A growing number of studies quantify the impact of nonlethal human disturbance on the behavior and reproductive success of animals. Athough many are well designed and analytically sophisticated, most lack a theoretical framework for making predictions and for understanding why particular responses occur. Behavioral ecologists have recently begun to fill this theoretical vacuum by applying econo...

This paper develops a simple growth model that embeds distorted factor markets and government intervention that achieves high economic growth, low consumption, and high investment simultaneously. All of these phenomena are consistent with Chinese macroeconomic data since the 1990s, implying the inefficiency of economic growth.

We analyze the determinants of effective legal institutions (legality) using data from 49 countries. We show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family. Countries that have developed legal orders internally, adapted the transplanted law, and/or had a population that was already familiar with ...

We review recent work on the statistical mechanics of Von Neumann’s growth model and discuss its application to cellular metabolic networks. In this context, we present a detailed analysis of the physiological scenario underlying optimality à la Von Neumann in the metabolism of the bacterium E. coli, showing that optimal solutions are characterized by a considerable microscopic flexibility acco...

We explore the hypothesis that demographic changes started in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are at the root of the acceleration in growth rates at the dawn of the modern age. During this period, life tables for Geneva and Venice show a decline in adult mortality; French marriage registers show an important increase in literacy; historians measure an acceleration of economic growth. W...

In the past two decades, China has witnessed rapidly economic growth. However, this extensive economic growth pattern has brought about quite a lot resource and environmental problems that might hold economic further development back at present and in near future. Now the emerging issue is how China could balance realization of rapidly economic growth and the sustainability of society in near f...

In this paper, a two sector economic economic growth model with renewable natural capital is developed. The model is similar in spirit to the models of Solow (1974) and Hartwick (1977) but with a slightly di erent emphasis. Namely, address the role human behavior and culture plays in the dynamics of a human ecological economic system. The analysis of the model indicates that there are both lowe...

Since the time immemorial, saving has been considered as a major driving factor for the prosperity of household and the development of countries. Traditionally, the inter-temporal concept of saving is limited to one’s life span irrespective of next generation. Development is, however, not considered as sustainable unless it has inter-generational and societal stand. This paper intends to show h...

Long-term economic development involves four fundamental processes: the exploitation of increasing returns to specialization, the transition from household to market production, knowledge and human capital accumulation, and industrialization. In this paper, we integrate these processes into a coherent framework for thinking about economic history. Preindustrial development is driven by increasi...

Four stylized facts of economic growth in DCs are set up initially. Despite its obvious simplicity the linear growth model with subsistence consumption is able to reproduce two of them: a rise in the saving rate along with per capita income as well as b-divergence. The rate of convergence shows extraordinarily low values at early stages of economic development. Hence, the big diversity in growt...