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Venture capital (VC) and growth are examined both empirically and theoretically. Empirically, VC-backed startups have higher early growth rates and initial patent quality than non-VC-backed ones. VC-backing increases a startup’s likelihood of reaching the right tails of the firm size and innovation distributions. Furthermore, outcomes are better for startups matched with more experienced venture capitalists. An endogenous growth model, where venture capitalists provide both expertise and financing for business startups, is constructed to match these facts. The presence of venture capital, the degree of assortative matching between startups and financiers, and the taxation of VC-backed startups matter significantly for growth.

We examine the labor market consequences of an exogenous increase in the supply of skilled labor in several municipalities in Norway, resulting from the construction of new colleges in the 1970s. We find that skilled wages increased as a response, suggesting that along with an increase in the supply there was also an increase in demand for skill. We also show that college openings led to an increase in the productivity of skilled labor and investments in R&D. Our findings are consistent with models of endogenous technical change where an abundance of skilled workers may encourage firms to adopt skill-complementary technologies.

Labor's share of income has attracted interest in recent years reflecting its apparent decline. These falls, witnessed across many countries, are usually deemed undesirable. Any such assertion, however, begs the question of what is the socially optimal labor share. We address this question using a micro-founded endogenous growth model calibrated on US data. We find that in our central calibration the socially optimal labor share is 17% (11 pp) above the decentralized equilibrium, calibrated to match the average observed in history. We also study the dependence of both long-run growth equilibria on model parameters and relate our results to Piketty's "laws of Capitalism". Finally, we demonstrate that cyclical movements in factor income shares are socially optimal and that the decentralized equilibrium typically does not generate excess volatility.

This thesis applies several econometric methods to a selection of country panels to study how growth is influenced by financial development and government debt. The first part presents the thesis discussion, including a synthesis on financial development, government debt, money supply, and economic growth. The second part deepens the discussion with three stand-alone essays. The first essay models how financial development affects growth through utilization of technological innovation. Based on explicit modeling of the innovation channel of finance, the results show a significant and positive sign for the interaction term between the measure of a country's own innovation and financial development in the most important specifications. This suggests that the innovation channel of finance is likely to be positively relevant to growth. The second essay examines effects of venture capital investment on economic growth in a similar framework. The findings demonstrate that the interaction of venture capital with innovation has a positive and statistically significant coefficient. Further, the joint impact related to venture capital and its interactions is positive in most specifications, suggesting that venture capital is probably a relevant factor for growth. The third essay delves deeply in the effects of general government debt and general government external debt on growth of real GDP. It explores the long-standing endogeneity problem, includes other relevant debt concepts besides government total debt, revisits the issue whether there are threshold values for the government debt ratio, examines the effect of debt on GDP components and structure, uses timely and extensive datasets and extensive robustness analysis, and runs meta-regressions of the results of this and a many of other studies. Even with correction for endogeneity, the study finds modest evidence of a negative and significant growth impact for government debt. The evidence is not robust over all samples and specifications. The final essay also reports evidence of a negative and significant effect of government external debt in the sample of developed economies. The findings overall comport with those of recent papers that conclude that there is no universal threshold value for a government debt ratio that would hold across all countries. Further, government debt appears to decrease the private-investment-to-GDP ratio, but increases the GDP ratio for household consumption. The meta-regression analysis shows that the study's results on how specification features affect the estimate of the government debt coefficient are broadly in line with those of other studies.

We study theoretically and numerically the effects of an environmental tax reform using endogenous growth theory. In the theoretical part, mobile labor between manufacturing and R&D activities, and elasticity of substitution between labor and energy in manufacturing lower than unity allow for a growth dividend, even if we consider preexisting tax distortions. The scope for innovation is reduced when we consider direct financial investment in the lab, or elastic labor supply. We then apply the core theoretical model to a real growing economy and find that a boost in economic growth following such a carbon policy is a possible outcome. Lump-sum redistribution performs best in terms of effciency measured by aggregate welfare, while in terms of equity among social segments its progressive character fails when we consider very high emissions reduction targets.

