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on Economic Growth |
| By: | Enriqueta Camps |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we account for the early demographic transition of Catalonia and the impact on population ageing and levels of productivity. Female vocational training and female real-wage increased during the first third of the 20th century, with high female participation levels in the workforce and the influence of libertarian practices of fertility control seeming to be the main reasons for the low levels of fertility (below replacement) during the first third of the 20th century. This sustained trend of low fertility has resulted in a high dependency ratio during the first decades of the 21st century caused in turn by increased longevity. The high proportion of dependents in the population has resulted in GDP per capita becoming an inadequate measure of the evolution of productivity levels during the 21st century. |
| Keywords: | fertility, gender wage gap, longevity, economic growth |
| JEL: | A11 A12 I15 J11 N3 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1910 |
| By: | Spyridon Boikos (University of Macedonia, Greece); Theodore Panagiotidis (Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, Greece); Georgios Voucharas (Liverpool Hope University, UK) |
| Abstract: | While significant progress has been made in exploring the importance of financial literacy, its impact on economic growth and financial development from a macroeconomic point of view, remains thinly understood. This paper provides fresh evidence on the relationship between financial literacy, financial development and economic growth. We utilise a novel dataset for 61 countries over the period 1999-2014 and employ a panel quantile regression model. We provide strong evidence that higher financial literacy levels lead to higher GDP per capita growth and the size of the impact is higher at lower quantiles of the conditional growth distribution. As financial development increases, its positive impact on economic growth diminishes, indicating an inverted U-shaped relationship. High levels of financial literacy mitigate the diminishing returns of financial development on GDP per capita growth by an average of 7.41%. Interestingly, in higher quantiles of the conditional growth distribution, the mitigating effect increases to 9.23%. |
| Keywords: | Financial Literacy, Financial Development, Economic Growth, Quantile Regression, Panel Data |
| JEL: | O16 O40 G10 G53 C21 C23 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rim:rimwps:25-09 |
| By: | Ayusha Fayyaz; Zoltan Bartha |
| Abstract: | The goal of this research is to uncover the channels through which research and development (R&D) impacts economic growth in developing countries. The study employed nine variables from three broader categories in the World Economic Forum database, each covering 32 countries from the lower-middle-income group for the year 2019. The theoretical framework is based on the R&D ecosystem, which includes components such as Institutions, Human capital, Capital market, R&D, and Innovation. Each of these components can contribute to the economic development of the country. Using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), we build a path diagram to visualize and confirm a potential relationship between the components. R&D features had a positive impact on innovation (regression weight estimate: +0.34, p = 0.001), as did capital market institutions (regression weight estimate: +0.12, p = 0.007), but neither had a significant impact on growth. According to the Schumpeterian institutional interpretation, R&D and innovation efforts may not lead to sustained growth in middle-income countries. We find no significant connection between innovation performance and economic growth. This suggests that while R&D and capital markets may contribute to innovation through entrepreneurship, this contribution is not impactful enough to drive economic growth in developing countries. Our findings provide further evidence of the middle-income trap. |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2509.19413 |
| By: | Giorgio Giorgi (University of Pavia); Christian Bidard (University of Paris X-Nanterre- France) |
| Abstract: | We give a survey of the main mathematical properties concerning the classical von Neumann growth model, properties often scattered in several papers and books and not always proved in a fully correct way. Hence, the present note may have some didactic utility. |
| Keywords: | von Neumann growth model, von Neumann equilibrium solutions |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pav:demwpp:demwp0227 |
| By: | Debora Princepe; Cristobal Qui\~ninao; Cristina D\'iaz Faloh; Pablo A. Marquet; Matteo Marsili |
