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on Economic Growth |
| By: | Mara P. Squicciarini; Nico Voigtländer |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the role of knowledge elites in modernization. At the eve of the French Revolution, in the spring of 1789, King Louis XVI solicited lists of grievances (Cahiers de Doléances), in which the public could express complaints and suggestions for reforms of the Ancien Regime. We show that the demand for mass education and democratization was particularly high in regions that had a thick knowledge elite, measured by subscribers to the famous Encyclopédie in the 1770s. Historical evidence suggests that this pattern is driven by the spirit of enlightenment of French knowledge elites. Pre-revolution literacy, in contrast, is not correlated with demand for mass education or with the density of knowledge elites. After the French Revolution, knowledge elites played a key role in implementing schooling reforms at the local level. We show that by the mid-19th century, schooling rates were significantly higher in regions with thicker knowledge elites. The same is true of other proxies for modernization, such as association membership, Republican votes, and the share of French-speaking pupils. Our results highlight an important interaction between local culture (the spirit of enlightenment) and nation-wide institutions in economic development: the French Revolution opened a window of opportunity for local elites to pursue their agenda of modernization. |
| JEL: | J24 N13 O14 |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22779&r=gro |
| By: | Daron Acemoglu; Ufuk Akcigit; William Kerr |
| Abstract: | Technological progress builds upon itself, with the expansion of invention in one domain propelling future work in linked fields. Our analysis uses 1.8 million U.S. patents and their citation properties to map the innovation network and its strength. Past innovation network structures are calculated using citation patterns across technology classes during 1975-1994. The interaction of this pre-existing network structure with patent growth in upstream technology fields has strong predictive power on future innovation after 1995. This pattern is consistent with the idea that when there is more past upstream innovation for a particular technology class to build on, then that technology class innovates more. |
| JEL: | D85 O31 O32 O33 O34 |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22783&r=gro |
| By: | Elizabeth Gooch (USDA Economics Research); Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (International Center for Public Policy. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University); Bauyrzhan Yedgenov (Department of Economics, International Center for Public Policy. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University) |
| Abstract: | This paper reexamines the causal link between institutional quality and economic development using "Malaria Endemicity" as an instrument for institutions. This instrument is superior to the previously used instruments in the literature which suffered from measurement error, including "settler mortality." Because the Malaria Endemicity measure captures the malaria environment before the discovery that mosquitoes transmit the disease and before the successful eradication efforts that followed, it is exogenous to both institutional quality and economic development. We find Malaria Endemicity a valid strong instrument which yields larger significant effects of institutions on economic development than those obtained in the previous literature. |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper1610&r=gro |
| By: | Borisov, Gleb V. (St. Petersburg State University); Pissarides, Christopher A. (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We make use of longitudinal data for the Russian economy over 1994-2013 to obtain earnings and education information about parents and children. We estimate the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment and earning capacity and find high intergenerational correlation of earnings for both sons and daughters independently of educational qualifications. We attribute them to the impact of informal networks. We also find high correlation of educational qualifications but with critical variations due to labour market conditions. At the time of transition around 1990 children's educational attainment fell well below parents but recovered a decade later when the economy was booming. |
| Keywords: | human capital, intergenerational education mobility, intergenerational earnings elasticity, Russia |
| JEL: | J21 J23 J24 J62 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10300&r=gro |
| By: | Guillaume Daudin (PSL, Université Paris-Dauphine, LEDa-DIAL UMR IRD 225); Raphaël Franck (Bar Ilan University, Department of Economics, 52900 Ramat Gan, Israel, and Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Economics at Brown University, Providence 02912 RI, USA.); Hillel Rapoport (Paris School of Economics, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | France experienced the demographic transition before richer and more educated countries. This paper offers a novel explanation for this puzzle that emphasizes the diffusion of culture and information through internal migration. It tests how migration affected fertility by building a decennial bilateral migration matrix between French regions for 1861-1911. The identification strategy uses exogenous variation in transportation costs resulting from the construction of railways. The results suggest the convergence towards low birth rates can be explained by the diffusion of low-fertility norms by migrants, especially by migrants to and from Paris. |
| Keywords: | Fertility, France, Demographic Transition, Migration. |
| JEL: | J13 N33 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dia:wpaper:dt201606&r=gro |
| By: | Leon Podkaminer (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | Abstract The last 50 years have produced a series of revolutionary technological changes. These decades have also witnessed a truly revolutionary systemic change at the global level. The change started with step-wise internal liberalisations and deregulations in the major industrialised countries. The internal systemic changes have been synchronised with the consecutive waves of liberalisation of international economic relations. Trade liberalisations (cuts in tariff levels, progressive removal of many non-tariff barriers to trade) were followed by consecutive waves of liberalisation of capital flows to a large degree completing the process of globalisation. Advancing globalisation seems to have been paralleled by the global economic growth becoming progressively slower and unstable. Using the standard tools of time series econometrics (VEC, Granger non-causality testing, ARDL) the paper suggests that trade has not been driving global economic growth (or even that expanding trade may have slowed down global output growth). Large and persistent trade imbalances which have become typical since the mid-1970s are just one possible reason for trade no longer playing the positive role assigned to it in the trade theories. The second reason relates to the ‘race-to-the-bottom’ tendencies with respect to the wage rate which have developed under globalisation. These tendencies may have been responsible for the persistent shortage of aggregate demand at the global level and – consequently – weakening global output growth. |
