Research Database

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model of economic growth. The model has a steady state equilibrium in which some firms devote resources to discovering qualitatively improved products and other firms devote resources to copying these products. Rates of both innovation and imitation are endogenously determined based on the outcomes of R&D races between firms. Innovation subsidies are shown to unambiguously promote economic growth. Welfare is only enhanced however if the steady state intensity of innovative effort exceeds a critical level.

The paper proposes a theory of ambiguous financial contracts. Leaving contractual contingencies unspecified may be optimal, even when stipulating them is costless. We show that an ambiguous contract has two advantages. First, it permits the guarantor to sacrifice reputational capital in order to preserve financial capital as well as information reusability in states where such tradeoff is optimal. Second, it fosters the development of reputation. This theory is then used to explain ambiguity in mutual fund contracts, bank loan commitments, bank holding company relationships, the investment banker's "highly confident" letter, non-recourse debt contracts in project financing, and other financial contracts.

We explain how a long period of slow pre-industrial development triggers an Industrial Revolution that leads to modern balanced growth. Development in the preindustrial period is driven by increasing returns to specialization made possible by a growing population. Increasing access to specialized intermediate goods eventually makes fundamental technological innovation possible. Innovation initiates the Industrial Revolution, after which productivity grows endogenously regardless of population growth. Industrialization reconciles the crucial role of population early on with its weak relation to per capita product in developed economies. Faster population growth speeds early development, though if it results from a highly productive primitive technology, the consequences for development are ambiguous.

Cointegration tests are used to examine the basic long-term relation between population and the housing stock. There is some weak evidence of a long-run relation between the constant-cost value of the housing stock and population-driven demand. Much stronger evidence exists for a long-term relation between owner-occupied housing units and the adult population. We generally cannot reject that the number of housing units intended for owner-occupancy has adjusted in proportion to the population 25 years of age and older. Using these results and current population projections, we produce trend forecasts through the year 2010 for the owner-occupied housing stock and single-family housing starts in the U.S.