How should governments best allocate their budget to support private research activities? The consensus in the literature is that sector-specific R&D support policies should be increasing in the degree of compatibility of sectoral innovation with the practices of the wider economy. Using a multi-sector endogenous growth model with in-house R&D and knowledge spillovers, it is shown, that accounting for the time it takes for an innovation to diffuse modifies this widely-accepted result. Wide applicability of green innovations alone does not justify higher research subsidies.

Environmental pollution adversely affects children’s probability to survive to adulthood, reduces thus parental expenditures on child quality and increases the number of births necessary to achieve a desired family size. We argue that this mechanism will be intensified by economic inequality because wealthier households live in cleaner areas. This is the key mechanism through which environmental conditions may impose a growth drag on the economy. Moreover, the adverse effect of inequality and pollution on children’s health may be amplified, if the population group that is least affected decides about tax-financed abatement measures. Our theory provides a candidate explanation for (1) the observed positive correlation between inequality and the concentration of pollutants at the local level, and (2) the hump-shaped evolution of child mortality ratios between cleaner and more polluted areas during the course of economic development., Economics Working Paper Series, 16/241

The paper develops an integrated baseline model to assess the trade-offs between the natural environment and economic growth. Consumption growth is considered under welfare and sustainability aspects. The framework features capital accumulation and the sectoral structure of the economy as key elements to cope with resource scarcity and pollution. Model extensions varying the number of sectors and inputs, changing central functional forms, and introducing poor input substitution and population growth are presented. The setup highlights the dual role of used inputs as a source of environmental problems and apart of the solution; it also discusses uncertainty and momentum effects. The paper concludes that the environment and economic growth can be compatible but that small deviations from the optimal paths my entail unsustainable development. Critical issues for sustainability are insufficient foresight, increasing damage intensity, and suboptimal policy making while population growth and poor input substitution are not necessarily precarious for future development., Economics Working Paper Series, 16/260

We build a two-country model of endogenous growth to study the welfare effects of taxes on tradable primary inputs when countries engage in asymmetric trade. We obtain explicit links between persistent gaps in productivity growth and the incentives of resource exporting (importing) countries to subsidize (tax) domestic resource use. The exporters' incentive to subsidize hinges on slower productivity growth and is disconnected from the importers' incentive to tax resource inflows i.e., rent extraction. Moreover, faster productivity growth exacerbates the im- porters' incentive to tax, beyond the rent-extraction motive. In a strategic tax game, the only equilibrium is of Stackelberg type and features, for a wide range of parameter values, positive exporters' subsidies and importers' taxes at the same time. The model predictions concerning the impact of resource taxes on relative income shares are supported by empirical evidence.

This paper examines the effects of knowledge diffusion on growth and costs of climate policy. We develop a general equilibrium model with endogenous growth which represents knowledge diffusion between sectors and regions. Knowledge diffusion depends on accessibility and absorptive capacity which we estimate econometrically using patent and citation data. Knowledge diffusion leads to a “greening” of economies boosting productivity of “clean” carbon-extensive sectors. Knowledge diffusion lowers the costs of global climate policy by about 90% for emerging countries (China) and 20% for developed regions (Europe and USA), depending on the substitutability between different knowledge types.

Climate physics predicts that the intensity of natural disasters will increase in the future due to climate change. One of the biggest challenges for economic modeling is the inherent uncertainty of climate events, which crucially affects consumption, investment, and abatement decisions. We present a stochastic model of a growing economy where natural disasters are multiple and random, with damages driven by the economy's polluting activity. We provide a closed-form solution and show that the optimal path is characterized by a constant growth rate of consumption and the capital stock until a shock arrives, triggering a downward jump in both variables. Optimum mitigation policy consists of spending a constant fraction of output on emissions abatement. This fraction is an increasing function of the arrival rate, polluting intensity of output, and the damage intensity of emissions. A sharp response of the optimum growth rate and the abatement share to changes in the arrival rate and the damage intensity justifies more stringent climate policies as compared to the expectation-based scenario. We subsequently extend the baseline model by adding climate-induced fluctuations around the growth trend and stock-pollution effects, demonstrating robustness of our results. In a quantitative assessment of our model we show that the optimal abatement expenditure at the global level may represent 0.9% of output, which is equivalent to a tax of $71 per ton carbon.

