This book, "The Mystery of Economic Growth," which was recently published in Hebrew, provides an excellent non-technical description of the developments of growth economics over the last half century. The story of the ideas and research of the theory and empirics of economic growth is organized around four themes. First, the importance of the accumulation of physical and human capital for the e...

This paper offers an informal theory of fractal poverty traps that lead to chronic poverty at multiple scales of socio-spatial aggregation. Poverty traps result from nonlinear processes at individual, household, community, national and international scales that cause the coexistence of high and low equilibrium levels of productivity and income and high and low rates of economic growth. Multiple...

This paper accounts for China’s economic growth since 1980 in a unified endogenous growth model in which a sequencing of physical capital accumulation, human capital accumulation and innovation drives the rise in China’s aggregate income. The first stage is characterized by physical capital accumulation. The second stage includes both physical and human capital accumulation, and in the final st...

We investigate how the relationship between economic growth and pollution is affected by the source of pollution: production or consumption. We are interested in polluting waste that cannot be naturally absorbed, but for which recycling efforts aim to avoid massive pollution accumulation with harmful consequences in the long run. We distinguish the cases where recycling efforts are capital-impr...

A mericans have always believed in building a better future. each generation has strived to pass on higher standards of living to their children than they themselves experienced. And for most of American history, this goal has been realized. Per capita income has risen strongly for most of the past two centuries. Such economic growth stems from a number of factors. Investment in skills and educ...

JEL Classification: D31, O41. This study proposes an economic growth model of structural change with heterogeneous households. It endogenously determine wealth accumulation and land value. Our model is based on three core theories in economics Walrasian general equilibrium theory, Ricardian theory of distribution, and neoclassical growth theory. The paper is focused on effects of changes in det...

Krugman, Young, Kim & Lau and Collins & Bosworth have argued that the extraordinary record of economic growth in East Asia can be explained adequately by factor accumulation deriving from Abread-and-butter economic forces@ such as high savings rates, good education, and the movement of under-employed peasants into the modern sector. Yet this explanation that it was all based on Aworking harder,...

A mericans have always believed in building a better future. Each generation has strived to pass on higher standards of living to their children than they themselves experienced. And for most of American history, this goal has been realized. Per capita income has risen strongly for most of the past two centuries. Such economic growth stems from a number of factors. Investment in skills and educ...

T                      is founded on two propositions: ) Institutions matter, ) Institutions are endogenous. The central claim of ‘‘new institutionalism’’ is that institutions are a ‘‘deeper’’, ‘‘primary’’ cause of economic development. The theoretical program has been laid out by North (, p. ; italics supplied): ‘‘To make sense out of historical and contemporary e...

This paper presents a simple model of human capital, ideas, and economic growth that integrates contributions from several different strands of the growth literature. The model generates a regression specification that is very similar to that employed by Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992), but the economics underlying the specification is very different. In particular, the model emphasizes the impor...