This dissertation is concerned with social preferences, accumulation of physical and human resources, and technology in inter-temporal development planning. Continuity of preferences defined over time paths of consumption imposes behavioral restrictions such as impatience or myopia. The first essay extends the different notions of myopia due to Brown and Lewis, and their characterization of the Mackey topology in terms of myopia, from $\ell_{\infty}$ to $L_{\infty}$. This characterization is then used to extend Araujo’s theorem on the necessity of impatience for the existence of competitive equilibrium from $\ell_{\infty}$ to $L_{\infty}$.
In the second essay, an overlapping generations macro model of popul ation growth and capital accumulation that generates the decisions of rich and poor families regarding number of children and savings is used to study the interactions among population growth, capital accumulation, skill composition of l abor, and income distribution. Tax transfer policies that can be used to affect these variables are also analyzed. The model provides an alternative to the Beckerian models for expl aining the inverse household income-child quantity relationship observed in most developing countries.
The third essay develops a decision theoretic model of R & D behavior incorporating time and uncertainty in the process of knowledge creation within an optimal stochastic control framework. The sources of knowledge are taken to be purchase of technology and know-how abroad and domestically as well as in-house R & D investment. The model is estimated with data from three groups of Indian manufacturing industries (light, petro-chemical, and heavy). In all three industries the bigger firms tend to substitute domestic for foreign purchase of technology and technical know-how, and in heavy industry they also do more in-house R & D. Monopoly power has no significant impact on light industry R & D activities. In the other two, it reduces firms’ pur’chase of technology without changing significantly their other R & D activities. In the case of the petrochemical industry this reduction is offset partially by an increase in in-house R & D efforts. Patenting stimulates further in-house research only in the light and petro-chemical industries. While the petro-chemical and light industries conduct more basic research, heavy industry does only minor adaptive research in in-house laboratories.