Does Foreign Environmental Policy Influence Domestic Innovation? Evidence from the Wind Industry

This paper analyses the relative influence of domestic and foreign demand-pull policies in wind power across OECD countries on the rate of innovation in this technology. We use annual wind power generation to capture the stringency of the portfolio of demand-pull policies in place (e.g., guaranteed tariffs, investment and production tax credits), and patent data as an indicator of innovation activity. We find that wind technology improvements respond positively to policies both home and abroad, but the marginal effect of domestic policies is 12 times greater. The influence of foreign polices is reduced by barriers to technology diffusion, in particular lax intellectual property rights. Reducing such barriers therefore constitutes a powerful policy leverage for boosting environmental innovation globally.     

Wealth,Capital and the Theory of Distribution: Some Implications for Piketty’s Analysis

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) has been spectacularly successful. One reason for this is that while it often challenges received views and supports a non-apologetic interpretation of capitalism, at the same time it relies on mainstream economics. This theoretical framework, however, is not always conducive to consistency and interpretative accuracy. This paper points out some of the book’s analytical weaknesses and shows that some empirical evidence, a clearer distinction between wealth and capital, and a different theoretical perspective, could lead to questioning some of the book’s claims. In particular, it argues that the increase in the wealth-to-output ratio (but not the capital-to-output ratio) cannot explain the observed changes in income shares. It also contends that non-mainstream perspectives on income distribution and growth suggest that changes in income distribution are due more to policy and power relations than to the factors Piketty identifies.     

Oil,Growth, and Health: What Does the Cross‐Country Evidence Really Show?*

We show that previous results from the body of literature on the resource curse have primarily been driven by the collapse in oil prices during the mid‐1980s. By exploiting cross‐country variations in the size of initial oil endowments and the timing of oil discoveries, we find that there is a stable positive relationship between oil abundance and long‐run economic growth. Using dynamic panel data methods, we also find that there is no evidence that higher oil rents hinder growth. However, to focus on material gain means that the welfare gain from oil is understated, because oil‐rich countries benefit more by the reduction in infant mortality and the gain in longevity. Interestingly, such oil‐led health improvements are more pronounced in non‐democratic countries, where initial heath conditions were poor and oil wealth is concentrated among the ruling elites.     

Does Age Exacerbate the Gender-Wage Gap? New Method and Evidence From Germany, 1984–2014

ABSTRACT

Given theoretical premises, the gender-wage gap adjusted for individual characteristics is likely to vary according to age. This study adapts John DiNardo, Nicole M. Fortin, and Thomas Lemieux's (1996) semi-parametric technique to disentangle year, cohort, and age effects in adjusted gender-wage gaps. The study relies on a long panel of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) covering 1984–2015. The results indicate that, in Germany, the gender-wage gap increases over a birth cohort's lifetime, including in the post-reproductive age for some birth cohorts. The results suggest that age and gender are overlapping handicaps in the labor market and call for a policy intervention.