Population and economic growth with human and physical capital investments

We present a two-sector endogenous growth model with human and physical capital accumulation to analyze the long-run relationship between population growth and real per capita income growth. Formal education and investment in physical capital are assumed to be two separate components of human capital production. Along the balanced growth path equilibrium, population change may have a positive, negative, or else neutral effect on economic growth depending on whether physical and human capital are complementary/substitutes for each other in the formation of new human capital and on their degree of complementarity.

A cost-benefit analysis for the economic growth in China

Currently, traditional development issues such as income inequality, depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution as well as retardation of infrastructure have occurred in China. In the future, more pressures would be imposed on China by the continuous fast development of industrialization, and with transfer of the world manufacture center to China. Sustainable development, including its economic, environmental and social elements, is a key goal of decisionmakers. This paper develops a methodology on cost benefit analysis of economic growth at macroscopic level to identify issues of China's sustainability. In order to address some important issues on how to make policies to improve the quality of economic growth, the CBA framework developed in this study analyses economic-ecological-social interaction, building three accounts that reflect three dimensions of sustainable development that includes 26 sub-models in all, and finally is integrated into an index as Net Progress Proceeds (NPP). The estimation methods of these submodels, such as cost of environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources and defensive expenditures are described in detail. Based on the framework and methods, this paper examines the costs and benefits of economic growth in three aspects of economy, ecology and society. The results illustrate that NPR of China's economic growth had been negative for a long time and has just became positive since year 2000 but was quite low. Even the best was only 1.6% in 2002 (the worst was − 24.2% in 1982). Based on the comparison between three accounts, we can draw a conclusion that ecological cost is the dominant factor that affects China's NPR. The empirical results show that if no other innovative measures or policies are taken in the future the costs of growth would outweigh its benefits, resulting in un-sustainability. Basically, the long-term economic growth would be unsustainable due to increasing environmental damage and depletion of natural resources. There are a few limitations that we consider need to be improved in our CBA framework and method, nevertheless they have many options that can be explored by policy makers, to make the development path more sustainable.     

How foreign investments contribute to economic growth of industrial parks in China: a production-frontier decomposition approach

We study the importance of foreign direct investment for economic growth of 52 Chinese industrial parks from 2007 to 2015. For this task, we extend a production-frontier methodology, specially designed to decompose economic growth into different sources, to take two types of capital into account. Our results reveal that foreign capital is necessary for boosting economic growth of the parks, but domestic capital played the main role.     

自然资源与区域经济增长:一个文献综述

自然资源是影响区域经济增长的重要因素,但是一直以来资源问题却没有引起主流经济学界的重视,包含有自然资源因素的增长模型是对区域经济增长模型的扩展。经验数据表明自然资源在某种程度上会挤出物质资本,并影响效率,从而形成区域经济增长过程中的"资源陷阱"现象,西方学者对此做出了理论上的解释。     

Labour quality in Taiwan: measurement and contribution to economic growth

This article compiles labour input indices that capture both employment changes and quality improvement of labour in Taiwan, from 1994 to 2011. Up to 77.19% of average annual labour input growth is from quality improvement. Further decomposition reveals that the most important source of growth is educational attainment, followed by age structure. Moreover, we find that Taiwan’s average annual GDP growth rate does not result from capital investment but from the contribution of a stable labour input to economic growth. Taiwan is a newly industrialized country, but because of the diminishing returns to capital, the catch-up effect has been slower than hoped. Additional capital investment has a relatively small effect on productivity, and the main source of the continuous economic growth rate is from labour quality, especially from highly skilled human capital. Making good use of these human resources creates a stable source of sustained economic growth.     

Population and economic growth: Ancient and modern

This paper focuses on the evolution of the relationship between population and economic growth from Hume to New Growth Theory. In this paper, we show that there were two main views on the subject. There were those who assumed that the relationship between fertility rate and income was positive. On the other hand, there were those who raised the possibility that this linkage did not occur, and they emphasised that an increase in income did not necessarily lead to having more children. Following from Hicks’ methodological precept, the paper will show that their position on the issue was related to a socio-economic fact: the sibship size effect. We show that those who took the view that an increase in income leads to the desire to have more children did not take into consideration the sibship size effect, while those maintaining that there existed a negative relationship introduced into their utility function a sibship size effect.     

