This paper constructs a two-sector unified growth model. Learning-by-doing in agriculture eventually allows the preindustrial economy to leave its Malthusian trap. But entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector do not attempt invention if not much is known about natural phenomena. This delays the industrial revolution. Since entrepreneurs identify new useful knowledge at all times in a serendipi...

This paper considers some methodological aspects of Joan Robinson’s contribution to post-Keynesian growth theory. Joan Robinson’s criticisms of equilibrium analysis, of the conflation of logical and historical time and of the uses (and misuses) of mathematical formalisation are scathing. But while many of her points are well taken, parts of her argument appear questionable. As a result, her met...

We consider a two-period overlapping generations model in which individual voters differ not only according to age but also productivity. In such a setting, a (redistributive) Pay-As-You-Go system is politically sustainable, even when the interest rate is larger than the rate of population growth. The medium wages workers (not the lowest) join the retirees to form a majority and vote for a posi...

In this paper we present an endogenous growth model with productive government spending and pollution. As to pollution we suppose that it is a by-product of aggregate production and that it negatively affects utility of the household but not production possibilities directly. Analyzing our model it is first shown that for reasonable parameter values there exists a unique balanced growth path wh...

This paper examines the importance of factor mobility within countries for the manifestation of agglomeration and location effects emphasized in the new economic geography literature. Working with a model of trade under monopolistic competition, the relationship of factor mobility (in particular labor) to industry adjustment and relocation is developed analytically, and then illustrated with a ...

This paper studies growth and welfare effects of fiscal policy in an endogenous growth model with productive public capital where we consider both distortionary and non-distortionary taxation in the model simultaneously. Analyzing the model it is assumed that the economy originally is on the balanced growth path when the government changes its fiscal parameters. The paper then studies growth an...

We develop a multi-sector general equilibrium model in which productivity growth is driven by the production of sector-specific knowledge. In the model, we find that long run differences in total factor productivity growth across sectors are independent of the parameters of the knowledge production function except for one, which we term the fertility of knowledge. Differences in R&D intensity a...

A Schumpeterian growth model is constructed for an economy where wages are determined by union-firm bargaining. It is shown that the economy is subject to cycles in which capital, output and employment vary in fixed proportion. These increase through saving and capital accumulation until a new technology is introduced, at which moment they fall sharply due to obsolescence of capital. The labour...

In this paper we present and analyze a stylized model of endogenous growth with international technology spillover effects from the North to the South. The model allows for endogenous structural change and environmental degradation that reduces world output. We find that within this framework the costless technological spillovers foster structural change in both more and less advanced economies...

This paper analyses a RBC model in continuous time featuring deterministic incremental development of technology and stochastic fundamental inventions arriving according to a Poisson process. Other than in standard RBC models, shocks are uncorrelated, irregular and rather seldom. In two special cases analytical solutions are presented. In the general case a delay differential equation (DDE) has...