Incorporating the decision of how to organize the acquisition, use, and communication of knowledge into economic models is essential to understand a wide variety of economic phenomena. We survey the literature that has used knowledge-based hierarchies to study issues such as the evolution of wage inequality, the growth and productivity of firms, economic development, and the gains from internat...

While policy makers widely recognise the fact that education serves as an engine for economic growth through the accumulation of human capital, education is also strongly associated with boosting levels of social capital. Indeed, an important justification for the large expenditures on education within many democratic nations is its social, and not just economic, impact – the benefits an educat...

A key prediction of standard models of economic growth is that the output-capital ratio is constant along the economy’s balanced growth path. Using data for 16 OECD countries over 135 years we examine whether the output-capital ratio reverts to a constant in the long run using univariate and panel stationarity tests with structural breaks. Univariate unit root tests with one and two breaks in t...

Proponents of economic globalization view it as a key to future economic development and in general it is considered a positive force for improved quality of life, acceleration of economic growth, efficient allocation of resources and greater productivity enhancements. Whereas, anti-globalization camp argues that it increases poverty and leads to worsening in the distribution of income. Like ma...

This study analyzes the relationship between the social factors and the economic growth. A summary of social and economic environment is presented for Romania. As such, the paper analyzes the global evolution of social and economic environment over time and establishes a direct correlation between human development and economic welfare. An econometric model and a clustering model are tested for...

A framework for the optimal taxation of cigarettes based on economic efficiency is provided here. Fundamentally different views of smoking in the context of addictive behavior result in markedly different estimates of the efficient cigarette tax rate. Based on the rational addiction model, more than half of the states may have increased their cigarette excise tax rates to levels beyond the econ...

This paper is a critical introduction to the new wave of economic literature on the role of social interactions in determining aggregate economic outcomes. I refer to this research program, also known as new social economics, as the socioeconomic analysis of behavior, to distinguish it from the more popular economic analysis of social behavior. I discuss the main features of so-called interacti...

The paper econometricallyestimate investors‘ optimal portfolios are independent of their investmenthorizon. When ex ante diversification is investigated there appears to be no evidence of increased demand for equity over a longer investment horizons in India. That is, in India we obtain a flat equity profile over the investment horizons.Therefore, the mean-aversion in fixed-income explains the ...

The connection between obtaining higher paying jobs and undertaking some seemingly irrelevant activity is interpreted as “social culture.” In the context of a society trying to adopt a new technology, I show that by allowing the firms to give preferential treatment to workers based on some “cultural activity,” the society can partially overcome an informational free-riding problem. Therefore, s...