Is economic growth for the birds?

The environment provides ecosystem services that support human wants. Economic growth is important for raising human living standards. But whether economic growth benefits the environment is unclear. Research into this relationship has focused on a U-shaped association known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). As economies grow, environmental quality initially declines but ultimately recovers and improves. However, environmental quality has been narrowly defined in the research, largely neglecting the availability and range of ecosystem services. Because these services derive from biodiversity, we use avian biodiversity as a proxy for environmental quality. Our results replace the U-shaped relationship with a lazy-S relationship. As economies grow, environmental quality initially declines, then improves over intermediate growth, but ultimately declines at higher growth. The EKC hypothesis has been used to forward economic growth as a means for improving environment quality. Our results call into question policies that rely solely on economic growth for reversing environmental decline.     

The “export-import” effect and economic growth

This paper proposes that singular improvements in productivity and growth are a result of increased exports and imports, especially in the manufacturing sector, but that sustainable increases in growth can only emerge through industrial diversification. Trade liberalizations between Canada and the United States have caused a narrowing of manufacturing productivity differentials, a predominance of intraindustry trade, and a positive Canadian trade balance for manufactured end products and fabricated materials. Sustained growth, however, relies more on the diversification of the industrial structure. Toward this end, Canadian trade policies should: (1) concentrate productivity in the exportable, rather than importable, sectors, (2) rationalize and specialize between rather than within industries, (3) encourage two-way trade in each industry, (4) liberalize trade gradually to avoid interindustry disruptions, and (5) redirect job real- location funds toward worker retraining and firm-specific modernization programs.     

China’s economic reforms and growth prospects

Conventional wisdom attributes China’s rapid economic growth to its model of state capitalism, which combines direct state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy and indirect state control of the rest of the economy through industrial policies and the allocation of credit through state-owned banks. This article argues that China’s growth since 1978 is largely due to the result of the expanding role of markets and the rise of private business. If China systematically adopts the economic reform agenda endorsed by the Chinese Communist Party in the fall of 2013, it likely will avoid a sustained period of much slower growth that some have forecast.     

Resource constraint,sustainable economic growth pattern and transformation of economic system in China

Over the past 20 years, China has made spectacular achievements in economic growth as well as in thetransformation of economic growth pattern. Industrial structure is being updated, and technology is playing a more andmore important role in economic development. The energy and resource consumption in many industries and enterprisesare reducing. However, we should realize that there are still many problems in changing the economic growth pattern,such as high input, high consumption, high discharge, inharmony, recycling difficulty, and low efficiency, which havegreatly impaired and restrict Chinese economic development. Therefore, the fundamental change of the economic growthpattern is inevitable. Based on the analysis on the status quo and the exploit of resources, this paper suggests that thetransformation from unsustainable to sustainable growth is the only choice in changing the economic growth pattern. Inaddition, the transformation should not completely rely on the fundamental effects of market mechanism. We should makefull use of the power of governments to speed up the transformation of economic system.     

Exchange rate volatility–economic growth nexus in Uganda

The global financial crisis has disrupted trade and capital flows in most developing economies, resulting in an increased volatility of exchange rates. We develop an autoregressive distributed lag model to investigate the effect of exchange rate volatility on economic growth in Uganda. Using data spanning the period 1960–2011, we find that exchange rate volatility positively affects economic growth in Uganda in both the short run and the long run. However, in the short run, political instability negatively moderates the exchange rate volatility–economic growth nexus. These results are robust to alternative specifications of the economic growth model.     

Does export variety determine economic growth in Pakistan?

This study explores the impact of export variety on economic growth in Pakistan. Export variety is decomposed into export related (within sector) and unrelated variety (between sectors) to examine the long run effect of export related variety and unrelated variety on economic growth. For this purpose, we incorporated export related variety and unrelated variety into the production function. The result of cointegration test shows that variables of the study are cointegrated in the long run. The result of fully modified ordinary least squares confirms the positive and significant effect of export related variety and unrelated variety on economic growth. Furthermore, the long run estimates show that the magnitude of export related variety is more than export unrelated variety. This study also finds the positive and significant effect of human capital on economic growth in the long run. It can be deduced from the results of the study that a specific sector shock will not disturb the economic pace of Pakistan.     

Religion and economic growth: was Weber right?

