Homepage of David de la Croix

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"David de la Croix (born 1964, PhD 1992) is Professor of Economics at UCLouvain (Belgium) and research fellow at CEPR. He has taught on a visiting basis at UCLA, Copenhagen, Aix-Marseille, Nanterre, Capetown, Săo Paulo, Taipei, Rostock, NYU Abu Dhabi,Poznań, and Manchester. He is the instigator and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Demographic Economics, published by Cambridge University Press, and was associate editor for the Journal of Economic Growth, the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, the Journal of Development Economics, and the Journal of Public Economic Theory.

David de la Croix studies the nexus between human capital and long-run economic growth. He has developed general equilibrium frameworks that highlight how mechanisms and incentives contribute to higher productivity and the accumulation of knowledge. He had a particular focus on how longevity changes incentives to educate, the effect of the interaction between education and fertility on growth, how family types shape human capital accumulation, and how knowledge institutions affect economic progress. David’s specific approach is to develop quantitative theory to measure the importance of these mechanisms in explaining key features of the data.

Recently he led a project (ERC Advanced Grant) on European universities and academies, combining a large scale data collection undertaking with a variety of quantitative approaches to investigate how the features of European academia helped the West to take-off.

Working with 66 co-authors (17 ♀, 49 ♂), he has published a number of research articles (including in journals such as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review of Economic Studies), and a treatise on Economic Growth co-authored with Philippe Michel. He has also written a number of policy briefs addressed to a more general audience. And he has advised 26 doctoral dissertations (12 ♀, 14 ♂).

Curriculum Vitae: Full (en), Short (en), Short (fr).

Academic Genealogy: Tree Academic Genealogical Tree

Google Scholar Online references at Google Scholar

Repec Online references at EconPapers Repec

mathscinet Online references at MathSciNet (ID: 696602)
My Erdös number is 5 [computed here]

WorldCat Online references at VIAF

ORCID iD icon ORCID ID 0000-0002-7589-8535

Publications cited more than 100 times (in Google Scholar), January 2026

Source citations (scopus) citations (google scholar)
De la Croix D. and M. Doepke, Inequality and growth: why differential fertility matters, American Economic Review, 93, 1091-1113, 2003 439 1279
De la Croix D. and P. Michel, A Theory of Economic Growth: Dynamics and Policy in Overlapping Generations, Cambridge University Press, 2002 0 853
Boucekkine R., D. De la Croix and O. Licandro, Vintage human capital, demographic trends and growth, Journal of Economic Theory, 104, 340-375,2002 279 667
De la Croix D. and O. Licandro, Life expectancy and endogenous growth, Economics Letters, 65, 255-263, 1999 166 387
De la Croix D. and M. Doepke, Public versus private education when differential fertility matters, Journal of Development Economics, 73, 607-629, 2004 136 325
De la Croix D., M. Doepke, and J. Mokyr, Clans, Guilds, and Markets: Apprenticeship Institutions and Growth in the Preindustrial Economy, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133, 1-70, 2018 90 278
De la Croix D. and C. Delavallade, Growth, public investment and corruption with failing institutions, Economics of Governance, 10, 187-219, 2009 86 259
Baudin T., D. de la Croix, P. Gobbi, Fertility and Childlessness in the United States, American Economic Review, 105, 1852-1882, 2015 90 254
Boucekkine R., D. De la Croix and O. Licandro, Early mortality declines at the dawn of modern growth, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 105, 401-418, 2003 85 182
De la Croix D. and M. Doepke, To segregate or to integrate: education politics and democracy, Review of Economic Studies, 76, 597-628, 2009 65 178
De la Croix D., O. Pierrard, HR. Sneessens, Aging and pensions in general equilibrium: Labor market imperfections matter, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 37, 104-124, 2013 42 176
Boucekkine R., D. De la Croix, and D. Peeters, Early literacy achievements, population density and the transition to modern growth, Journal of the European Economic Association, 5, 183-226, 2007 58 150
Bouzahzah M., De la Croix D. and F. Docquier, Policy reforms and growth in computable OLG economics, Journal of Economics Dynamics and Control, 26, 2093-2113, 2003 37 146
De la Croix D. and O. Licandro, The Child is Father of the Man: Implications for the Demographic Transition, The Economic Journal, 123, 236-261, 2013 52 134
De la Croix D. and M. Vander Donckt, Would empowering women initiate the demographic transition in least developed countries?, Journal of Human Capital, 4, 85-129, 2010 65 127
Collard F. and D. De la Croix, Gift exchange and the business cycle: the fair wage strikes back, Review of Economic Dynamics, 3, 166-193, 2000 42 108
De la Croix D. and O. Licandro, The Longevity of Famous People from Hammurabi to Einstein, Journal of Economic Growth, 20, 263-303, 2015 38 107
De la Croix D. and F. Mariani, From Polygyny to Serial Monogamy: a Unified Theory of Marriage Institutions, Review of Economic Studies, 82, 565-607, 2015 34 102
De la Croix D. and P. Gobbi, Population Density, Fertility, and Demographic Convergence in Developing Countries, Journal of Development Economics, 127, 13-24, 2017 26 101
D De la Croix D., F. Docquier, A. Fabre, and R. Stelter, The academic market and the rise of universities in medieval and early modern Europe (1000–1800), Journal of the European Economic Association, 22, 1541-1589, 2024 9 100