and quality of productive factors. We remark that the theory of economic growth and the theory of international trade,...