We augment a Schumpeterian growth model with a public basic-research sector to examine how much a country should invest in basic research. We find that the closer the country is to the world’s technological frontier the more the government should invest in basic research. Basic-research...

Vote-buying is widely used by parties in developing countries to influence the outcome of elections. We examine the impact of vote-buying on growth. We consider a model with a poverty trap where redistribution can promote growth. We show that vote-buying contributes to the persistence of poverty...

In this paper we study the incentives for basic-research investments by governments in a globalized world. For this purpose, we develop a two-country Schumpeterian growth model in which each country chooses its basic-research investments. We find that a country's basic-research investments...

This paper studies the growth effects of externalities associated with intergenerational health transmission, health persistence, and women's occupational constraints- with particular emphasis on the role of access to infrastructure. The first part provides a review of the evidence on these...

This paper studies the existence of middle-income growth traps in a two-period overlapping generations model of economic growth with two types of labor and endogenous occupational choices. It also distinguishes between "basic" and "advanced" infrastructure, with the latter promoting design...

The effects of capital requirements on risk-taking and welfare are studied in a stochastic overlapping generations model of endogenous growth with banking, limited liability, and government guarantees. Capital producers face a choice between a safe technology and a risky (but socially...