British economic growth since 1270: the role of education

This paper constructs an original database on physical capital, labor, education, GDP, innovations, technology spillovers, and institutions to analyze the proximate determinants of British economic growth since 1270. Several approaches are taken in the paper to tackle endogeneity. We show that education has been the most important driver of income growth during the period 1270–2010, followed by knowledge stock and fixed capital, while institutions have not been robust determinants of growth. The contribution of education has been equally important before and after the first Industrial Revolution. Overall, the results give strong support to the predictions of Unified Growth Theories.     

技术引进与中国经济发展相关性研究

本文以中国人中型企业为背景，分析了技术引进发展的历程和现状，封技术引进和经济增长进行了Granger因果关系和OLS相关性分析。文章分析了技术引追与经济增长在短期、中期和长期的关系，显示两到三年之间技术引进对经济增长能够产生促进作用。     

Non-convex aggregate technology and optimal economic growth

This paper examines a model of optimal growth where the aggregation of two separate well behaved and concave production technologies exhibits a basic non-convexity. First, we consider the case of strictly concave utility function: when the discount rate is either low enough or high enough, there will be one steady state toward which the convergence of the optimal path is monotone and asymptotic. When the discount rate is in some intermediate range, we will find sufficient conditions for having either one equilibrium or multiple equilibria steady state. Depending to whether the initial capital per capita is located with respect to a critical value, we show that the optimal paths monotonically converge to one single appropriate equilibrium steady state. Second, we consider the case of linear utility and provide sufficient conditions to have either unique or two steady states when the discount rate is in some intermediate range. In this range, we give conditions under which the above critical value might not exist, and the economy attains one steady state in finite time, then stays at the other steady state afterward. P. Michel passed away when this research was completed. This paper is dedicated to his memory as a friend and colleague. N. M. Hung and C. Le Van thank the referee for vey helpful remarks and criticisms. They are grateful to Takashi Kamihigashi for very fruitful discussions. They also thank J.-F. Leclerc for editing the final version of this paper.     

The economic implications of learning-by-doing for population size and growth

This paper criticizes Arrow's research on learning-by-doing. The authors use a model like Arrow's to conclude that population growth--and, even more important, population size--may have positive effects on economic growth through positive effects on the rate of technical progress, on reasonable assumptions about the likely capital-output ratios with different demographic structures, but negative effects with other capital-output ratio difference. In a comparison of 2 worlds that have different population sizes, but that are otherwise alike including their capital-labor ratios and the initial per worker outputs, the larger world will come to have higher per worker output because of learning-by-doing. This conclusion is unlike the conclusion implicit in Arrow's model of learning-by-doing because Arrow looked at steady-state rates of growth rather than changes in the level of income from the starting point. Arrow's analysis also is confused by using the capital stock rather than cumulative output as the measure of experience, though output is the variable used in the empirical analyses that are the basis of this line of work.     

International technology diffusion and economic growth: Explaining the spillover benefits to developing countries

Technology spillovers offer great opportunities for economic growth to developing countries that do little, if any, R&D activity. This paper explores the extent to which these countries benefit from foreign technology, the diffusion mechanisms involved, and the factors that shape their absorption capabilities. Results based on a non-stationary panel of 55 developing countries indicate that the benefits are quite substantial: a ten-percent increase in foreign R&D stock is translated into more than a two-percent increase in aggregate productivity. Of the diffusion channels considered, imports appear to be more conducive to R&D spillover. In addition, developing countries that enjoy larger benefits tend to exhibit larger stock of human capital, more openness to trade and foreign activities, and stronger institutions. These North–South R&D spillovers, although larger than previously suggested, appear less strong than North–North spillovers, adding to the general literature on economic divergence between developed and developing countries.     

The impact of energy conservation on technology and economic growth

We present a model of growth driven by energy use and endogenous factor-augmenting technological change. Both the rate and direction of technological progress are endogenous. The model captures four main stylised facts: total energy use has increased; energy use per hour worked increased slightly; energy efficiency has improved; and the value share of energy in GDP has steadily fallen. We study how energy conservation policies affect growth over time and in the long run. Policies that reduce the level of energy use are distinguished from those that reduce the growth rate of energy inputs. Although these policies may stimulate innovation, they unambiguously depress output levels. The former policy has no impact on long-run growth; the latter reduces long-run growth both in the short run and in the long run.     

