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on Economic Growth |
| By: | Dalgaard, Carl-Johan; Hansen, Casper Worm; Strulik, Holger |
| Abstract: | The fetal origins hypothesis has received considerable empirical support, both within epidemiology and economics. The present study compares the ability of two rival theoretical frameworks in accounting for the kind of path dependence implied by the fetal origins hypothesis. We argue that while the conventional health capital model is irreconcilable with fetal origins of late-in-life health outcomes, the more recent health deficit model can generate shock amplification consistent with the hypothesis. We also develop a theory of ontogenetic growth in utero and during childhood, unify it with the theory of adult aging, and discuss the transmission of early-life shocks to late-life health deficit accumulation. |
| Keywords: | Fetal Origins,Health Capital,Health Deficits,Ontogenetic Growth,In Utero Development |
| JEL: | I10 J13 D91 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cegedp:385&r=all |
| By: | Antony, Jürgen; Klarl, Torben |
| JEL: | Q30 E21 O44 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc19:203640&r=all |
| By: | Krieger, Tommy |
| JEL: | D73 H11 O43 P14 P48 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc19:203507&r=all |
| By: | Kazeem B. Ajide (University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria); Olorunfemi Y. Alimi (University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria); Simplice A. Asongu (Yaoundé, Cameroon) |
| Abstract: | Studies on the causes of income differences between the rich and the poor have received an extensive attention in the inequality empirics. While ethnic diversity hasalso been identified as one of the fundamental causes of income inequality, the role of institutions as a mediating factor in the ethnicity-inequality nexus has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. To this end, this study complements the existing literature by investigating the extent to which institutional framework corrects the noisy influence originating from the nexus between “ethnic diversity†and inequality in 26 sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1996-2015. The empirical evidence is based on pooled OLS, fixed effects and system GMM estimators. The main findings reveal that the mediating influences of institutional settingsaredefective, thus making it extremely difficult to modulatethe noisy impacts of ethno-linguistic and religious heterogeneity on inequality. In addition, the negative influencesorchestrated by ethnolinguistic and religious diversities on inequality fail toattenuate the impact of income disparityeven when interacted with institutions. On the policy front, institutional reforms tailored toward economic, political and institutional governances should be targeted. |
| Keywords: | Linguistic, religious, ethnicity, inequality, Institutions, Kuznets curve |
| JEL: | C23 D02 D63 E02 |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aby:wpaper:19/018&r=all |
| By: | Jeremy Greenwood; Nezih Guner; Karen A. Kopecky |
| Abstract: | The 19th and 20th centuries saw a transformation in contraceptive technologies and their take up. This led to a sexual revolution, which witnessed a rise in premarital sex and out-of-wedlock births, and a decline in marriage. The impact of contraception on married and single life is analyzed here both theoretically and quantitatively. The analysis is conducted using a model where people search for partners. Upon finding one, they can choose between abstinence, marriage, and a premarital sexual relationship. The model is confronted with some stylized facts about premarital sex and marriage over the course of the 20th century. Some economic history is also presented. |
| JEL: | D1 E13 J1 J12 J13 N11 N12 O33 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26410&r=all |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany); Korneliusz Pylak (Maria Curie Skłodowska University of Lublin, Poland); Michael Wyrwich (University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Persistence of entrepreneurship over longer periods of time could indicate a culture of entrepreneurship among the local population that may be an important factor for regional development, but does persistence of economic activity require cultural transmission? We exploit the diverse historical developments in the territory that is Poland today to analyze the level and the sources of persistence from the 1920s until today. Persistence is mainly found in those regions that were part of Germany before World War II. This persistence is noticeable despite the exchange of most of the pre-war population, ruling out that persistence is driven by transmission of culture. In most regions that were already part of Poland before World War II, the relationship between historical and current levels of entrepreneurship is not significant. Persistence of entrepreneurship is related to the historical success of regions, which we capture by the pre-war level of and self-employment in manufacturing industries, particularly in those that can be regarded as knowledge intensive. Our main conclusion is that persistence of entrepreneurship requires a certain level of successful economic development that we capture by the degree of industrialization in the early 20th century, but it does not necessarily require persistence of the local population. |
| Keywords: | Persistence, entrepreneurship, self-employment |
| JEL: | L26 M13 O1 O18 R11 |
| Date: | 2019–06–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2019-003&r=all |
| By: | Berlemann, Michael; Wenzel, Daniela |
| JEL: | O44 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc19:203608&r=all |
| By: | Morgan Kelly; Cormac Ó Gráda; Peter Solar |
| Abstract: | Shipping was central to the rise of the Atlantic economies, but an extremely hazardous activity: in the 1780s, roughly five per cent of British ships sailing in summer for the United States never returned. Against the widespread belief that shipping technology was stagnant before iron steamships, in this paper we demonstrate that between the 1780s and 1820s, a safety revolution occurred that saw shipping losses and insurance rates on oceanic routes almost halved thanks to steady improvements in shipbuilding and navigation. Iron reinforcing led to stronger vessels while navigation improved, not through chronometers which remained too expensive and unreliable for general use, but through radically improved charts, accessible manuals of basic navigational techniques, and improved shore-based navigational aids. |
| Keywords: | Shipping; Insurance; Industrial Revolution |
| JEL: | N N73 G22 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucn:wpaper:10197/11167&r=all |
| By: | Ksenia Gonchar (National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow); Maria Kristalova (Bremen University and Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how innovation strategies of Russian manufacturing firms affect various features of firm performance. A multi stage model is used, which relates the firm's decision to undertake R&D to its innovation output, technical efficiency, labor productivity, and growth. We also include imports into the knowledge production function, because catching up economies may adopt technologies embodied in imported hardware. Additionally, we link productivity and innovation output to survival. We find that both types of knowledge input - R&D and imports - strongly determine innovation. Innovations yield the strongest performance return in the case of catching up to technological frontier. Product innovation is more beneficial than process innovation in all performance features except for labor productivity. However, higher efficiency does not improve the growth rates or survival time of manufacturing firms. Taken together, these results show that innovation is not uniformly rewarded across all features of firm performance. |
| Keywords: | innovation, productivity, growth, survival, Russia |
| JEL: | C30 D24 O30 |
| Date: | 2019–02–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2019-001&r=all |
| By: | Schmöller, Michaela |
| JEL: | E20 E24 E60 O40 O41 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc19:203598&r=all |