This paper develops and structurally estimates a learning model in which firms acquire information about workers' ability by observing their performance over time. A firm consists of a collection of jobs which differ in the informational content of performance, as measured by the dispersion in...

This paper puts forth a theory to explainwhy special interest groups are more prevelant in some countries. Its thesis is that uneven industrialization facilitates the formation of special interest groups with monopoly control over factor supplies. An uneven industrial structure is both an...

We propose a theory where capital market imperfections are at the origin of cross-country TFP differences. In our theory entrepreneurs have private information about the multifactor productivity of their technology. We study how the contracting environment, as described by the ability to enforce...

What drove western population growth in the U.S. during the 19th century? The facts are: (i) The birth ratio was higher in the West than in the East. Both exhibited a secular decline. (ii) Between 1800 and 1810 net migration accounted for 88% of the rate of population growth in the northwest...

The main questions of this paper are as follows: Whether and to what extent does rising educational attainment contribute to a country's economic growth by facilitating the reallocation of labor from the agricultural sector to the non-agricultural sector? The transition from the agricultural...

We report an intriguing empirical observation. The relationship between corruption and output depends on the economy's degree of openness: in open economies, corruption and GNP per capita are strongly negatively correlated, but in closed economies there is no relationship at all. This stylized...

We study the volatility of growth rates and find that it differs systematically across countries. Our empirical investigation reveals that there is a high correlation between disparity in political regimes across countries and differences in volatility. This is not the case for some of the...

All industrialized countries experienced a transition from high birth rates and stagnant standards of living to low birth rates and sustained growth in per capita income. What contributed to this transformation? Were output and population dynamics driven by common or separate forces? We develop...

In this paper, we document the reallocation of employment over time between agriculture, manufacturing, and services (the process of structural transformation) and the growth rate of sectoral labor productivity across countries. We find that countries are going through a remarkably similar...