| Keywords: | world income, world trade, globalisation, wage-led growth, VEC, Granger causality |
| JEL: | F43 F15 F16 O47 O49 |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:131&r=gro |
| By: | Stanislao Gualdi (Ecole Centrale Supélec - Laboratoire MAS); Antoine Mandel (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne - Paris School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the interplay between technological change and macroeconomic dynamics in an agent-based model of the formation of production networks. On the one hand, production networks form the structure that determines economic dynamics in the short run. On the other hand, their evolution reflects the long-term impacts of competition and innovation on the economy. We account for process innovation via increasing variety in the input mix and hence increasing connectivity in the network. In turn, product innovation induces a direct growth of the firm's productivity and the potential destruction of links. The interplay between both processes generate complex technological dynamics in which phases of process and product innovation successively dominate. The model reproduces a wealth of stylized facts about industrial dynamics and technological progress, in particular the persistence of heterogeneity among firms and Wright's law for the growth of productivity within a technological paradigm. We illustrate the potential of the model for the analysis of industrial policy via a preliminary set of policy experiments in which we investigate the impact on innovators' success of feed-in tariffs and of priority market access |
| Keywords: | Production network; Network formation; Scale-free networks; Firms demographics; distribution of firms' size; Zipf law; General equilibrium; monopolistic competition; disequilibrium |
| JEL: | D57 D85 L16 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:16054&r=gro |
| By: | Huang, We-Chi; Chen, Ping-ho; Lai, Ching-Chong |
| Abstract: | This paper develops an R&D-based growth model featuring international R&D funding and patent collateral. It then uses the model to examine how the international borrowing interest rate and the fraction of patent collateral will affect innovations and economic growth. |
| Keywords: | International R&D funding, patent collateral, R&D-based growth model |
| JEL: | E44 O31 O40 |
| Date: | 2016–11–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:74881&r=gro |
| By: | Hélène Latzer (CEREC - Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces multi-quality firms within a Schumpeterian framework. Featuring non-homothetic preferences and income disparities in an otherwise standard quality-ladder model, we show that the resulting differences in the willingness to pay for quality among consumers generate both positive investments in R&D by industry leaders and positive market shares for more than one quality, hence allowing for the emergence of multi-product firms within a vertical innovation framework. This positive investment in R&D by incumbents is obtained with complete equal treatment in the R&D field between the incumbent patentholder and the challengers: in our framework , the incentive for a leader to invest in R&D stems from the possibility for an incumbent having innovated twice in a row to efficiently discriminate between rich and poor consumers displaying differences in their willingness to pay for quality. We hence exemplify a so far overlooked demand-driven rationale for innovation by incumbents. Such a framework also makes it possible to analyze the impact of inequality both on long-term growth and on the allocation of R&D activities between challengers and incumbents. We find that an increase in the income gap positively impacts an econ-omy's growth rate, partly shifting R&D activities from challengers to incumbents. On the other hand, a greater income concentration is detrimental for growth, diminishing both the incumbents' and the challengers' R&D activities. |
| Keywords: | Growth,Innovation,Income inequality |
| Date: | 2016–10–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-01387266&r=gro |
| By: | Diego Comin (Dartmouth College); Daniel Lashkari (Harvard U.); Marti Mestieri (Northwestern University) |
| Abstract: | We develop a multi-sectoral endogenous growth model in which the direction of innovation across sectors is endogenous. Thus, our model provides a theoretical framework to think about the classical demand-pull versus technology-push drivers of innovation in a general equilibrium framework. A robust prediction that emerges from our analysis is that innovation growth should be higher in more income-elastic sectors. We test this prediction using the universe of U.S. patents for the period 1976-2007. We find empirical support for this prediction. Preliminary analysis of firm R&D expenditures from the U.S. census also confirm this prediction. |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed016:1287&r=gro |
| By: | Taro Hisamatsu (Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University) |
| Abstract: | This paper reconstructs Torrens fs theory of economic growth. Actual wage is determined by the capital-population ratio between the maximum and the minimum wage. In the process of growth, the maximum wage keeps being lowered by the decreasing marginal productivity in agriculture, while the minimum wage remains constant. Based on these notions of wages, Torrens fs economic dynamics are described as follows. In the early stage of growth, capital increases faster than population so that the actual wage rises above the minimum. Thereafter, the economy grows with a tendency for the population to increase faster than the capital while limiting the actual wage below the decreasing maximum until it enters a stationary state and the actual wage and profit rate are reduced to their minimum. This theory has been attributed to Ricardo by some scholars, but Torrens proposed a more ingenious theory than Ricardo fs. |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:koe:wpaper:1633&r=gro |