|
on Economic Growth |
| By: | Crafts, Nicholas (CAGE, The University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | This paper re-examines output and productivity growth during the British industrial revolution in the light of recent research. Revised estimates are presented which incorporate new findings on the structure of employment, in particular, that the level of industrialization in the mid-18th century is now known to be considerably higher than was assumed in earlier work. This implies that industrial labour productivity growth was faster than believed by authors of the 1980s but still slower than earlier writers claimed. It is shown that in most important respects the Crafts-Harley view of macroeconomic growth remains basically intact. |
| Keywords: | industrial revolution; productivity growth; take-off |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:204&r=gro |
| By: | Graziella Bertocchi; Monica Bozzano |
| Abstract: | We investigate the historical determinants of the education gender gap in Italy in the late nineteenth century, immediately following the country’s Unification. We use a comprehensive newly-assembled database including 69 provinces over twenty-year sub-samples covering the 1861-1901 period. We find robust evidence that female primary school attainment, relative to that of males, is positively associated with the medieval pattern of commerce, along the routes that connected Italian cities among themselves and with the rest of the world. The effect of medieval commerce is particularly strong at the non-compulsory upperprimary level and persists even after controlling for alternative long-term determinants reflecting the geographic, economic, political, and cultural differentiation of medieval Italy. The long-term influence of medieval commerce quickly dissipates after national compulsory primary schooling is imposed at Unification, suggesting that the channel of transmission was the larger provision of education for girls in commercial centers. |
| Keywords: | Education gender gap, medieval commerce, Italian Unification, political institutions, family types. |
| JEL: | E02 H75 I25 J16 N33 O15 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mod:dembwp:0007&r=gro |
| By: | Hasan KIRMANOGLU; Nejat ANBARCI |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:003306:330600077&r=gro |
| By: | Barbara Pistoresi; Alberto Rinaldi |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the relationship between external constraint and economic growth in Italy from 1861 to 2000. In particular, it investigates whether the persistent current account deficits in the 1861-1913 years constrained output growth. To this aim it studies the genesis of the current account fluctuations, that is whether these were generated by the dynamics of the GDP or by variations in capital inflows. Using integration and co-integration analysis and the Granger causality testing, it shows that in the long run Italy’s external position is sustainable: the Italian economy seems to have used the external deficits (surpluses) to smooth its aggregate consumption. Moreover in the shorter 1861-1913 sub-period, the persistent current account deficits, financed by foreign capital inflows, do not seem to have curbed economic growth. |
| Keywords: | Current account, economic growth, Italy, Granger causality |
| JEL: | F43 O11 N1 N7 |
| Date: | 2013–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mod:dembwp:0011&r=gro |
| By: | Alfonso ARPAIA; Alessandro TURRINI |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:000238:23800006&r=gro |
| By: | Vincenzo Scoppa; Manuela Stranges (Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza, Università della Calabria) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the role of culture in explaining economic outcomes at individual level analyzing how cultural values from the home country affect the decision to work of immigrants in Italy, using the National Survey of Households with Immigrants. Following the “epidemiological approach”, we relate the probability of being employed in Italy for immigrant women with the female labor force participation (LFP) in their country of origin, taken as a proxy of cultural heritage and gender role model. Controlling for a number of individual and household characteristics, we show that participation in the labor market is affected both by the culture of females’ and by their husband’s origin countries. We also show that the relationship between own decisions in the host country and home country LFP cannot be attributed to human capital quality or discrimination and it turns out to be stronger for immigrants that maintained more intense ties with their origin countries. Finally, we investigate to what extent cultural influence is driven by religious beliefs: we find that religion is a key determinant of differences in female labor decisions, but, besides religion, other cultural values exert additional influence.. |
| Keywords: | Culture, Immigration, Labor Force Participation, Epidemiological Approach, Gender, Italy |
| JEL: | Z10 Z13 J10 J15 J16 J20 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clb:wpaper:201413&r=gro |
| By: | Nabil ANNABI; Simon HARVEY; Yu LAN |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:000238:23800004&r=gro |
| By: | Marco Vivarelli (DISCE, Università Cattolica) |
| Abstract: | This paper is intended to provide an updated discussion on a series of issues that the relevant literature suggests to be crucial in dealing with the challenges a middle income country may encounter in its attempts to further catch-up a higher income status. In particular, the conventional economic wisdom – ranging from the Lewis-Kuznets model to the endogenous growth approach– will be contrasted with the Schumpeterian and evolutionary views pointing to the role of capabilities and knowledge, considered as key inputs to foster economic growth. Then, attention will be turned to structural change and innovation, trying to map – using the taxonomies put forward by the innovation literature – the concrete ways through which a middle income country can engage a technological catching-up, having in mind that developing countries are deeply involved into globalized markets where domestic innovation has to be complemented by the role played by international technological transfer. Among the ways how a middle income country can foster domestic innovation and structural change in terms of sectoral diversification and product differentiation, a recent stream of literature underscores the potentials of local innovative entrepreneurship, that will also be discussed bridging entrepreneurial studies with the development literature. Finally, the possible consequences of catching-up in terms of jobs and skills will be discussed. |
