Early states like China, India, Italy and Greece have been experiencing more rapid economic growth in recent decades than have later-comers to agriculture and statehood like New Guinea, the Congo, and Uruguay. We show that more rapid growth by early starters has been the norm in economic...

We study the effect of capital controls on the level of investment in human capital and the resulting growth path of an economy. The economy consists of two groups of agents based on the ownership of factors of production. One type of agents – called workers – own human capital and bequeath...

We construct an overlapping generations model to study the effect of capital controls on human capital investments and the incidence of redistributive politics in a growing economy. We argue that the conventional wisdom linking higher capital controls to lower growth is reproduced only when an...

One of the well documented facts about India's rapid growth since 1991 has been the accompanying unequal sub-national experiences. In this paper, using unsaturated night-light data for 1996-2010, we investigate patterns of growth at the district level. We find evidence of absolute convergence....

On November 8, 2016, the Indian government abruptly demonetized 86% of its currency in circulation in an attempt to reduce black money, corruption, and counterfeiting. Yet, 99% of the currency was eventually returned to banks. We exploit large regional variations in deposit growth as a result of...

We revisit the idea that colonized countries that were more (less) economically advanced in 1500 became poorer (richer, respectively) by the late 20th century. Using data on place of origin of today's country populations and the urbanization and population density measures used by Acemoglu et...

Over the past decade, research explaining cross country income differences has increasingly pointed to the dominant role of total factor productivity (TFP) gaps as opposed to factor accumulation. Nevertheless, it is a widely held belief that a country's ability to absorb and implement...

We construct an overlapping generations model to study the effect of capital controls on human capital investments and the incidence of redistributive taxation in a growing economy. We argue that the conventional wisdom linking higher capital controls to lower growth is reproduced only when an...

This paper explores the consequences of skill biased technological progress on the savings rates. The literature, both theoretical and empirical, on the causes and consequences of skill biased technological progress in the past few years has burgeoned considerably. So has the literature on...

We study the effect of capital controls on the level of investment in human capital and the resulting growth path of an economy. The economy consists of two groups of agents based on the ownership of factors of production. One type of agents - called workers - own human capital and bequeath...