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on Economic Growth |
| By: | Ani Harutyunyan; Omer Ozak |
| Abstract: | This research explores the effects of culture on technological diffusion and economic development. It shows that culture's direct effects on development and barrier effects to technological diffusion are, in general, observationally equivalent. In particular, using a large set of measures of cultural values, it establishes empirically that pairwise differences in contemporary development are associated with pairwise cultural differences relative to the technological frontier, only in cases where observational equivalence holds. Additionally, it establishes that differences in cultural traits that are correlated with genetic and linguistic distances are statistically and economically significantly correlated with differences in economic development. These results highlight the difficulty of disentangling the direct and barrier effects of culture, while lending credence to the idea that common ancestry generates persistence and plays a central role in economic development. |
| Keywords: | Comparative economic development, Economic growth, Culture, Barriers to technological diffusion, Genetic distances, Linguistic distances |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ete:licosp:551450&r=gro |
| By: | Gustafsson, Björn Anders (University of Gothenburg); Yang, Xiuna (China Development Research Foundation) |
| Abstract: | This paper asks if economic growth and steps towards a market economy have affected earnings gaps between the Han and nine large urban ethnic minorities: Zhuang, Hui, Manchurian, Tujia, Uighur, Miao, Tibetan, Mongol and Korean. It also asks how earnings premiums and earnings penalties have changed for the nine ethnic minorities. For the analysis we use a subsample of the 2005 China's Inter-Census Survey. We find examples of three different changes over time in earnings premiums and earnings penalties: One ethnic minority for whom the development has been more favourable than for the Han majority; a second category in which development has been similar; and a third category for which development has been unfavourable. We conclude from the analysis that it can be misleading to infer the experience of one ethnic minority from that of another. |
| Keywords: | earnings, ethnic minorities, Uighur, Tibetan, Korean |
| JEL: | J15 J31 J71 P23 |
| Date: | 2016–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10230&r=gro |
| By: | Jorge M. Agüero (University of Connecticut); Muhammad F. Majid (McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy) |
| Abstract: | We expand the literature on the costs of conflict by studying how wars affect the stock of human capital. Applying a “missing people” approach to censuses before and after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, we show that the size of the educated cohort shrunk by 39 percent. This effect contrasts with the demographic trends observed in other African countries during the same period and in Rwanda pre-genocide where the less educated are more likely to be missing. We show that excess missing rate of the educated found after the genocide is driven by deaths of educated Hutus, rather than refugee flows or even the ethnic targeting of Tutsis. We discuss how this loss affects labor markets post-conflict, the returns to education and we document the bias of studies that focus on impact of wars on the accumulation of human capital. |
| Keywords: | Costs of War, Genocide, Education, Mortality, Rwanda |
| JEL: | J10 J24 I15 |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2016-24&r=gro |
| By: | Prados de la Escosura, Leandro |
| Abstract: | This essay offers a new set of historical GDP estimates from the demand and supply sides that revises and expands those in Prados de la Escosura (2003) and provides the basis to investigate Spain’s long run economic growth. It presents a reconstruction of production and expenditure series for the century prior to the introduction of modern national accounts. Then, it splices available national accounts sets over the period 1958-2015 through interpolation, as an alternative to conventional retropolation. The resulting national accounts series are linked to the ‘pre-statistical era’ estimates providing yearly series for GDP and its components since 1850. On the basis of new population estimates, GDP per head is derived. Trends in GDP per head are, then, drawn and, using new employment estimates, decomposed into labour productivity and the amount of work per person, and placed into international perspective. |
| Keywords: | Spain; Splicing GDP; Expenditure; Output; GDP; Historical national accounts |
| JEL: | N14 N13 E01 C82 |
| Date: | 2016–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:23644&r=gro |
| By: | Simplice Asongu (Yaoundé/Cameroun); Jacinta C. Nwachukwu (Coventry University, UK) |