Financial systems and economic growth in South Africa: a dynamic complementarity test

This study examines the relationship between banks, stock markets and economic growth in South Africa. The study attempts to answer one critical question: are stock markets and banks complementary to one another in the process of enhancing economic growth? The complementarity between the stock markets and banks is examined by including a set of interactive terms in a standard growth model, alongside bank development and stock market development proxies. In order to test the robustness of the results, three proxies of stock market development have been used, namely stock market capitalization, stock market traded value and stock market turnover – against the ratio of bank credit to the private sector, a proxy for bank-based financial development. The economic growth is, however, proxied by real GDP per capita. Using the ARDL-Bounds testing procedure, the study finds that the complementarity between stock market development and bank-based financial development is weak and sensitive to the proxy used to measure stock market development.     

The relation between capital formation and economic growth: evidence from sub-Saharan African countries

This paper examines the causal relationship between capital formation and economic growth in Sub-Saharan African countries using recent panel cointegration and causality testing techniques. We find that causality is bi-directional, suggesting that higher economic growth leads to higher capital formation and that in turn, increases in capital formation results in higher economic growth. These results hold irrespective of whether capital formation is measured with private fixed capital formation or by gross capital formation.     

The interactive effects of human capital and quality of life on economic growth

To bridge the gap in the quality of life (QOL) and economic growth literature and understand the reinforcing effects of QOL and human capital on economic development, we examine the interactive effects of these two factors on wage growth from 2000 to 2007 at the county level across the United States. First, a Rosen–Roback model is employed to estimate implicit values of amenities including climate, clean air and other natural attributes, which are used to generate QOL indices. Second, QOL, human capital represented by the share of college graduates, and their interaction serve as key variables in the wage growth model. An instrumental variable approach and location fixed effects are used to address endogeneity of human capital and control for location-specific unobservable characteristics. Results suggest that human capital and QOL significantly contribute to economic growth and the growth effects are even larger in nonmetropolitan counties. Importantly, we find that the effect of human capital on growth is larger in high-QOL counties and QOL enhances the effect of human capital on growth. Our results provide empirical support for community development strategies through providing utility-enhancing amenities that improve QOL and retain human capital.     

The human capital and economic growth nexus: in East and South Asia

This study adopts a disaggregated regional focus to test for the human capital (HC)-growth nexus in selected nine Asian countries. It utilizes the Empirical Bayesian methodology which addresses not only the heterogeneity issue but it also utilizes the common structural priors of regional countries to yield ‘informationally’ efficient estimates of the impact of HC on the stock and levels of GDP. Various measures of HC are utilized to determine which of these produces a better explanation of economic growth in the two Asian regions. The study finds that primary and secondary education was more prominent in explaining the fluctuations of economic growth in East Asia, whereas tertiary and vocational education showed positive effects on economic growth in South Asia. Government expenditures on education were also found to positively affect economic growth in both regions. The results shed new evidence to establish that the differences in growth rates within East and South Asia are associated with differences in educational progression in the regions.     

Private versus social returns to human capital: Education and economic growth in India

This paper investigates whether differences between private and social returns to education of government sector employees can contribute to an explanation of the “micro–macro paradox” in the literature on education and growth. We hypothesize that in India educated people find privately rewarding jobs in a sector in which social returns are low, namely the government sector. This could help explain high returns to education at the micro level and small or negative coefficients on education growth in growth regressions at the macro level. The empirical results, which are consistent with this hypothesis, are based on an analysis of state-level data from India spanning 40 years.     

