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Olivier de La Grandville is visiting professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, a position he has held since 1988. A professor of economics at the University of Geneva between l978 and 2007, he has also held visiting positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique of Lausanne, University of Neuchâtel, University of Western Australia, and more recently at Frankfurt University.

We introduce a formula for the optimal savings rate in an economy driven by an investment policy reflecting competitive equilibrium. The reasonable numbers generated by the formula should be of help not only to assess our present situation but also to prepare our future. Moreover, this chapter provides two theorems correcting a widely held belief in economic growth theory, namely that a steady state defined by income per person growing at the labor-augmenting rate can be asymptotically reached only if technical progress is labor-augmenting. We finally show that the magnitudes of the optimal savings rates are highly robust to very different, S-shaped evolutions of population and technology. The chapter closes with a daring conjecture.

This chapter develops a neoclassical growth model of illegal immigration with imperfect substitutability between native and immigrant workers in production. We investigate analytically and/or numerically the effects of illegal immigration on the average capital stock in the host economy as well as on the wage, income, and asset holdings of native workers. Our findings indicate that the effects of an increase in illegal immigration on the average levels of capital, consumption, and income are positive. Moreover, by employing the normalization technique (e.g., Klump & de La Grandville, 2000), we examine the effects of a change in the elasticity of substitution between immigrant workers and natives for any given immigration ratio. These effects are in general ambiguous, because of the presence of two opposing forces: the efficiency and the distribution effects. Finally, we extend the model by separating the domestic workers into skilled and unskilled and study the impact on distribution of income and wealth. We show that illegal immigration may not necessarily make the distribution of wealth more unequal and unskilled labor worse off. This is because the end results depend on the elasticities of substitution between different types of labor. Thus, assuming erroneously that immigrants and natives are perfect substitutes could lead to results that are not only overestimated but also of the wrong sign.

Multisector growth (MSG) models have a special aura that is shared with computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. Both of them, with their many sectors (industries and goods), are known as trying to convert Walrasian general equilibrium systems from an abstract economy representation into workable models with industrial structures changing as actually observed. Yet, they are plagued by severe problems. First, they are difficult subjects involving systems of nonlinear equations. Second, their prevalent numerical (algorithmic) methodology offers little in the way of showing a clear overall picture and understanding the plethora of numbers pouring out from model simulations. The great wood is not seen for all the trees. Hence, the main objective is to set out comparative static and dynamic systems for succinctly stating and explicitly solving MSG models. The Walrasian general equilibrium is completely stated by one equation and the multisector dynamics by one differential equation. Benchmark solutions are shown for three Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) parameter regimes of a 10-sector general equilibrium model.

Vintage capital growth models have been at the heart of growth theory in the 1960s. This research line collapsed in the late 1960s with the so-called embodiment controversy and the technical sophisitication of the vintage models. This chapter analyzes the astonishing revival of this literature in the 1990s. In particular, it outlines three methodological breakthroughs explaining this resurgence: a growth accounting revolution, taking advantage of the availability of new time series; an optimal control revolution, allowing to safely study vintage capital optimal growth models; and a vintage human capital revolution, along with the rise of economic demography, accounting for the vintage structure of human capital similarly to physical capital age structuring. The related literature is surveyed.

The famous Uzawa (1961) balanced growth theorem has exercised a tyranny of sorts over macroeconomics for decades. It is the prime reason why researchers use Cobb–Douglas production functions and abstract from considering movements in factor shares. Others have had to recourse to complex explanations for long-run labor augmentation in technical progress. In this chapter, we discuss the issues arising from this problem and propose a way of achieving balanced growth with a short-run production function where the elasticity of factor substitution is less than one, and capital augmenting technology shocks can be permanent. We do so by allowing firms to choose the relative reliance on capital in the production technology and introducing a suitable modification of the production function. We also provide some model simulations in the context of a simple deterministic neoclassical growth model.