Can sustained economic growth and declining population coexist?

Most of the developed countries have been experiencing sub-replacement fertility. This leads to worries over the sustainability of economic growth in these countries. Given this concern, we ask the following questions: Is there a force that would allow economic growth and declining population to coexist? Is there a mechanism that could reverse the decline in fertility? We argue that returns to human capital in production provide the key to understanding this relation. Our theoretical framework predicts that, when the degree of increasing returns to human capital in traditional production technologies falls, advanced economies switch their productive efforts from labor-oriented technologies that require a constant creation of young workforce toward human capital-oriented technologies that support an ageing population. We call this shift the “endogenous efficiency-augmenting mechanism”. This suggests that sustained economic growth and a declining population can coexist in the long run. Finally, we compare our model against the data and find: (i) The degree of increasing returns to human capital has been falling over time throughout the world along with population growth rates. (ii) Increasing returns to human capital and population growth rates are positively correlated. (iii) Predictions of our model are consistent with what the data reveal.     

Inward investment and endogenous development. The convergence of the strategies of large firms and territories?

Inward investment is often understood as an inadequate instrument for self-sustained growth and as being responsible for the insufficient development of peripheral areas. Globalization and increasing competition within the markets, however, changed the firms' and regions' adjustment environment, and led to the convergence of spatial strategies of the large innovative firms and the development strategies of regional and local governments. This process contributes toward the integration of the external firms within local productive systems and, therefore, large innovative firms can play a relevant role in endogenous development processes. Although the convergence of strategies is not a phenomenon that can be generalized for all types of firms and territories, a new line of action opens up that permits improved productive restructuring and economic development, even in less favoured and peripheral regions.     

市场资本介入政府投资项目的制度内生分析

本文将行政(部门或地方)决策者和市场投资主体作为参与方,尝试建立以双方自愿参与为条件的政府投资项目制度内生模型。通过考察影响政府投资项目操作形式选择的具体因素,构建计量估计表达式,以电力行业为背景分析可能出现的投资制度安排均衡形态,并用样本数据检验了制度创生过程中可能的影响因素及显著性。检验结果表明,未能拒绝参与方所选择的投资制度安排内生影响因素主要假说。     

Equilibrium dynamics in a class of one-sector endogenous growth models with external habits: An application of special functions

This paper analyzes the equilibrium dynamics in a class of one-sector endogenous growth models with external habits. Using an explicit solution expressed in terms of the Gauss hypergeometric function, we show that the levels of consumption, habits and capital may exhibit non-monotonic transition dynamics, even though their ratios converge monotonically. A numerical simulation illustrates this result.     

Growth vs. level effect of population change on economic development: An inspection into human-capital-related mechanisms

This paper studies the different mechanisms and the dynamics through which demography is channeled to the economy. We analyze the role of demographic changes in the economic development process by studying the transitional and the long-run impact of both the rate of population growth and the initial population size on the levels of per capita human capital and income. We do that in an enlarged Lucas–Uzawa model with intergenerational altruism. In contrast to the existing theoretical literature, the long-run level effects of demographic changes, i.e. their impact on the levels of the variables along the balanced growth path, are deeply characterized in addition to the more standard long-run growth effects. We prove that the level effect of the population rate of growth is non-negative (positive in the empirically most relevant case) for the average level of human capital, but a priori ambiguous for the level of per capita income due to the interaction of three transmission mechanisms of demographic shocks, a standard one (dilution) and two non-standard (altruism and human capital accumulation). Overall, the sign of the level effects of population growth depends on preference and technology parameters, but numerically we show that the joint negative effect of dilution and altruism is always stronger than the induced positive human capital effect. The growth effect of population growth depends basically on the attitude to intergenerational altruism and intertemporal substitution. Moreover, we also prove that the long-run level effects of population size on per capita human capital and income may be negative, nil, or positive, depending on the relationship between preferences and technology, while its growth effect is zero. Finally, we show that the model is able to replicate complicated time relationships between economic and demographic changes. In particular, it entails a negative effect of population growth on per capita income, which dominates in the initial periods, and a positive effect which restores a positive correlation between population growth and economic performance in the long term.