This paper proposes a structural approach to growth modeling relying on random return scale. An RBC-like model in which return to scale may be strictly increasing or decreasing depending on shocks is explicitly derived. We show that relevant component of usual macroeconomic models (including...

Evidence from English real wages and real land rents for the period 1500-1800 are used to evaluate the impact of temperature and precipitations on under-developed economies. Estimating key parameters of an AK-growth model, we extract Total Factor Productivity (TFP hereafter) shocks and estimate...

Economic theory long acknowledged a positive relation between human capital and economic growth (Smith, 1776; Becker, 1964), which was nevertheless called into question in the late 1990s (Caselli et al. 1996; Pritchett, 2001). The two primary criticisms evoked were the failure to consider diminishing...