There is widespread concern that an international agreement on stringent climate policies will not be reached because it would imply too high costs for fast growing economies like China. To quantify these costs we develop a general equilibrium model with fully endogenous growth. The framework includes disaggregated industrial and energy sectors, endogenous innovation, and sector-specific investments. We find that the implementation of Chinese government carbon policies until 2020 causes a welfare reduction of 0.3 percent. For the long run up to 2050 we show that welfare costs of internationally coordinated emission reduction targets lie between 3 and 8 percent. Assuming faster energy technology development, stronger induced innovation, and rising energy prices in the reference case reduces welfare losses significantly. We argue that increased urbanization raises the costs of carbon policies due to altered consumption patterns., Economics Working Paper Series, 14/201

This paper analyzes the role of complexity in production on the level of output and on its rate of growth. We develop an endogenous growth model with human capital accumulation, where increased complexity could exert either a positive or a negative effect on the level of output but always a positive effect on its rate of growth. Our empirical measure of complexity is derived from net trade flows, and is based on the product space description of production sectors in the global economy. The evidence from a broad cross-section of countries is consistent with the main theoretical predictions of the model, and supports the view that production complexity is important in order to account for differences in economic performance. An indicator of the intensity of vertical trade among countries is also shown to be relevant to explain output performance.

We construct a tractable endogenous growth model with production externalities in which the public capital stock augments investment specific technological change. We characterize the first best fiscal policy and show that there exist several labor and capital tax-subsidy combinations that decentralize the planner's growth rate. The optimal factor income tax mix is therefore indeterminate which gives the planner the flexibility to choose policy rules from a large set. Our model explains why many advanced economies experiencing similar growth rates have widely varying factor income tax rates.

We study the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on optimum growth and environmental policy by using an expansion-in-varieties growth model with polluting non-renewable resources. Climate change harms the capital stock. Our main contribution is to introduce and extensively explore the naturally determined time lag between greenhouse gas emission and the damages due to climate change which proves to be crucial for the transition of the economy towards its steady state. The social optimum and optimal abatement policies are fully characterized. The inclusion of a green technology delays optimal resource extraction. The optimal tax rate on emissions is proportional to output. Poor understanding of the emissions diffusion process leads to suboptimal carbon taxes and suboptimal growth and resource extraction., Economics Working Paper Series, 13/184

The paper shows how a dynamic neoclassical AS-AD can be derived and used to describe business cycles and growth trends to undergraduates. Derived within the Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans (RCK) model, the AS-AD is the stationary equilibrium of the deterministic dynamic general equilibrium framework. Allowing Solow exogenous growth, the AS-AD is derived along the balanced growth path equilibrium. The derivation first builds consumption demand, aggregate demand, and then aggregate supply through the equilibrium conditions and a closed form solution for the capital stock. Through a comparative static change in goods sector productivity, the paper shows the basic failing of the standard RBC model. Allowing a second comparative static change in the consumer's time endowment, this captures a change in the "external margin" of labor supply. These comparative statics enable explanation of the business cycle, and "Solow-plus" growth trends including education time and working time. In extension of RCK, the paper shows beyond the undergraduate level, how to derive AS-AD when including human capital and endogenous growth. This allows an endogenous change in the time endowment for work and leisure through a change in human capital productivity, with a similar but more fundamental AS-AD story of business cycles and growth trends.

The paper presents a human-capital-based endogenous growth, cash- in-advance economy with endogenous velocity where exchange credit is produced in a decentralized banking sector, and money is supplied stochastically by the central bank. From this it derives an exact functional form for a general equilibrium 'Taylor rule'. The inflation coefficient is always greater than one when the velocity of money exceeds one; velocity growth enters the equilibrium condition as a separate variable. The paper then successfully estimates the magnitude of the coefficient on inflation from 1000 samples of Monte Carlo simulated data. This shows that it would be spurious to conclude that the central bank has a reaction function with a strong response to inflation in a 'Taylor principle' sense, since it is only meeting fiscal needs through the inflation tax. The paper also estimates several deliberately misspecified models to show how an inflation coefficient of less than one can result from model misspecification. An inflation coefficient greater than one holds theoretically along the balanced growth path equilibrium, making it a sharply robust principle based on the economy's underlying structural parameters.