The nexus among foreign investment,domestic capital and economic growth: Empirical evidence from the MENA region

The objective of this paper is to estimate an econometric model for analyzing the interrelationship among foreign direct investment, domestic capital and economic growth in 13 MENA countries by using a ‘growth model’ framework and simultaneous-equation models estimated by the generalized method of moments (GMM) during the period 1990–2010. Our empirical results show that there is bi-directional causal relationship between foreign investment and economic growth, as well as domestic capital and economic growth, and there is uni-directional causal relationship from foreign direct investment to domestic capital for the region as a whole.     

Economic complexity,human capital and economic growth: empirical research based on cross-country panel data

Economic complexity reflects a country’s production capabilities and plays an important role in economic growth. This article measures the economic complexity of 210 countries using the method of reflections, and investigates the impact of economic complexity and human capital on economic growth. The measurement results show that there are significant differences regarding the level of complexity among countries. High-income economies have higher complexity than low- and middle-income economies. The empirical findings demonstrate that economic complexity and different levels of human capital have positive effects on long- and short-term growth. A positive interaction effect on economic growth exists between economic complexity and human capital. In addition, secondary education as a proxy for human capital has a relatively greater positive direct effect and a much stronger interactive effect with complexity on economic growth. In addition, the magnitude of the interaction effect between economic complexity and human capital on long- and short-term growth increases as the revealed comparative advantage threshold grows.     

How giving affects giving: a long-term analysis of donations

Social preferences theories suggest that at least some people show altruistic behaviour. However, this philanthropic behaviour ranges from pure altruistic preferences to reluctant altruists. The fact that a subset of contributors has impure preferences raises questions regarding the stability of prosocial contributions. Assuming differences in other regarding preferences, we examine whether at an aggregated level monetary contributions are stable or fragile over time. We study the aggregated donations in the US from 1973 to 2013 using ARIMA and ARMAX models. The significant autoregressive and moving average coefficients in our estimations suggest that aggregated donations are highly autocorrelated. Our estimated impulse response functions indicate that aggregated donations converge to their historic mean quickly after an exogenous shock, which shows the stickiness of the inclination to donate.     

The quality of human capital,educational reform and economic growth

Using a general equilibrium growth model with a costly schooling process, this paper analyses the effect on economic growth of educational reform that allocates more resources to the schooling sector to raise the quality of human capital. It shows that the positive effect of improved quality on the economic growth could be offset by the reverse effect of reduced human capital formation that arises from the distortion of resource reallocation. An appropriate tax-subsidy scheme is shown to remove this reverse effect of educational reform.     

Natural capital and quality of life: a model for evaluating the sustainability of alternative regional development paths

Natural capital contributes to the quality of life of a region in two complementary ways: first, by directly providing environmental services that cannot be imported, and second, by supplying the natural resources that, through a human controlled production process, become valuable to humans. The evolution of the combination of these two components of the quality of life determines the path of development a region takes. Environmental services also determine the ability of natural capital to regenerate itself. Ecosystems and other components of the regional natural capital produce environmental services that provide life-support functions necessary for natural capital reproduction. The destruction of this critical natural capital impairs the internal sources of improvement of the quality of life of a region, leading to a non-sustainable path of development. This article describes a model of the relationship between natural capital and quality of life that provides a stricter definition of sustainable development through explicit characterization and classification of natural capital according to its ability to produce life-supporting environmental services, by its substitutability, and by its possible reconstruction. Application of this model then shows that there are 51 possible regional development paths, only 32 of which are sustainable and only 14 of which are sustainable while also providing improvements in quality of life. Only six of these 14 sustainable development paths are attained with economic growth, however, while the other eight paths increase quality of life by increasing the production of environmental services. The model could help in the development of institutional interventions that would promote regional development paths that are sustainable.     

Patient and parent preferences for immunoglobulin treatments: a conjoint analysis

Abstract

Objectives:

The purpose was to quantify patient and parent preferences for administration attributes of immunoglobulin (IG) treatments; and determine which administration attributes were most important to users of IG treatment and whether patients and parents have similar preferences for administration attributes.

