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on Economic Growth |
| By: | Gaetano Basso (Bank of Italy); Mithali R. Mathur (University of California-Davis); Giovanni Peri (University of California-Davis, NBER) |
| Abstract: | OECD countries experienced declining native population growth and rising net immigration over 1990-2024. We compile a new dataset of net immigration rates to OECD countries from all origins and show that most of the increase came from non-OECD countries and was predominantly high-skilled. Push factors, network effects, and policy indices explain little of the large cross-country heterogeneity in immigration dynamics; unexpected shocks and surges were common. Using local projections and several sources of identifying variation, we then estimate the relationship between immigration and growth in GDP per capita, labor productivity, capital investment, and total factor productivity (TFP). Immigration from non-OECD countries was a significant predictor of GDP per worker growth, primarily through higher investment. High-skilled immigration, in particular, was associated with stronger human capital accumulation, faster TFP growth, and greater capital deepening. Native population growth, by contrast, had no or weakly negative effects on GDP per capita and productivity. These results are consistent with a large literature documenting the positive productivity and growth effects of immigration, especially high-skilled immigration. |
| Keywords: | OECD economies, immigration, population change, immigration policies, push-driven shift share, labor productivity, TFP, investment, human capital |
| JEL: | F22 O47 J61 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_1054_26 |
| By: | Acar-Burkay, Sinem |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the question of the effects of ethnic diversity on economic growth. It extends the cross-country growth regressions in Easterly and Levine (1997) by allowing for growth effects of natural resources to depend on the amount of ethnic fractionalization to see if ethnic diversity, natural resource abundance, and the interaction of the two can explain Middle Eastern Countries' poor economic performance. And, the answer is found to be “yes”: The resource curse applies in ethnically heterogeneous countries but not in homogenous ones. |
| Date: | 2026–09–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:mkq3e_v1 |
| By: | Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (University of Pennsylvania, NBER, and CEPR); Patrick Norrick (Northwestern University) |
| Abstract: | As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics. But the real surprise is that the fall has been concentrated in low- and middle-income countries and among poorer and less educated women. We fit a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950: the common component peaked in 1978, and what drives fertility down today are country-specific trends, 219 of them negative and not one leveling off. None of the commonly cited mechanisms can account for this pattern, so we offer a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. Children come in integers, so it takes very little to move a cohort’s fertility rate from 1.8 to 1.3. And nothing in an economy pushes fertility back to 2.1. We close with the main economic consequences, in particular slow growth. |
| Keywords: | fertility decline; demographic transition; population aging; economic growth;labor force; population projections |
| JEL: | J11 J13 O40 E24 O11 |
| Date: | 2026–10–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:26-016 |
| By: | Kaiji Chen; Hanming Fang; Yang Tang |
| Abstract: | Rapid economic growth creates large differences in lifetime incomes across generations. This paper examines the intergenerational redistribution generated by subsidized access to appreciating public assets in rapidly growing economies. We show that providing incumbent generations with subsidized access to these assets before future growth is fully capitalized into market values gives them an early claim on subsequent economic growth, thereby redistributing resources from future to incumbent generations. In the context of housing privatization, subsequent capital gains on privatized housing enable homeowners to trade up, further amplifying housing demand, house prices, and intergenerational redistribution. We evaluate the early ownership and capital gains channels of asset-based redistribution in a quantitative equilibrium model calibrated to China's housing privatization. Relative to more standard pension-based redistribution, we show that asset-based redistribution delivers higher welfare for future cohorts while substantially reducing long-run fiscal burdens once economic growth unexpectedly slows. |
| JEL: | E02 G11 G28 H2 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35754 |
| By: | Federico, Giovanni; Tena Junguito, Antonio |
| Abstract: | Humans have been migrating since the out-of-Africa dispersal, roughly 300, 000 years ago, but the nineteenth century marked a major leap forward. For the first time in history, millions of people voluntarily migrated over long distances, from Europe to the Americas and Oceania, and from India and China to Southeast Asia. Yet we still know too little about these flows. The recent literature has made great progress in analyzing migrants' motivations and the microeconomic impact of their arrival, but the conventional wisdom still relies on the data compiled by Ferenczi and Willcox (1929) on gross migrations in the Atlantic economy. In this paper, we reconstruct new worldwide series for total (gross) and net migration, including inter-Asian and, partially, inter-European flows from 1800 to 1938. We estimate that more than 150 million people, about 10% of the world population, migrated, but half of them returned home. They accounted for between a sixth and a tenth of the workforce in the Americas and from a fifth to three-quarters in Australia and New Zealand. We also estimate the long-run effect of migrations on the distribution of the world population. |