| Abstract: | Can sustained open-ended technological progress preserve natural resources in a finite planet? We address this question on the basis of a stylized model with genuine open-ended technological innovation, where an innovation event corresponds to a random draw of a technology in the space of the parameters that define how it impacts the environment and how it interacts with the population. Technological innovation is endogenous because an innovation may invade if it satisfies constraints which depend on the state of the environment and of the population. We find that open-ended innovation leads either to a sustainable future where global population saturates and the environment is preserved, or to exploding population and a vanishing environment. What drives the transition between these two phases is not the level of environmental impact of technologies, but rather the demographic effects of technologies and labor productivity. Low demographic impact and high labor productivity (as in several western countries today) result in a Schumpeterian dynamics where new "greener" technologies displace older ones, thereby reducing the overall environmental impact. In this scenario, global population saturates to a finite value, imposing strong selective pressure on technological innovation. When technologies contribute significantly to demographic growth and/or labor productivity is low, technological innovation runs unrestrained, population grows unbounded, while the environment collapses. As such, our model captures subtle feedback effects between technological progress, demography and sustainability that rationalize and align with empirical observations of a demographic transition and the environmental Kuznets curve, without deriving it from profit maximization based on individual incentives. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2510.01085 |
| By: | Marcello D'Amato (University of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa and CSEF.); Francesco Flaviano Russo (Università di Napoli Federico II and CSEF) |
| Abstract: | We explore the long-term economic and institutional consequences of an early exposure to a fundamental technological innovation in human history, pottery. Using a data set on radiocarbon-dated pottery discoveries, we show that regions that were ex-posed to pottery earlier have been subsequently characterized by higher historical population density and by an earlier development of complex political organizations. These results hold after controlling for the timing of the Neolithic transition, bio-geographic variables, and migratory distance from East Africa. We argue that the dual role of pottery, both as a cooking and fermentation tool that improved nutritional efficiency and as a storage technology that enabled surplus management, shifted Malthusian constraints and contributed to the emergence of social stratification, institutional complexity, and early state formation. Classification-JEL: O11; O33; O47; N00. |
| Keywords: | Neolithic; Pottery Antiquity; Population, State. |
| Date: | 2025–09–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sef:csefwp:759 |
| By: | Hasselbalch, Jacob; Larsen, Mathias |
| Abstract: | When imagining how a green transition can take place, the relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability is commonly viewed in two ways: As ‘green growth, ’ where the two can be mutually supporting, and as ‘degrowth, ’ where they cannot. The two are considered mutually exclusive, internally coherent, and competing eco-political paradigms. Here, we conceptually analyze the literature and map standpoints within the two positions along nine dimensions covering national institutions, world order, and scientific cosmology. We find that there are substantial disagreements within as well as agreements between green growth and degrowth. In consequence, we argue that the literature is caught in a false binary. To constructively move the debate forward, we propose giving up the paradigmatic and polarized approach and instead embracing a multidimensional plurality of imagined growth futures. |
| Keywords: | green growth; degrowth; post-growth; imaginaries; paradigms |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:129714 |
| By: | Klaus Desmet; Dávid Krisztián Nagy; Esteban Rossi-Hansberg |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how human capital shapes the economic geography of development. We develop a model in which the cost of acquiring human capital varies across space, and regions with higher human capital innovate more. Locations are spatially connected through migration and trade. There are localized agglomeration economies, and human-capital-augmenting technology diffuses across space. Using high-resolution data on income and schooling, we quantify and simulate the model at the 1° x 1° resolution for the entire globe. Over the span of two centuries, the model predicts strong persistence in the spatial distribution of development — unlike spatial dynamic models without human capital, which predict convergence. Proportionally lowering the cost of education in sub-Saharan Africa or Central and South Asia raises local outcomes but reduces global welfare, whereas the same policy in Latin America improves global outcomes. An alternative policy equalizing educational costs across sub-Saharan Africa generates relatively worse outcomes, as population reallocates within the region toward less productive areas. Central to these results is the estimated negative correlation between the education costs and local fundamentals, as well as inefficiencies in the spatial allocation due to externalities. |
| JEL: | E24 F10 I24 J24 O11 O18 O33 R12 R23 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34310 |