Journal Article Traditional Capital Theory Get access Dan Usher Dan Usher Nuffield College, Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 32, Issue 2, April 1965, Pages 169–186, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296061 Published: 01 April 1965

Journal Article The Social Rate of Discount and the Optimal Rate of Investment: Comment Get access Dan Ushbk Dan Ushbk Nuffield College, Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 78, Issue 4, November 1964, Pages 641–644, https://doi.org/10.2307/1879660 Published: 01 November 1964

A dynastic cycle is a periodic alternation of society between despotism and anarchy. In a society of farmers, rulers, and bandits, population growth simultaneously impoverishes farmers and reduces the ruler's surplus per head. Society evolves into a despotic stationary state or into a dynastic cycle depending on whether poverty among farmers chokes off population growth before the surplus shrinks to the point where rulers turn to banditry.

A dynastic cycle is a periodic alternation of society between despotism and anarchy. In a society of farmers, rulers, and bandits, population growth simultaneously impoverishes farmers and reduces the ruler's surplus per head. Society evolves into a despotic stationary state or into a dynastic cycle dependent on whether poverty among farmers chokes off population growth before the surplus shrinks to the point where rulers turn to banditry.

When a man migrates from one country to another, he abandons his share of public property--the use of roads and schools, the rights to a share of revenue from minerals in the public domain, and so on--in the former country and acquires a share of public property in the latter, conferring a benefit upon the remaining residents of the country from which he comes and imposing a cost upon the original residents of the country to which he goes. This proposition is developed with the aid of an ordinary marginal product of labor curve, the "public property" effect is contrasted with other sources of costs and benefits of migration, and an attempt is made to supply a rough and ready estimate of the magnitudes involved.

When a man migrates from one country to another, he abandons his share of public property--the use of roads and schools, the rights to a share of revenue from minerals in the public domain, and so on--in the former country and acquires a share of public property in the latter, conferring a benefit upon the remaining residents of the country from which he comes and imposing a cost upon the original residents of the country to which he goes. This proposition is developed with the aid of an ordinary marginal product of labor curve, the "public property" effect is contrasted with other sources of costs and benefits of migration, and an attempt is made to supply a rough and ready estimate of the magnitudes involved.