The effect of political regimes and technology on economic growth

This study analyses the role of financial constraints on the investment decisions of 497 Brazilian firms. We use panel data, with firm-specific information for different years, allowing for the abandonment of the representative firm model. Information on capital intensity at the firm level is used to group firms. We estimate different models and the results suggest the presence of financial restrictions, especially for capital-intensive firms.     

The impact of military technology transfer on economic growth: international evidence

The purpose of this article is to measure the impact of military technology transfer on economic growth for 67 selected countries during the period 2000 to 2005 through the application of the Malmquist productivity index, which is broken down into efficiency change and technical change. Our main findings are as follows. First, technology diffusion is all-pervading in half of the sampled countries due to pure efficiency and scale efficiency changes. Second, a higher-income level and an excess of arms imports lead to innovative activities. Third, middle-income countries have higher efficiency and pure efficiency changes; these contribute to higher total productivity change. Finally, after separating the impact of capital investment from that of arms imports, the diffusion of military technology has a more positive and substantial impact on economic growth, thereby revealing the presence of externalities between countries.     

An empirical analysis of the relationship between economic development and population growth in China

China has experienced a dramatic demographic transition since the latter half of the twentieth century, and thus, assessing the global economic implications is an important issue. This article uses time-series data on China to estimate the determinants of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. According to the results of the presented co-integration analysis, population has a significantly negative impact on GDP per capita, while savings rate, total factor productivity and degree of industrialization have significantly positive impacts on GDP per capita. These results suggest that the share of the working-age population relative to the total population does not have a strong influence on GDP per capita. Therefore, the contribution of the working-age population to economic growth might not be as large as previously assumed. It is also possible that an increase in savings, remarkable industrialization and rapid technological progress have all stimulated economic growth in China greatly.     

Assessing the roles that absorptive capacity and economic distance play in the foreign direct investment-productivity growth nexus

We further examine the channels through which Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) develops the national productivity of host countries. We investigate whether FDI is an effective channel of technological transfer across borders and whether that technology transfer is bi-directional: from an investing country to a host country and vice versa. In particular, an analysis is provided of whether FDI helps channel more resources towards the promotion of education activities and hence augments economic growth indirectly through augmenting the host country's absorptive capacity. Also, the analysis uses a novel approach to take into account the possibility that physical distances can act as a barrier to economic and technological interactions amongst countries, by embedding a measure of geographical distance into two specific channels: international trade and FDI. Empirical results obtained all lend strong support to these hypotheses.     

Population growth and economic growth: a reconsideration

The relationship between population growth and development has long been a controversial topic in the economic development literature. Early work by Hoover and Coale and more recent work by Blanchet suggest that high fertility suppresses per capita income growth. However, recent work by Kelley and Srinivasan are ambivalent about such a neo-Malthusian relationship between population growth and economic growth. The authors examine these conflicting positions. They emphasize that the rates of both population growth and income growth are endogenous variables within a general equilibrium framework. An endogenous growth model with endogenous fertility is then developed. It is found that when all exogenous variables are controlled for, there exists an inverse relation between population growth and economic growth. However, when some exogenous factors change, such as an improvement in technological progress, the relation becomes ambiguous. This suggests that the conflicting findings in the literature may be because of the presence of substantial heterogeneity in unobserved variables across countries and over time in cross-country panel data sets.     

An econometric analysis of the effects of population change on economic growth: a study of Taiwan

This study used an econometric model, estimated from time series data, to evaluate the effects of demographic factors on the T aiwanese economy. The simulation results suggest that, in the short run, a stationary population produces significantly higher income per capita than rapid population growth; in the long run, however, rapid population growth produces a slightly higher income per capita. Under assumptions of very low fertility trends, the population size, equivalent adult consumers, and labor force can be expected to grow by no more than 50% in a century, whereas under the very high fertility trend assumptions, they would more than double. The reason that lower fertility populations produce a smaller gross domestic product per capita in the long run than the normal fertility population is that the negative effects of a slower growing labor force dominate the positive effects of a faster growing capital formation. In terms of the present values of annual income per capita, the slow growing population shows considerably better economic performance. Given the immediate economic advantages of lower fertility, it is important for developing countries with high birth rates to reduce fertility in order to produce higher per capita income effects and break out of poverty. It is considered of little importance that the slow growing populations eventually produce slightly smaller per capita.     