Evidence of falling wages in Catholic cities and rising wages in Protestant cities between 1500 and 1750, during the spread of literacy in the vernacular, is inconsistent with most theoretical models of economic growth. In The Protestant Ethic, Weber suggested an alternative explanation based on culture. Here, a theoretical model confirms that a small change in the subjective cost of cooperating with strangers can generate a profound transformation in trading networks. In explaining urban growth in early-modern Europe, specifications compatible with human-capital versions of the neoclassical model and endogenous-growth theory are rejected in favor of a “small-world” formulation based on the Weber thesis.     

Immigration and economic growth: do origin and destination matter?

This article assesses the heterogeneous effects of immigration on economic growth depending on both the origin and the destination countries. Following the development of a growth model augmented by human capital of immigrants, we estimate it in a dynamic panel setup using the system-GMM estimator. We find that the growth-enhancing effect of immigration is significantly larger when immigration flows from developed to developing economies than when it does to those that include both developed and developing economies. We interpret these results as evidence of immigrants from developed countries bringing with them their advanced knowledge into the developing countries.     

Population dividend and economic growth in China, 1978–2018

ABSTRACT

China witnessed important demographic transitions during the past 40 years. The significant decline in fertility rate, as a result of both policy change and economic factors, generated the so-called population dividends – rising proportion of working age population – during the past several decades. This paper demonstrates important channels through which broadly defined population dividends contribute to economic growth in China, by magnifying roles of capital, by improving labor quality, alongside increases in labor supply, and by strengthening labor mobility. As population aging now takes over from population dividends as the main demographic trend, it is possible for China to continue its strong growth by focusing on both the traditional growth factors, such as further reducing the proportion of agricultural workers, and new growth factors, such as further improving productivity by strengthening human capital and weakening institutional obstacles.     

Does tourism influence economic growth? A dynamic panel data approach

On average, tourism-specialized countries grow more than others. This is not consistent with the core of modern economic growth theory that suggests that economic growth is linked to sectors with high-tech intensity and large scale. In this article, we use appropriate panel data methods to study the relationship between tourism and economic growth. In general, we show that tourism is a positive determinant of economic growth both in a broad sample of countries and in a sample of poor countries. However, contrary to previous contributions, tourism is not more relevant in small countries than in a general sample.     

Absorptive capability and economic growth: how do countries catch-up?

This paper investigates empirically the importance of technologicalcatch-up in explaining productivity growth in a sample of countriessince the 1960s. New proxies for a country's absorptive capability—basedon data for students studying abroad, telecommunications andpublications—are tested in regression models. The resultsindicate that absorptive capability is a factor in explaininggrowth, with the most robust finding that countries with relativelyhigh numbers of students studying science or engineering abroadexperience faster subsequent growth. However, the paper alsoindicates that the significance of coefficients varies acrossspecifications and samples, suggesting caution in focusing onindividual results.     

Energy efficiency and economic growth of China： 1953-2006

Energy plays an important role in the economic life. With the rapid development of economy, the constraint of energy on the sustainable development of economy is becoming more and more obvious. This paper just Studies the factors influencing energy efficiency of China and the relationship between energy efficiency and China＇s economic： growth. By using time series multivariable linear regression methods with China＇s relevant data from 1953 to 2006, this paper constructs the regression model to analyze the factors that would impact energy, efficiency. After that, a regression model of China＇s real output to capital, labor and energy e lficiency is conducted to estimate the marginal contribution of every factor to the real output to prove the fundamental influence of energy efficiency to the economic growth. In the end, some policies and recommendations are also put forward in order to improve the energy efficiency; of China.     

Impact of social media on economic growth – evidence from social media

This article attempts to investigate the impact of social media (SM) on economic growth. Using information obtained from memberships to social networks, we find that SM has a negative and significant impact on economic growth. This provides evidence in favour of our hypothesis that SM increases the search costs for information and also increases the substitution effect from labour to leisure thereby producing a negative impact on growth.     

When does inflation hurt economic growth? Different nonlinearities for different economies

The effects of inflation on growth are shown to change substantially as the inflation rate rises. Moreover, the nonlinearities are quite different for industrial economies than for developing countries. Whereas it is often assumed that inflation does not significantly hurt growth in developing countries until the 20–40% range, we find that the threshold falls within single digits. Marginal growth costs for developing countries then decline significantly above 50% inflation. Failure to account for nonlinearity biases downward the estimated effects of inflation on growth. Mixing industrial and developing economies together also produces unreliable results.     