The paper investigates the long-run consequences of a phase-out of nuclear energy for the Swiss economy. We apply the CITE model, a CGE model with fully endogenous growth, and complement it with a bottom-up model. We find that the nuclear phase-out can be achieved at relatively low costs, even when the expansion capacities of other technologies are limited. Consumer welfare decreases by 0.4% at the maximum compared to business as usual. Our results show that an economy can cope well with ambitious energy policies through sufficient innovation. Economic growth is not slowed down significantly. The phase-out policy contributes to a structural shift in favor of innovative, energyextensive sectors. It does not work against the climate policy goals but rather accelerates the transition to a less energy-dependent economy., Economics Working Paper Series, 12/167

The paper develops a two-region endogenous growth model with climate change affecting the countries capital stocks negatively. We compare two different policies aimed at supporting less developed countries: climate mitigation by rich countries, which diminishes the increase in stock pollution and hence capital depreciation, and income transfers in the tradition of development aid. Under a mild set of assumptions we fi nd that active climate policies are more efficient for rich economies and also, remarkably, better for poor countries than additonial development aid. The main reason is the difference between the two policies with respect to their effects on economic growth. The results are robust with respect to possible model extensions., Economics Working Paper Series, 12/166 (166)

This study is a short note designed to underline the importance of using the theoretically required form of accumulation functions. It is now a common knowledge that a growth model must rely on non-diminishing returns to a factor of production in order to generate endogenous growth. In Lucas (1988), for example, there is no diminishing-returns to the accumulation of human capital, which is the source of endogenous growth in the model. This rule, however, can lead to the following potentially misleading assumption: diminishing marginal productivity to each factor of production - given that there is no other source of long run growth - is sufficient for generating steady state equilibrium at levels. In this short note, we make two points. First, diminishing marginal productivity alone is not necessarily sufficient for generating steady state equilibrium at levels. Second, the inclusion of a theoretically required counter-force in the accumulation function together with diminishing returns is sufficient for generating steady state equilibrium. In conclusion, we heuristically argue that an accumulation function with no theoretically required counter-moving force, with or without diminishing returns, may bias the results of the model.

In this paper, we use a CGE model with endogenous growth to study the interplay between environmental regulation, innovation and sectoral growth. We find that a stringent reduction target for carbon emissions combined with a CO2-tax leads to structural changes. Under the assumption of a unilateral policy, the economy specializes in producing the energy-extensive good. Coupling the carbon tax with policies that aim at directly supporting sectoral capital accumulation significantly mitigates the negative impacts on competitiveness and growth. Finally, we identify two parameters that play an important role in applied energy policy analysis. First, the assumptions on the substitutability between fossil and non-fossil energy strongly affect the effectiveness of a given policy. When fossil and non-fossil energy are good substitutes, structural change in the economy is far less pronounced than under relative complementarity. Second, the rate of pure time preference has a pronounced impact on the investment incentives and thus on long-run development. Increasing the discount rate from 0.9% to 4.5% leads to a contraction in investments and to lower growth rates in all sectors.

While most countries have harmonized intellectual property rights (IPR) legislation, the dispute about the optimal level of IPR-enforcement remains. This paper develops an endogenous growth framework with two open economies satisfying the classical North-South assumptions to study (a) IPR-enforcement in a decentralized game and (b) the desired globally-harmonized IPR-enforcement of the two regions. The results are compared to the constrained-efficient enforcement level. Our main insights are: The regions’ desired harmonized enforcement levels are higher than their equilibrium choices, however, the gap between the two shrinks with relative market size. While growth rates substiantially increase when IPR-enforcement is harmonized at the North’s desired level, our numerical simulation suggests that the South may also benefit in terms of long-run welfare., Economics Working Paper Series, 11/150