Methods:

US adult patients and parents of children with a self-reported physician diagnosis of a primary immunodeficiency disorder completed a best-practice web-enabled choice-format conjoint survey that presented a series of 12 choice questions, each including a pair of hypothetical IG-treatment profiles. After reviewing current therapies, each profile was defined by mode of administration, frequency, location, number of needle sticks, and treatment duration. Before answering the choice questions, respondents were told to assume all treatments worked equally well. Choice questions were based on a D-efficient experimental design. Preference weights for attribute levels were estimated using random-parameters logit for each sample (adult patients and parents). Tests were performed to determine potential interactions among the administration attributes. All respondents provided online informed consent.

Results:

In total, 252 patients and 66 parents completed the choice questions appropriately. Overall, both groups preferred a home setting, monthly frequency, fewer needle sticks, and shorter treatment durations of IG treatment relative to alternative choices (p?<?0.05). Mode of administration was the least important attribute to both samples; however, parents strongly preferred self-administration to an appointment with a healthcare professional (p?<?0.05), whereas patients slightly preferred self-administration but were indifferent to the two modes.

Limitations:

Respondents evaluate hypothetical treatments and differences can arise between stated and actual choices.

Conclusions:

Considering the hypothetical treatments evaluated, IG treatments that provide the option of a home setting, monthly frequency, fewer needle sticks, and shorter treatment durations may address the needs of both patients and parents. Patients and parents have different preferences for administration attributes of IG treatments.     

Public capital,deficit financing,and economic growth in a stochastic economy

This paper examines the relationship among deficit-financing fiscal policy, risk and economic growth in a stochastic endogenous growth model with private and public capital. We show that there are positive balanced-growth rate and a debt-to-GDP ratio that depend on deep parameters such as the income tax rate and the standard deviation of the growth rate of private and public capital. Investment and fiscal shocks influence the mean and variance of the growth rate and the debt dependency rate through portfolio changes and capital accumulation. In particular, an increase in the risk of private investment destabilizes the economy and reduces the mean growth rate if the portfolio change is drastic, and this increase in risk increases the debt-to-GDP ratio. In contrast, an increase in the income tax rate stabilizes the economy, increases the mean growth rate, and has a positive or negative effect on the debt-to-GDP ratio according to the ratio of public to private capital if the income tax rate is sufficiently small.     

The cyclicality of bank regulation in a general economic framework

This article utilizes a representative agent model to address how the regulation policies for banks should respond to the general economic condition. With the consideration of a self-fulfilling deposit insurance facility with sufficient bank reserve to meet the expected need of liquidity shock, our model suggests a counter-cyclical capital adequacy requirement in a competitive loan market. The exception might occur when the moral hazard problem becomes very unwieldy and the representative individual is rather risk averse. With regard to the closure policy, we find that it is closely related to the individual’s degree of risk aversion. A counter-cyclical closure policy is recommended when the individual is highly risk averse. Otherwise, a pro-cyclical closure policy is preferred.     

Climate-change adaptation: The role of fiscal policy

Climate change and natural disasters have important consequences on fiscal sustainability, especially for developing countries with limited financial resources and underdeveloped institutions. The paper contributes to shed light on the role of fiscal policy in climate-change adaptation, which aims at containing the economic damage of climate change. We use an overlapping generations (OLG) model for a small open economy in which adaptation reflects the extent to which public policies reduce the negative influence of climate change on the capital depreciation rate. Adaptation includes both preventive measures, i.e. investment in infrastructure, and remedial measures, i.e. post-disaster relief and reconstruction. Through model simulations we assess the costs and benefits of both remedial and preventive actions. We find that preventive intervention leads to higher GDP growth rates than either taking no action or waiting until remedial action is necessary. However, the evidence shows that, due to high costs of early adaptation and budgetary constraints, countries tend to focus on late corrective actions, also relying on international assistance. Given the expected increase in climate-related risks, a comprehensive strategy including both preventive and corrective actions would be desirable to strengthen resilience to shocks and alleviate the financial constraints, which particularly affect small countries.