Government spending should be regarded as a social and political phenomenon, not merely as a technical choice. We argue that there is an implicit contract between the organized elites and politicians which often leads to a pro-elite allocation of public resources. A natural and simple taxonomy...

Explicitly accounting for certain basic physical laws governing the “earth” sector dramatically enriches our ability to explain a high degree of diversity in observed patterns of economic growth. We provide a theoretical explanation of why some countries have been able to sustain a more or...

This paper explores the conditions for sustainable development through two models of economic growth that elucidates two extremes; an open economy with constant prices, and a closed economy with endogenous prices. Sustainable development is easier to achieve in the case of the former than the...

The standard theoretical literature has shown that environmental sustainability and positive economic growth are not incompatible as long as environmental policies are optimal. However, in showing this result earlier studies have relied on strong assumptions that may appear to charge the dice in...

We show that the tax system in Chile is insufficient, inefficient and inequitable. Insufficient because it does not yield enough revenues for the state to promote human capital development and to face poverty in a more comprehensive way; inefficient because it is highly unbalanced causing most...

This paper examines how certain new structural factors have contributed to the latest great financial crisis and world recession of 2008-09. We focus on three of these structural factors: (i) the incorporation of highly populated countries into the growth process; (ii) The increasing scarcity of...

Three new structural factors underlie the latest great world crisis: (1) the incorporation of highly populated countries into the growth process; (2) The increasing scarcity of the environment and certain natural resources; (3) the dramatic concentration of wealth and income in the advanced...