Essays on macroeconomics and international trade
Name
746650569-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
13.69 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
dddd46ef09010f4d55204c3cd01cc537
Author(s)
Mestieri, Martí (Mestieri Ferre)
Advisor(s)
Daron Acemoglu, Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Robert M. Townsend.
Date Issued
2011
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the study of different aspects of income inequality across and within countries. In the first chapter, I study how the optimal provision of human capital is distorted in the presence of borrowing constraints and private information on talent and wealth. It shows that elitist, non-merit based, access to higher education can be constrained optimal in poor and unequal countries. The second chapter documents how the IT revolution has changed the patterns of North-South trade and analyzes its effects on wage inequality. It provides theoretical and empirical results on wage polarization and a changes in the pattern of specialization. Finally, the third chapter provides a framework for estimating technological diffusion across countries. The framework is applied to study the diffusion of major technologies across the world since the Industrial Revolution. It is shown that differences in technology diffusion in the last two hundred years can account for two thirds of current income per capita differences.
Description
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, June 2011.
"June 2011." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
Subjects
Economics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
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copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
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