| Abstract: | This study examines the impact of globalisation on inclusive human development in 51 African countries for the period 1996-2011 with particular emphasis on income levels (low income versus middle income), legal origins (English common law versus French civil law), resource wealth (oil-rich versus oil-poor), landlockedness (landlocked versus unlandlocked), religious domination (Christianity versus Islam) and political stability (stable versus unstable). The empirical evidence is based on instrumental variable panel Fixed effects and Tobit regressions in order to control for the unobserved heteroegeneity and limited range in the dependent variable. Political, economic, social and general globalisation variables are used. Six main hypotheses are investigated. The findings broadly show that middle income, English common law, oil-poor, unlandlocked, Christian-oriented and politically-stable countries are associated with comparatively higher levels of globalisation-driven inclusive human development. Puzzling findings are elucidated and policy implications discussed. |
| Keywords: | Globalisation; inequality; inclusive development; Africa |
| JEL: | E60 F40 F59 D60 O55 |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:agd:wpaper:16/038&r=gro |
| By: | Ogilvie, S.; Edwards, J.; Küpker, M. |
| Abstract: | Human capital is widely regarded as central to economic growth but historical analyses find no causal link between standard literacy indicators and economic development. Book consumption has been proposed as an alternative indicator which has the advantage of measuring economically relevant human capital. We investigate this possibility using individual-level data from a German region between 1610 and 1900. Book ownership was widespread in this society from an early date. But multivariate analysis reveals that the relationship between book ownership and signatures, the standard literacy measure, differed substantially across time-periods, locations, and social groups. Book consumption was associated with other variables – time, gender, urbanization, migration status, and wealth – in ways inconsistent with its having conveyed the “useful knowledge” of industrial and commercial matters emphasized as the way books might have measured economically relevant human capital. Book consumption is interesting in its own right and casts light on important aspects of the preferences of pre-modern economic agents, but cannot serve as an indicator of human capital for historical analyses of economic growth. |
| Keywords: | economic history; human capital; education; growth; Germany |
| JEL: | N33 E24 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–09–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:1655&r=gro |
| By: | Kodila-Tedika, Oasis; Asongu, Simplice; Cinyabuguma, Matthias |
| Abstract: | Are there contemporary development effects of African resistance to European domination? This question is the primary issue addressed by this inquiry. We establish that African resistance has had adverse effects on post-colonial African development and discuss possible channels of such causality. This relationship is robust to alternative model and to controlling for the outliers. |
| Keywords: | Africa; Colonization; Slavery; Development |
| JEL: | N17 O11 O43 O55 P14 P17 P48 P51 |
| Date: | 2016–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:74228&r=gro |
| By: | Batabyal, Amitrajeet |
| Abstract: | In this note we study aspects of economic growth in a region that produces a final consumption good with creative and physical capital. This consumption good is manufactured with a production function that exhibits increasing returns to scale. Our analysis leads to three results. First, we compute the growth rate of creative capital in our regional economy. Second, we show that despite the presence of increasing returns, the regional economy under study converges to a balanced growth path (BGP). Finally, we compute the growth rates of physical capital and output on the BGP. |
| Keywords: | Balanced Growth Path, Creative Capital, Creative Region, Economic Growth, Increasing Returns |
| JEL: | D20 R11 |
| Date: | 2016–06–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:74107&r=gro |
| By: | Asongu, Simplice; Nwachukwu, Jacinta |
| Abstract: | This paper examines interconnections between law, politics and the quality of government in Africa. We investigate whether African democracies enjoy relatively better government quality compared to their counterparts with more autocratic inclinations. The empirical evidence is based on Instrumental variable Two-Stage-Least Squares and Fixed Effects with data from 38 African countries for the period 1994-2010. Political regimes of democracy, polity and autocracy are instrumented with income-levels, legal-origins, religious-dominations and press-freedom to account for government quality dynamics, of corruption-control, government-effectiveness, voice and accountability, political-stability, regulation quality and the rule of law. Findings show that democracy has an edge over autocracy while the latter and polity overlap. As a policy implication, democracy once initiated should be accelerated to edge the appeals of authoritarian regimes. |
| Keywords: | Law; Politics; Democracy; Government Policy; Development |
| JEL: | K00 O10 P16 P43 P50 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:74231&r=gro |