We consider an infinite-horizon inter-generational economy with identical agents differing only in their inherited wealth and with a constant-returns-to-scale technology using capital and labour (called "effort") and displaying a purely idiosyncratic risk. If effort is contractible, full...

Per capita incomes across European regions are not equal and do not stay constant; regional income distributions uctuate over time. Such a process could have many possible limiting outcomes: complete equal- ity (convergence), stratication, and continually increasing inequality are but three...

I examine the dynamic evolutions of unemployment, hours of work and the service share since the war in the United States and Europe. The theoretical model brings together all three and emphasizes technological growth. Computations show that the very low unemployment in Europe in the 1960s was...

This paper divides the population into two groups: the "inheritors" or "rentiers" (whose wealth is smaller than the capitalized value of their inherited wealth, i.e. who consumed more than their labor income during their lifetime); and the "savers" or "self-made men" (whose wealth is larger than...

This paper studies growth and inequality in China and India – two economies that account for a third of the world’s population. By modelling growth and inequality as components in a joint stochastic process, the paper calibrates the impact each has on different welfare indicators and on the...

This paper examines the impact of mass media and information and commu- nications technologies (ICT) as knowledge-based infrastructures on economic development. The results suggest that both mass media and ICT penetra- tion are negatively associated with corruption. This result holds across both...

Internet development holds the promise of transmitting economic value across physical space at zero marginal cost. In such a “weightless economy”, what factors matter for the location of economic activity and thus for economic development? This paper sketches a model of spatial dynamics over...

This paper reviews the cross-country record of economic growth, using as organizing framework how economic theory has guided that empirical analysis. The paper argues that recent studies of economic growth—both empirical and theoretical—distinguish from previous work in three distinct...

This paper examines how preference heterogeneity affects the ability of the poor to extract resources from the rich. We study the equilibrium of a game in which coalitions of individuals form parties, parties propose platforms, and all individuals vote, with the winning policy chosen by...

Convergence concerns the poor catching up with the rich|if not instan- taneously, then at least having a tendency to do so. When poor and rich here refer to entire economies, then whether convergence occurs is traditionally viewed as just a side consequence of a more central ques- tion, namely...