| Keywords: | catching-up, structural change, globalization, capabilities, innovation, entrepreneurship. |
| JEL: | O14 O33 |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie2:dises1403&r=gro |
| By: | Svetlana Makarova; Wojciech Charemza |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:000239:23900056&r=gro |
| By: | Maxime Fougere; Patrick Georges; Marcel Merette |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:002721:272100029&r=gro |
| By: | Christopher Arthur Clarke (Washington State University); Stephen M. Miller (University of Nevada, Las Vegas and University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | The slow economic recovery since the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession requires state and local governments to continue to make difficult decisions concerning which taxes to raise and which expenditures to decrease in order to maintain a balanced budget. As expenditures usually raise economic growth and taxes generally hinder it, seeking the optimum combination of taxes and expenditures encourages prosperity in a state. In this paper, we study the effects of various expenditures and revenue combinations on growth in real state personal income per capita, using a sample of annual observations from 1977 to 2010 for 49 states and the District of Columbia. We find that state and local governments overfund education and parks, recreation, and natural resources while they underfund hospitals and health spending, once netted for charges and user fees. State and local governments also underutilize corporate income taxes as a source of revenue. Finally, we also estimate non-linear and short- and long-run specifications, which generally support prior findings. |
| Keywords: | Regional growth, state and local finance |
| JEL: | E62 H21 H70 O40 R11 |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2014-25&r=gro |
| By: | Bosede Comfort OLOPADE; David OLOPADE |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:002596:259600124&r=gro |
| By: | Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Catholic University of Chile); José-Carlos Tello (Catholic University of Peru) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a dynamic general-equilibrium political-economy model for the optimal size and composition of public spending. An analytical solution is derived from majority voting for three government spending categories: public consumption goods and transfers (valued by households), as well as productive government services (complementing private capital in an endogenous-growth technology). Inequality is reflected by a discrete distribution of infinitely-lived agents that differ by their initial capital holdings. In contrast to the previous literature that derives monotonic (typically negative) relations between inequality and growth in one-dimensional voting environments, this paper establishes conditions, in an environment of multi-dimensional voting, under which a non-monotonic, inverted U-shape relation between inequality and growth is obtained. This more general result – that inequality and growth could be negatively or positively related – could be consistent with the ambiguous or inconclusive results documented in the empirical literature on the inequality-growth nexus. The paper also shows that the political-economy equilibrium obtained under multi-dimensional voting for the initial period is time-consistent. |
| Keywords: | inequality, endogenous growth, multidimensional voting, endogenous taxation |
| JEL: | D72 E62 H11 H31 |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apc:wpaper:2014-019&r=gro |
| By: | ISMIHAN Mustafa; METIN-OZCAN Kivilcim; TANSEL Aysit |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:003307:330700071&r=gro |
| By: | Baotai Wang; Ajit Dayanandan |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:002721:272100100&r=gro |
| By: | R.N. Ghosh; I. Vanden Driesen |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwa:wpaper:94-06&r=gro |
| By: | Muhammad Shahbaz; Sahbi Farhani; Mohammad Mafizur Rahman |
| Abstract: | The present study investigates the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth using Cobb-Douglas production function by incorporating exports, capital and labor as additional factors of production. We applied the ARDL bounds testing approach to test the existence of long run relationship between the series. The VECM Granger approach is implemented to detect the direction of causal relation between the variables. Our results show that variables are cointegrated for long run relationship. The results indicate that natural gas consumption, exports, capital and labor are contributing factors to domestic production and hence economic growth in case of France. The causality analysis indicates that feedback hypothesis is validated between gas consumption and economic growth which implies that adoption of energy conservation policies should be discouraged. The bidirectional causality is also found between exports and economic growth, gas consumption and exports, capital and energy consumption, exports and capital. This study opens up new direction for policy makers to formulate a comprehensive energy policy to sustain economic growth for long span of time in case of France. |
| Keywords: | Exports, Gas Consumption, Growth, France |
| Date: | 2014–09–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-583&r=gro |
| By: | André DRAMAIS |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:003306:330600042&r=gro |