Are the FDI inflow spillover effects on Malaysia's economic growth input driven?

This paper inspects the influence of human capital, labour force, and absorptive capacity, physical capital as a control variable, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and gross domestic product (GDP) on Malaysia's productivity growth. A time series quarterly data from the period of 1999 to 2008 was used. The effects of FDI inflows on human capital, labour force, absorptive capacity and physical capital were investigated. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression was applied to estimate the data in the first step and in the second step productivity indicators were calculated. The results show that the FDI inflows and inputs used are negatively contributed to total factor productivity (TFP). Meanwhile, FDI plays a significant role in achieving economic growth through input driven as indicated by the contribution of the TFP. In this regard, a significant positive relationship between human capital, labour force and absorptive capacity which determines the spillover effect on Malaysian economic growth (GDP) was found and the physical capital has shown negative relationship.     

The real exchange rate and economic growth: are developing countries different?

Recent research has found a positive relationship between real exchange rate (RER) undervaluation and economic growth. Different rationales for this association have been offered, but they all imply that the mechanisms involved should be stronger in developing countries. Rodrik (2008 Rodrik, D. 2008. The real exchange rate and economic growth. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2: 365–412.  [Google Scholar]) explicitly analyzed and found evidence that the RER–growth relationship is more prevalent in developing countries. We show that his finding is sensitive to the criterion used to divide the sample between developed and developing countries. Using alternative classification criteria and empirical strategies to evaluate the existence of asymmetries between groups of countries, we find that the effect of currency undervaluation on growth is indeed larger and more robust for developing economies. However, the relationship between RER undervaluation and per capita GDP is non-monotonic, and is limited largely to the least developed and richest countries. This discontinuity constitutes a puzzle that calls for closer analysis.     

Does international tourism affect international trade and economic growth? The Indian experience

This study attempts to investigate the relationship between international tourism, trade, and economic growth in India over the period from April 1991 to July 2012. To account for potential asymmetries in the relationship, we make use of new asymmetric Granger-causality tests and frequency analysis. We show that there is bidirectional Granger-causality between trade and tourism in positive components, whereas unidirectional Granger-causality runs from tourism to trade for negative components. Moreover, we find evidence of bidirectional Granger-causality between economic growth and tourism in positive components, but unidirectional Granger-causality running from economic growth to tourism for negative components. On the other hand, the results from frequency analysis provide evidence of Granger-causality between trade and tourism, and also between economic growth and tourism, at different frequency bands.     

Cuba’s reform and economic growth: a comparative perspective with Vietnam

Cuban reform process lags behind the GDP growth reached by the Vietnamese. When comparing the evolution of the different sectors and demand components of GDP, Vietnam has had higher growth rates in all cases, highlighting exports first and investment second. Once the Balance of Payments Constrained Growth model has been estimated, the significant effect of the foreign exchange constraints on growth for both countries is confirmed. However, the Vietnam growth can be explained not only by its export success. International openness, which included the end of the US embargo, and institutional factors also explains the differential of results.     

Marshall’s disciples: knowledge and innovation driving regional economic development and growth

Studies of knowledge and innovation as driving forces of regional development and growth offer a myriad of approaches. Here, questions asked, methods used and answers given are manifold. In our overview, we cover recent developments in this research area. Moreover, we explore the question as to the extent to which approaches in this research area compete with or complement one another. It turns out that the various studies are much more complementary than competitive. However, there is still much ground to be covered before we fully understand the processes underlying the creation and dissemination of knowledge and innovation leading to regional development and growth.JEL Classification: R11, O32, O33, O18 Correspondence to: Claudia WerkerThis Special Issue is the outcome of the workshop on Knowledge and Innovation in Creating and Sustaining Regional Growth in a Global Environment held at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, July 10 ^th until 12 ^th , 2003. Financial support by the Dutch research council (NWO), the Centre for Economic Research (CfER) of the Open University Milton Keynes (UK) as well as by Eindhoven Center for Innovation Studies (ECIS, The Netherlands) is gratefully acknowledged; as is the organizational support by ECIS. We are grateful for helpful comments by Ron Boschma and Joachim Schwerin. Moreover, we would like to thank Uwe Cantner for his kind support in making this Special Issue happen. Naturally, the usual disclaimer applies.