David de la Croix and his co-authors Raouf Boucekkine and Omar Licandro developed a unified framework encompassing longevity, education and economic growth.

[1][2] The basic link is that a longer life expectancy justifies a greater investment in education (this is called the Ben Porath mechanism in the related literature), which in turn fosters economic growth by promoting human capital accumulation.

[3][4] In a similar vein, David de la Croix and his co-author Matthias Doepke contributed to the development of a unified framework encompassing fertility, education, inequality and growth.

Different from family- or clan-based institutions that were prevalent in the rest of the World, apprenticeship (as framed by the guild systems in Medieval Europe) allowed new techniques and innovations to spread rapidly across the continent thanks to master-apprentice interactions, without being constrained by family lines.

[18][19] David de la Croix is currently working on a large scale new project, whose goal is to understand how the human capital of scientists and scholars has contributed to the affirmation of the West.