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on Economic Growth |
| By: | Hai Ha Pham (EM Normandie - École de Management de Normandie = EM Normandie Business School); Ngoc-Sang Pham (EM Normandie - École de Management de Normandie = EM Normandie Business School) |
| Abstract: | We introduce the notion of wariness, defined as a concern for the lowest lifetime utility, in overlapping generations models and explore its effects on economic growth. In an exogenous growth model, under standard assumptions, we prove that the capital stock converges to a steady state. We then explore conditions under which this steady state is increasing (or decreasing) in the wariness level. We also provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the dynamic efficiency of the intertemporal equilibrium. In endogenous growth models (à la Romer (1986) or à la Barro (1990)), we show that the growth rate of capital stock per capita in the economy with wariness is lower (higher, respectively) than that in the economy without wariness if and only if the capital return is high (low, respectively). |
| Keywords: | Wariness, Overlapping generations, Dynamic efficiency, Economic growth, Endogenous growth, Wariness Overlapping generations Dynamic efficiency Economic growth Endogenous growth |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04918980 |
| By: | Alex Trew; Stephan Heblich; ​Yanos Zylberberg; Dávid Nagy |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how cities’ industrial structure shapes their life and death. Our analysis exploits the large heterogeneity in the early composition of English and Welsh cities. We extract built-up clusters from early historical maps, identify settlements at the onset of the nineteenth century, and isolate exogenous variation in the nature of their rise during the transformation of the economy by the end of the nineteenth century. We then estimate the causal impact of cities’ population and industrial specialization on their later dynamics. We find that cities specializing in a small number of industries decline in the long run. We develop a dynamic spatial model of cities to isolate the forces which govern their life and death. Intratemporally, the model captures the role of amenities, land, local productivity and trade in explaining the distribution of economic activity across industries and cities. Intertemporally, the model can disentangle the role of aggregate industry dynamics from city-specific externalities. We find that the long-run dynamics of English and Welsh cities is explained to a large extent by such dynamic externalities `a la Jacobs. |
| Keywords: | quantitative economic geography, specialization, cities over time |
| JEL: | F63 N93 O14 R13 |
| Date: | 2023–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1398 |
| By: | Sefa Awaworyi Churchill (RMIT University); Simon Chang (University of Western Australia); Russell Smyth (Monash University); Trong-Anh Trinh (Monash University) |
| Abstract: | This paper extends prior theory linking present-day sex ratios to present-day propensity for entrepreneurship among men backward in time to explore the long-run gender origins of entrepreneurship. We argue that present-day propensity for entrepreneurship among men will be higher in neighbourhoods which had historically high sex ratios. We propose that high sex ratios generate attitudes and behaviours that imprint into cultural norms about gender roles and that vertical transmission within families create hysteresis in the evolution of these gender norms. To empirically test the theory, we employ the transport of convicts to the British colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a natural experiment to examine the long-run effect of gender norms on entrepreneurship in present-day Australia. We use a representative longitudinal dataset for the Australian population that provides information on the neighbourhood in which the participant lives, which we merge with data on the sex ratio in historical counties from the mid-nineteenth century. We find that men who live in neighbourhoods which had high historical sex ratios have a higher propensity for entrepreneurship. We present evidence consistent with the vertical transmission of gender norms within families being the likely mechanism. Arguments for policies to promote female entrepreneurship are typically couched in terms of gender norms representing a barrier to more women starting their own business. We present evidence consistent with gender norms contributing to gender differences in rates of entrepreneurship by being a spur for higher male entrepreneurship rather than a barrier to female entrepreneurship. |
| Keywords: | gender norms, sex ratios, entrepreneurship, Australia |
| JEL: | I31 J21 J22 N37 O10 Z13 Z18 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mhe:chemon:2025-06 |
| By: | Broadberry, Stephen (Nuffield College, Oxford); Fukao, Kyoji (Hitotsubashi University); Settsu, Tokihiko (Musashi University) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses recently revised data on Japanese GDP to analyse the process by which Japan caught-up with the West. The new historical national accounts suggest that Japan was more than one-third richer in 1874 than suggested by Maddison, and that the Meiji period growth built on earlier development. We show that (1) despite trend GDP per capita growth during the Tokugawa shogunate, the catching-up process only started after 1890 with respect to Britain, and after World War 1 with respect to the United States and many European nations (2) although catching up was driven by the dynamic productivity performance of Japanese manufacturing, Japanese success in exporting manufactured goods was just as much driven by limiting the growth of real wages (3) despite claims that Japan was following a distinctive Asian path of labour-intensive industrialisation, capital played an important role in the catching-up process. |
| Keywords: | JEL Classification: |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:749 |
| By: | Gozen, Ruveyda Nur |
| Abstract: | How do stronger property rights for disadvantaged groups affect innovation? I investigate the impact of strengthened property rights for women on U.S. innovation by analyzing the Married Women's Property Acts, which granted equal property rights to women starting in 1845 in New York State. I examine the universe of granted patents from 1790 until 1901, exploiting the staggered adoption of the laws over time across states. The strengthening of women's property rights led to a 40% increase in patenting activity among women in the long run, with effects peaking about a decade after the laws were introduced. Importantly, women's innovations were not of lower quality (as measured by a novelty index based on patent text analysis) and did not generate negative effects on male innovation. Finally, I show that the main mechanism was through higher human capital accumulation among women inventors and innovation incentives, rather than an increase in participation in STEM fields, labor force participation, or relieving financial frictions. |
