Human Capital Formation, Life Expectancy and the Process of Economic Development This paper presents a microfounded theory of long-term development. We model the interplay between economic variables, namely the process of human capital formation and technological progress, and the biological constraint of finite lifetime expectancy. All these processes affect each other and are endogenously det...

Growth, Development, and Technological Change The theory of endogenous technical change has deeply contributed to our understanding of the fundamental sources of economic growth and development. In this chapter we survey important contributions in the field by focussing on the basic structure of endogenous growth models with horizontal as well as vertical innovation and emphasizing important im...

Several empirical studies are concerned with measuring the effect of currency and current account crises on economic growth. Using different empirical models this paper serves two aspects. It provides an explicit assessment of country specific factors influencing the costs of crises in terms of economic growth and controls via a treatment type model for possible sample selection governing the o...

International Labor Standards and the Political Economy of Child Labor Regulation Child labor is a persistent phenomenon in many developing countries. In recent years, support has been growing among rich-country governments and consumer groups for the use of trade policies, such as product boycotts and the imposition of international labor standards, to reduce child labor in poor countries. In ...

This study explores the link between economic growth and penile length between 1960 and 1985. It estimates an augmented Solow model utilizing the Mankiw-Romer-Weil 121 country dataset. The size of male organ is found to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with the level of GDP in 1985. Economic development between 1960 and 1985 is negatively associated with the size of male organ. With consid...

This paper studies estimation of a panel data model with latent structures where individuals can be classified into different groups where slope parameters are homogeneous within the same group but heterogeneous across groups. To identify the unknown group structure of vector parameters, we design an algorithm called Panel-CARDS which is a systematic extension of the CARDS procedure proposed by...

In this paper, we examine the specification tests which have been proposed for fixed effects in binary panel data model, using several different data generating processes to evaluate the performance of the specification test in different situations. By simulations, we find the specification test based on moment conditions is able to outperform the Lagrange multiplier test proposed by Gurmu (199...

Among the oldest and most pervasive economic institutions are bonded labor and serfdom. While seemingly exploitative, both bonded labor and serfdom are often not imposed on the laborers but voluntarily chosen. It is generally the lack of suitable alternatives which makes workers opt for a life in servitude. This paper shows that the existence of these voluntary forms of servitude itself may res...

There is a heated debate on the merits of legalizing certain illegal, harmful and corrupting activities (such as trade in illicit drugs), but little theoretical insights on the consequences for optimal enforcement policies and corruption. We propose a model where the government hires law enforcers to report those who engage in a harmful activity. Offenders are allowed to respond by offering bri...

This paper takes a global, long‐run perspective on the recent debate about secular stagnation, which has so far mainly focused on the short term. The analysis is motivated by observing the interplay between the economic and demographic transition that has occurred in the developed world over the past 150 years. To the extent that high growth rates in the past have partly been the consequence of...