Of maize and men: the effect of a New World crop on population and economic growth in China

We examine the question of whether China was trapped within a Malthusian regime at a time when Western Europe had all but emerged from it. By applying a difference-in-differences analysis to maize adoption in China from 1600 to 1910, we find that cultivation of this New World crop failed to raise per capita income. While maize accounted for a nearly 19 % increase in the Chinese population during 1776–1910, its effect on urbanization and real wages was not pronounced. Our results are robust to different sample selection procedures, to the control of variables pertinent to Malthusian “positive checks”, to different measures of economic growth and to data modifications. Our study thus provides rich empirical support to the claim that under the conditions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China, new agricultural technologies led to the Malthusian outcome of population growth without wage increases and urbanization.     

Four essays on economic evolution: an introduction

This essay is in two parts. The first considers the evolution of evolutionary economics from 1982 to 2012. While enormous advances are acknowledged, it is argued that the field is in danger of fragmentation and that there has been relatively little development in its over-arching theoretical framework since Nelson and Winter (1982). This sets the scene for a 2011 workshop and four of the papers presented at the event. In the second part, each paper is outlined in turn, both in terms of its specific contribution and any light it may shine on the problems raised in the first part.     

Accounting for economic evolution: Fitness and the population method

The theme of this paper is the general population dynamics of evolutionary processes, and, in particular, a number of accounting concepts that are central to any understanding of evolutionary processes of the variation-cum-selection retention kind. A population perspective, for example, turns out to be crucial to the study of the competitive process in economic systems defined at the level of industries, sectors and markets. Business rivalry, underpinned by differential innovative activity, is the basis of the differential survival and growth of competing economic activities and the strategies deployed to create sustainable differences in competitive selection characteristics are at the core of the capitalist dynamic interpreted as an adaptive, evolutionary process. This kind of evolutionary argument is necessarily concerned with growth rate dynamics and the explanation of the diversity of growth rates across entities in a population. However, the following discussion does not provide any causal explanation of economic evolution in terms of the determinants of growth rate differences, rather it provides a bookkeeping scheme in which different causal theories may be set and compared. Growth dynamics and structural change are the two central features of variation/selection processes within populations and I explore them in terms of three themes: namely, Logistic Growth Accounting; Competition Accounting; and, the Price Theorem. The unifying theme that links all three is their relation to the population method in evolutionary theory.      

Population growth and economic growth

This discussion of the issues relating to the problem posed by population explosion in the developing countries and economic growth in the contemporary world covers the following: predictions of economic and social trends; the Malthusian theory of population; the classical or stationary theory of population; the medical triage model; ecological disaster; the Global 2000 study; the limits to growth; critiques of the Limits to Growth model; nonrenewable resources; food and agriculture; population explosion and stabilization; space and ocean colonization; and the limits perspective. The Limits to Growth model, a general equilibrium anti-growth model, is the gloomiest economic model ever constructed. None of the doomsday models, the Malthusian theory, the classical stationary state, the neo-Malthusian medical triage model, the Global 2000 study, are so far reaching in their consequences. The course of events that followed the publication of the "Limits to Growth" in 1972 in the form of 2 oil shocks, food shock, pollution shock, and price shock seemed to bear out formally the gloomy predictions of the thesis with a remarkable speed. The 12 years of economic experience and the knowledge of resource trends postulate that even if the economic pressures visualized by the model are at work they are neither far reaching nor so drastic. Appropriate action can solve them. There are several limitations to the Limits to Growth model. The central theme of the model, which is overshoot and collapse, is unlikely to be the course of events. The model is too aggregative to be realistic. It exaggerates the ecological disaster arising out of the exponential growth of population and industry. The gross underestimation of renewable resources is a basic flaw of the model. The most critical weakness of the model is its gross underestimation of the historical trend of technological progress and the technological possiblities within industry and agriculture. The model does correctly emphasize the exponential growth of population as the source of several complications for economic growth and human welfare. Stabilization of population by reducing fertility is conducive for improving the quality of population and also advances the longterm management of the population growth and work force utilization. The perspective of longterm economic management involves populatio n planning, control of environmental pollution, conservation of scarce resources, exploration of resources, realization of technological possibilities in agriculture and industry and in farm and factory, and achievement of economic growth and its equitable distribution.