| Keywords: | innovations; gender; property rights; economic development; Ruveyda Nur Gozen |
| JEL: | J16 N00 O12 O34 P14 |
| Date: | 2024–06–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126790 |
| By: | Ruveyda Nur Gozen |
| Abstract: | Breakthrough innovations occurred when women obtained the right to reap economic rewards from their inventions. Ruveyda Nur Gozen shows how such inclusive policies are a critical driver of economic growth. |
| Keywords: | equality, gender, Technological change, women, US Economy, patents |
| Date: | 2025–02–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepcnp:693 |
| By: | Wu, Haoyu; Atamanov, Aziz; Bundervoet, Tom; Paci, Pierella |
| Abstract: | On current trends, the future of global poverty reduction will be determined by Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet even during Sub-Saharan Africa’s period of high economic growth — roughly corresponding to the first decade and a half of the 2000s — the extent to which this growth translated into improved living standards for African households was hotly debated. This paper revisits the issue of Sub-Saharan Africa’s relatively low growth elasticity of poverty using a sample of 575 successive and comparable growth spells between 1981 and 2021. The findings confirm that, even controlling for initial differences in poverty, income levels, and inequality, Sub-Saharan Africa consistently had a significantly lower growth elasticity of poverty relative to other regions over this period. The lower growth elasticity of poverty, which has remained unchanged over time, is due to a lower passthrough between growth in gross domestic product per capita (or growth in household final consumption expenditure as measured by national accounts) and growth in household consumption expenditures as measured from surveys. Given the low passthrough of economic growth to households, Africa thus needs higher rates of economic growth than its peer countries in other regions to achieve equal rates of poverty reduction. Given the challenge of achieving this in the current global economic environment, success in reducing global poverty will require a focused effort to strengthen the effect of aggregate economic growth on household welfare in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results suggest that this will require (i) improved provision of basic education services and basic infrastructure, (ii) faster structural transformation, and (iii) a decrease in the occurrence and persistence of violent conflicts. |
| Date: | 2024–02–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10690 |
| By: | David Baqaee; Hannes Malmberg |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the long-run economic consequences of Western sanctions on Russia. Using a new framework for balanced growth path analysis, we find that the long-run declines in consumption are significantly larger when capital stocks are allowed to adjust --- 1.4 times larger for Russia and 2.2 times larger for Eastern Europe. This is contrary to the common intuition that long-run effects should be milder due to greater adjustment opportunities. In our model, Russian long-run consumption falls by 8.5%, Eastern European consumption by 2%, and Western countries' consumption by 0.3% in response to sanctions. The model also reveals important distributional effects: as capital adjusts, Russian real wages fall more than rental prices in the long run. These findings show that accounting for capital adjustment is quantitatively important when analyzing trade sanctions. |
| JEL: | E0 F0 F1 F5 F51 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33506 |
| By: | Boehm, Johannes; Chaney, Thomas |
| Abstract: | What caused the end of antiquity, the shift of economic activity away from the Mediterranean towards northern Europe? We assemble a large database of coin flows between the 4th and 10th century and use it to document the shifting patterns of exchange during this time period. We build a dynamic model of trade and money where coins gradually diffuse along trade routes. We estimate the parameters of this model and recover time-varying bi-lateral trade flows and real consumption from data on the spatial and temporal distribution of coins. Our estimates suggest that technical progress, increased minting, and to a lesser degree the fall in trade flows over the newly formed border between Islam and Christianity contributed to the relative growth of Muslim Spain and the Frankish lands of northern Europe and the decline of the Roman-Byzantine world. Our estimates are consistent with the increased urbanization of western and northern Europe relative to the eastern Mediterranean from the 8th to the 10th century. |
| Keywords: | gravity models; international trade; market access; diffusion |
| JEL: | F1 O1 N73 |
| Date: | 2024–09–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126785 |
| By: | Tamkoc, Mehmet Nazim; Ventura, Gustavo |
| Abstract: | This paper documents that senior plant managers in less-developed countries spend more time dealing with government rules and regulations than their counterparts in richer countries. These facts are interpreted through the lens of a span-of-control growth model, in which top managers run heterogeneous production plants, employing middle managers as well as production workers. The model implies that increasing the time burden on top management leads to equilibrium changes in wages, occupational sorting, the size distribution of production plants and ultimately, to a reduction in aggregate output. These consequences hold even when the time burden is symmetric across all plants. Quantitative results show that increasing the burden on managers’ time from the levels observed in Denmark to the higher levels observed in poorer countries have substantial consequences. Imposing the average time spent on regulations in Argentina reduces aggregate output by about 1/3 and mean plant size by more than 5 employees. Results contribute to rationalizing differences in plant size and output across countries via a channel hitherto unexplored in the literature. |
| Date: | 2024–05–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10761 |
| By: | Peng, Cong; Wang, Yao; Chen, Wenfan |
| Abstract: | This study explores the impacts of road improvements in a country characterized by "urbanization without growth". Our analysis reveals that, although road upgrades increase population growth, they do not significantly advance economic development and tend to worsen living conditions. Utilizing a combination of empirical evidence and a spatial equilibrium model, we identify that constrained industrial capacities and congestion from high population density limit the efficacy of road development policies in enhancing GDP and overall welfare. Our results also indicate that strategically targeting road placement in regions with higher economic productivity could yield better economic outcomes. |
| Keywords: | road improvements; urbanization; industrialization; quantitative spatial model; satellite imagery; africa |
| JEL: | O1 R1 R4 |
| Date: | 2024–12–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126771 |