| Keywords: | International migration; Global migration; Historical demography; Return migration; Labor mobility; Population dynamics; Economic history |
| JEL: | J61 N30 J11 F22 |
| Date: | 2026–09–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:50842 |
| By: | Raouf Boucekkine; Natalia Hritonenko; Yuri Yatsenko; Ullrika Sahlin |
| Abstract: | We study optimal growth in a Ramsey economy with irreversible pollution, where the natural absorption capacity is non-monotonic and non-concave a la Forster. In the absence of pollution control, the capital dynamics decouple from pollution, and we characterize a simple threshold on the maximal absorption capacity above which the optimal path is sustainable and below which an optimal regime of irreversible pollution sets in. We then introduce an optimal abatement pollution control to assess whether irreversible pollution ceases to be optimal. We derive a four-dimensional dynamical system for capital, consumption, pollution and the (shadow) cost of pollution, coupled with an algebraic rule for optimal abatement, which is eventually reduced to dimension three, with abatement linearly entering the pollution dynamics. Our main result is that optimal abatement shifts the irreversibility threshold but does not eliminate it. More importantly, we show that embedding the Forster's pollution dynamics into a Ramsey growth model generates a novel hybrid ecological irreversibility condition that is invisible in pollution-only frameworks. Coupling ecosystem curvature with the social discount rate, it is structurally robust and preeminent over all feasibility conditions amenable to policy intervention and defines the boundary between a world where sustainability is achievable and one where it is not. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.12693 |
| By: | Carl Magnus Magnusson; Laura Torelli |
| Abstract: | The development of capital markets as a means of promoting economic growth has increasingly become a policy priority worldwide. But can changes in financial structure alone deliver this promise? This paper examines the capital market-growth relationship, drawing on both theoretical and empirical literature to provide a conceptual framework for thinking about this question. Market-based finance can improve allocative efficiency, facilitate high-risk, long-term investment, and possibly increase resilience during economic downturns. But the broad empirical evidence linking financial structures and economic outcomes is far from conclusive, and equity and debt markets operate through very different channels. The literature also points to clear complementarities between banks and securities markets, as well as possible risks associated with non-bank debt finance. The impact of capital markets on growth is real, but far less mechanical than is sometimes implied in contemporary policy debate. Because they enable growth through very specific channels, their effectiveness depends on the nature of the growth constraint being addressed; capital markets can help overcome financial barriers to growth, but may have limited impact in other areas. |
| JEL: | E44 G10 G18 G21 G23 O16 |
| Date: | 2026–09–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:dafaad:50-en |
| By: | Wurster, Maximilian; Hellenkamp, Detlef |
| Abstract: | In knowledge-based economies, technological innovation capability, intangible assets, and intellectual property are becoming increasingly important for long-term economic performance. Patent data are widely used as indicators of innovation; however, simple patent counts do not adequately capture the quality, technological relevance, or international market coverage of individual patents. This paper therefore examines the extent to which key patents can serve as a quality-oriented indicator of technological innovation capability for analysing economic performance. Key patents are understood as particularly high-quality patents in relevant key technologies, whose patent strength derives from technological relevance and international market coverage. The paper combines a conceptual analysis of the key patent approach with literature from growth and innovation economics, as well as with an exploratory empirical plausibility assessment based on a global patent dataset on world-class patents in future technologies (Breitinger et al., 2020). Economic performance is operationalised empirically through per capita income. The empirical evidence is assessed from two complementary perspectives: an international cross-section of high-income economies and a dynamic analysis of the United States, which held a particularly prominent position in high-quality patenting across key future technologies during the period under observation. In both perspectives, the findings point to a positive association between key patents and per capita income. They should not, however, be interpreted as evidence of causality, but as empirically grounded support for the plausibility of this relationship. The contribution of this paper lies in positioning key patents as a differentiated innovation indicator that takes patent quality, technological relevance, and international reach more fully into account than mere patent volumes. The key patent approach thus offers a scientifically grounded perspective on innovation capability and economic performance in knowledge-based economies. |
| Keywords: | Key patents, Patent quality, Innovation indicators, Technological innovation capability, Knowledge-based economies, Economic performance, Intangible assets |
| JEL: | O31 O33 O34 O47 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:343662 |