A positive joint two-sector productivity shock causes Rybczynski (1955) and Stolper and Samuelson (1941) effects that release leisure time and initially raises the relative price of human capital investment so as to favor it over goods production. This enables a basic RBC model, modified by having the household sector produce human capital investment sector, to succeed along related major dimensions of output, consumption, investment and labor, similar to the international approach of Maodifying the dynamics relative to the important work of Jones et al. (2005), two key US facts stressed by Cogley and Nason (1995) are captured: persistent movements in the growth rates of output and hump-shaped impulse responses of output. Further, physical capital investment has data consistent persistence within a hump-shaped impulse response. And Gali's (1999) challenging empirical finding that labour supply decreases upon impact of a positive productivity shock is reproduced, while volatility in working hours is also data-consistent because of the substitution between market and nonmarket sectors.

This paper introduces a democratic voting process into an OLG economy in order to analyze the e ffects of a rising old-age dependency ratio on the composition of government spending and endogenous economic growth. Forward-looking agents vote each period on the public policy mix between productive government expenditure and public consumption spending that benefi ts the elderly. Population aging shifts political power from the young to the old. While this does not aff ect public productive expenditure, it leads to an increase in public spending on the elderly and a slowdown in economic growth. However, the overall e ffect on long-term economic growth is positive. This is due to reduced capital dilution or increased saving.

We develop a general equilibrium model of vertical innovation in which multiple firms compete monopolistically in the quality space. The model features many firms, each of which holds the monopoly to produce a unique quality level of an otherwise homogenous good, and consumers who are heterogeneous in their valuation of the good's quality. If the marginal cost of production is convex with respect to quality, multiple firms coexist, and their equilibrium markups are determined by the degree of convexity and the density of quality-competition. To endogenize the latter, we nest this industry setup in a Schumpeterian model of endogenous growth. Each firm enters the industry as the technology leader and successively transits through the product cycle as it is superseded by further innovations. The intrinsic reason that innovation happens in our economy is not one of displacing the incumbent; rather, innovation is a means to differentiate oneself from existing firms and target new consumers. Aggregate growth arises if, on the one hand, increasingly wealthy consumers are willing to pay for higher quality and, on the other hand, private firms' innovation generates income growth by enlarging the set of available technologies. Because the frequency of innovation determines the toughness of product market competition, in our framework, the relation between growth and competition is reversed compared to the standard Schumpeterian framework. Our setup does not feature business stealing in the sense that already marginal innovations grant non-negligible profits. Rather, innovators sell to a set of consumers that was served relatively poorly by pre-existing firms. Nevertheless, "creative destruction" prevails as new entrants make the set of available goods more differentiated, thereby exerting a pro-competitive effect on the entire industry.

We present a Schumpterian model of endogenous growth with General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) that captures two important historical stylized facts: First, from the beginning of mankind until today GPTs are arriving at an increasing frequency and, second, all GPTs heavily depended on previous technologies. In our model, the arrival of GPTs is endogenous and arises stochastically depending on the currently available applied knowledge stock. This way of endogenizing the arrival of new GPTs allows for a model which is more in tune with the historical reality than the existing GPT models.

Since 1980, the aggregate income of oil-exporting countries relative to that of oil-poor countries has been remarkably constant despite structural gaps in productivity growth rates. This stylized fact is analyzed in a two-country model where resource- poor (Home) and resource-rich (Foreign) economies display productivity differences but stable income shares due to terms-of-trade dynamics. We show that Home's income share is positively related to the national tax on domestic resource use, a prediction con rmed by dynamic panel estimations for sixteen oil-poor economies. National governments have incentives to deviate from both efficient and laissez-faire allocations. In Home, increasing the oil tax improves welfare through a rent-transfer mechanism. In Foreign, subsidies (taxes) on domestic oil use improve welfare if R&D productivity is lower (higher) than in Home., Economics Working Paper Series, 10/132

