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THE WIDE CROSS-COUNTRY DISPARITY IN RATES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH IS THE MOST PUZZLING FEATURE OF THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS. THIS PAPER DESCRIBES A CLASS OF MODELS IN WHICH THIS HETEROGENEITY IN GROWTH EXPERIENCES CAN BE THE RESULT OF CROSS-COUNTRY DIFFERENCES IN GOVERNMENT POLICY. THESE DIFFERENCES CAN ALSO CREATE INCENTIVES OF LABOR MIGRATION FROM SLOW-GROWING TO FAST-GROWING COUNTRIES. IN THE MODELS CONSIDERED, GROWTH IS ENDOGENOUS DESPITE THE ABSENCE OF INCREASING RETURNS BECAUSE THERE IS A "CORE" OF CAPITAL GOODS THAT CAN BE PRODUCED WITHOUT THE DIRECT OR INDIRECT CONTRIBUTION OF FACTORS THAT CANNOT BE ACCUMULATED, SUCH AS LAND.

ABSTRACTThis paper represents a case study in welfare state expansion. It takes an actor-centered point of view and reconstructs the long process which has ultimately led to a compromise solution to the problem of providing long-term care, especially for the elderly. It describes the previously means-tested arrangement of long-term care provision and its shortcomings. Furthermore, it sketches the different stages through which the political debate on this issue has passed during the last twenty years: from the initial phase of defining the "social problem", to the final stage when the approval of the compromise package became a question of "all or nothing". The analysis of the politics of long-term care insurance reveals that the difficulties of reaching an agreement mainly resulted from the complex decision-making situation. It was in essence a problem of decision-making under conditions of general uncertainty.

Taking advantage of key recent advances in long-run economic and financial data, we analyze the statistical properties of global long-maturity real interest rates over the past seven centuries. In contrast to existing consensus, we find that real interest rates are in fact trend stationary and exhibit a persistent downward trend since the Renaissance. We investigate structural breaks in real interest rates over time and find that overall the Black Death and the 1557 "Trinity default" appear as consistent inflection points. We further show that demographic and productivity factors do not represent convincing drivers of real interest rates over long spans. (JEL E43, F30, N20)