The paper develops a new type of CGE model to predict the effects of carbon policies on consumption, welfare, and sectoral development in the long run. Growth is fully endogenous, based on increasing specialization in capital varieties, and specific in each sector of the economy. The benchmark scenario is calculated based on the endogenous gains from specialization which carry over to policy simulation. Applying the model to the Swiss economy we nd that a carbon policy following the Copenhagen Accord entails a moderate but not negligible welfare loss compared to development without any negative effects of climate change. Energy extensive as well as capital and knowledge intensive sectors profit in the form of increased growth rates., Economics Working Paper Series, 10/129

If Janossy's theory should concisely be drafted, one might say that he had been researching the "real carrier of economic development" in a very original way and having formulated his theory in a specific language. He managed to identify the "carrier" of development focusing on the systematic examination of the post-war reconstruction periods, and setup a hypothesis being ascribed to his name, which allowed him to forecast - as the first and the only one in the world - the end of the post-war golden age, a decade in advance. The present study is aimed at comparing and contrasting Janossy's specifically formulated and highly genuine theories and ideas to the contemporary neo-classical economics and to the endogenous growth theory that have appeared in the nineties. The "real carrier of economic development" matches to the "human capital" of the contemporary neo-classical theory while in the endogenous growth theory it does match to the "technological progress", both appearing as separate factors of production. We present a new growth model that satisfies the best our considerations to which the a longitudinal model fitting is done for Maddison's [2003] historical data - from 1870 to present for the 19 most developed OECD countries - and for the post-war reconstruction period, as well. The same model is applied for a cross-regional analysis, after having calculated the rates of return on capital a ranking has been performed for nearly 300 (EU-27 NUTS 2) regions in the period of 2000-2005.

Computable general equilibrium models simulate the reaction of industries on carbon taxes. Their results differ strongly on the assumption of the underlying technologies. This paper compares two models and emphasizes the differences between their approaches to technology. The first model is the CITE model, which is the first model with endogenous growth based on gains from specialization so that growth dynamics result from investment incentives. The second model is a model with exogenous growth of endowments, which is the basis for many other CGE models. The results show that the CITE model unveils dynamics that cannot be obtained with the model based on exogenous growth. Reactions are stronger in the CITE model and industries need more time to approach the new balanced growth path.

We analyze the relative growth performance of open economies in a two-country model where different endowments of labor and a natural resource generate asymmetric trade. A resource-rich economy trades resource-based intermediates for final manufacturing goods produced by a resource-poor economy. Productivity growth in both countries is driven by endogenous innovations. The effects of a sudden increase in the resource endowment depend crucially on the elasticity of substitution between resources and labor in interme-diates production. Under substitution (complementarity), the resource boom generates higher (lower) resource income, lower (higher) employment in the resource-intensive sector, higher (lower) knowledge creation and faster (slower) growth in the resource-rich economy. The resource-poor economy adjusts to the shock by raising (reducing) the relative wage, and experiences a positive (negative) growth effect that is exclusively due to trade., Economics Working Paper Series, 10/124

We study a two-phase endogenous growth model in which the adoption of a backstop technology (e.g. solar) yields a sustained supply of essential energy inputs previously obtained from exhaustible resources (e.g. oil). Growth is knowledge-driven and the optimal timing of technology switching is determined by welfare maximization. The optimal path exhibits discrete jumps in endogenous variables: technology switching implies sudden reductions in consumption and output, an increase in the growth rate, and instantaneous adjustments in saving rates. Due to the positive growth e¤ect, it is optimal to implement the new technology when its current consumption bene.ts are substantially lower than those generated by old technologies.

An established result of the endogenous growth literature is that competitive equilibria in expanding-varieties models are suboptimal due to the rent-effect: monopolistic pricing drives the equilibrium quantity of each intermediate below the efficient level, implying that it is optimal to subsidize nal producers. This paper shows that, if scale effects are eliminated by including R&D spillovers in the model, normative prescriptions change. Since the laissez-faire economy under-invests into R&D activity, the share of resources devoted to intermediates production increases, and this reallocation e¤ect contrasts the rent-effect. In many scenarios, including the polar case of logarithmic preferences, the reallocation e¤ect surely dominates: the equilibrium quantity of each intermediate exceeds the optimal one, and the optimal policy consists of taxing final producers because scal authorities must internalize the overshooting mechanism generated by under-investment in R&D., Economics Working Paper Series, 09/116

A less well-known empirical finding for the US and UK is a pronounced low frequency negative relationship between inflation and Tobin's q; a normalized market price of capital. This stylized fact is explained within a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model using three key features: (i) a Lucas and Prescott (1971) physical capital adjustment cost with a rising marginal cost of investment, (ii) production of human capital with endogenous growth and (iii) an inflation tax cash-in-advance economy. The baseline endogenous growth model matches the US inflation and q long term correlation, while comparable exogenous growth are unable to do this, and it outperforms the exogenous growth models in explaining business cycle volatilities of q and of stock returns.

We provide a comprehensive survey of the recent literature on the link between productive government expenditure and economic growth. Starting with the seminal paper of Robert Barro (1990) we show that an understanding of the core results of the ensuing contributions can be gained from the study of their respective Euler equations. We argue that the existing literature incorporates many relevant aspects, however, policy recommen- dations tend to hinge on several knife-edge assumptions. Therefore, future research ought to focus more on idea-based endogenous growth models to check the robustness of policy recommendations. Moreover, the inclusion of hitherto unexplored types of government expenditure, e. g., on the "rule of law", would be desirable.

We study the effect of a declining labor force on the incentives to engage in labor-saving technical change and ask how this effect is influenced by institutional characteristics of the pension scheme. When labor is scarcer it becomes more expensive and innovation investments that increase labor productivity are more profitable. We incorporate this channel in a new dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous economic growth and heterogeneous overlapping generations. We calibrate the model for the US economy. First, we establish that the net effect of a decline in population growth on the growth rate of per-capita magnitudes is positive and quantitatively significant. Second, we find that the pension system matters both for the growth performance and for individual welfare. Third, we show that the assessment of pension reform proposals may be different in an endogenous growth framework as opposed to the standard framework with exogenous growth.

This paper develops a new open-economy endogenous growth model where technology diffusion allows for a stable and non-degenerate world income distribution. In accordance with the empirical literature, I find that country characteristics such as the social infrastructure, the degree of openness, the investment rate, population growth, the level of human capital, or growth policies such as subsidies to innovation investments explain a country's position in the eventual world income distribution. Club convergence in growth rates can be traced back to a country's openness and to a minimum required level of human capital.

I focus on the independent role of social innovation in economic progress. Modern theory of economic growth and development emphasizes endowments, power, incentives, and physical technology, paying scant attention to knowledge of social systems as a scarce resource. I reverse these procedures by directing the spotlight on social technologies, holding constant other important explanatory variables. First, I add social knowledge to Mokyr’s (2002) framework for analyzing useful knowledge and compare knowledge of nature to knowledge of the social game. Second, I examine the relationship between physical and social technologies in production—both in the production of commodities and social systems. Third, I discuss institutional policy—attempts by governments to establish and maintain social systems. I borrow ideas from both rational choice and bounded rationality macroeconomics. Finally, I use the evolution of modern biotechnology in the United States to illustrate the problem of knowledge in institutional policy.

This paper formalizes international status seeking in a two-country model of endogenous growth: utility of agents in developing countries is affected by consumption gaps with advanced economies. By distorting intertemporal choices, envy tends to revert growth differentials in favor of the developing country when traded goods are substitutes. Notably, asymmetric pref- erences with endogenous status desire generate (i) convergence in growth rates in the presence of structural gaps, and (ii) convergence in income levels, if productivity differences are absorbed by technology diffusion. This process is driven by declining terms of trade and faster capital accumulation of the status seeker. A calibration exercise shows that the model predictions are consistent with the stylized facts that characterized the growth performance of East Asian economies.

In this paper we test whether a reallocation of government budget items can enhance long-term GDP growth in a set of European countries. We apply modern panel data techniques to the period 1970-2006, and we use three alternative dependent variables in a growth regression: economic growth, total factor productivity and labour productivity. Our results are able to identify also the distortions induced by public expenditure in the private factors allocation. In particular, we detect a strong crowding-in effect associated to public investment, which have enhanced economic growth by boosting private investment. We also associate a significant dependence of productivity on public expenditure on education as well as the role of social security and health issues in growth and the labour market.

In this paper we analyze the implications of recycling for long-run economic development. In contrast to former approaches, we take explicit account of the circulation of matter in the economy. Building upon a Romer (1990) type growth model we consider virgin resources and recycled wastes as essential inputs to production. These material inputs either end up as waste after consumption or are bound in the capital stock - depending on the utilization of the produced output. As accumulating wastes can be recycled and again be employed in production, the waste stock serves as a source of valuable inputs in our model. We focus on the implications of recycling-related market failures and the integration of material balances on the dynamics of the economy. It is shown that, even in the absence of environmental policy, long-run development is sustainable. Yet, optimal environmental policy can serve as a means to raise growth. March 2006

We analyze a multi-sector growth model with directed technical change where man-made capital and exhaustible resources are essential for production. The relative pro tability of factor-specific innovations endogenously determines whether technical progress will be capital- or resource-augmenting. We show that convergence to balanced growth implies zero capital-augmenting innovations: in the long run, the economy exhibits purely resource-augmenting technical change. This result provides sound microfoundations for the broad class of models of exogenous/endogenous growth where resource-augmenting progress is required to sustain consumption in the long run, contradicting the view that these models are conceptually biased in favor of sustainability., Economics Working Paper Series, 06/50

This paper studies the e¤ects of distortionary taxes and public in- vestment in an endogenous growth OLG model with knowledge trans- mission. Fiscal policy a¤ects growth in two respects: .rst, work time reacts to variations of prospective tax rates and modi.es knowledge formation; second, public spending enhances labour e¢ ciency but also stimulates physical capital through increased savings. It is shown that Ramsey-optimal policies reduce savings due to high tax rates on young generations, and are not necessarily growth-improving with respect to a pure private system. Non-Ramsey policies that shift the burden on adults are always growth-improving due to crowding-in e¤ects: the welfare of all generations is unambiguously higher with respect to a private system, and there generally exists a continuum of non-optimal tax rates under which long-run growth and welfare are higher than with the Ramsey-optimal policy.

We set up a simple dynamic macroeconomic model with (i) polluting consump- tion and a preference for a clean environment, (ii) increasing returns in abate- ment giving rise to an EKC and (iii) sustained growth resulting from a linear final-output technology. The model captures two sorts of market failures caused by external effects associated with consumption and environmental effort. This model is employed to investigate the determinants of the turning point and the (relative) effectiveness of different public policy measures aimed at a reduction of the environmental burden. Moreover, the model offers a potential explana- tion of an N-shaped pollution-income relation. Finally, it is shown that the model is compatible with most empirical regularities on economic growth and the environment. May 2005

In this paper we study the problem of exhaustible resources and renewable resources in a theoretical endogenous growth framework, under various assumptions. In particular, we consider the hypotheses that those two inputs are or are not technologically perfect substitutes of each other. Moreover, we develop the starting model accounting for the negative externality of waste accumulation. Finally, a comparative analysis is made between Pigouvian tax and waste recycling as an environmental policy to internalize the negative externality represented by refuse accumulation.

We study the negative correlation between natural resource-abundance and long-term income focusing on the savings-investment channel. We first present empirical evidence on this channel and then develop an OverLapping-Generations (OLG) model to study the issue. In this model, savings adjust downwards to income from natural resources, and investment in capital contributes to knowledge creation, a feature based on endogenous growth theory. We analyze the link from resource income future income through savings and investment. Natural resources have two counteracting effects on income. In the short term, resource wealth augments income, but in the long-term, it decreases income through a crowding-out effect on capital and knowledge. We discuss different scenarios under which the resource curse is most likely to take place.

We develop an economic model for fossil-fuel and carbon-free energy supply and demand with capital and labor as production factors, and endogenous technological change through learning by research and learning by doing. We use the model to study inter-temporally efficient carbon taxes for climate stabilization targets. Calculations show an inverted U-curve with an initial rise of carbon-taxes that sets in motion the transition from fossil-fuels to carbon-free energy sources, followed by a drop in carbon taxes when the carbon-free energy sources have grown mature.