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on Economic Growth |
| By: | Antonio Ciccone; Jan Nimczik |
| Abstract: | The scale effects that have become an integral part of growth theory imply that productivity should be increasing in population size. We use newly digitized data to estimate the relation between GDP per worker and refugee settlements in West Germany following the arrival of 8 million WWII refugees—more than 15% of the West German population in 1949. Our approach builds on the county-level analysis of the relation between GDP per capita growth and refugee settlements in Peters (2022). As we find that his estimates do not reflect the effect on GDP per capita, we also provide corrected per-capita estimates. |
| Keywords: | Economic growth, scale effects, productivity, population shocks, immigration |
| JEL: | O1 O4 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_579 |
| By: | Broadberry, Stephen; Lennard, Jason |
| Keywords: | business cycle; economic growth; Europe |
| JEL: | N10 E32 O47 |
| Date: | 2024–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:123968 |
| By: | Antman, Francisca M. (University of Colorado, Boulder); Flynn, James (Miami University) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the impact of beer on mortality during the Industrial Revolution in 18th century England. Due to the brewing process, beer represented an improvement over available water sources during this period prior to the widespread understanding of the link between water quality and human health. Using a wide range of identification strategies to derive measures of beer scarcity driven by tax increases, weather events, and soil quality, we show that beer scarcity was associated with higher mortality, especially in the summer months when mortality was more likely to be driven by waterborne illnesses related to contaminated drinking water. We also leverage variation in inherent water quality across parishes using two proxies for water quality to show that beer scarcity resulted in greater deaths in areas with worse water quality. Together, the evidence indicates that beer had a major impact on human health during this important period in economic development. |
| Keywords: | beer, water quality, mortality, industrial revolution |
| JEL: | N33 I15 Q25 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17164 |
| By: | Jaedo Choi; Younghun Shim |
| Abstract: | Should policymakers in developing countries prioritize foreign technology adoption over domestic innovation? How might this depend on development stages? Using historical technology transfer data from Korea, we find that greater productivity gaps with foreign firms correlate with faster productivity growth after adoption, despite lower fees. Furthermore, non-adopters increased patent citations to foreign sellers, suggesting knowledge spillovers. Motivated by these findings, we build a two-country growth model with innovation and adoption. As the gaps narrow, productivity gains and spillovers from adoption diminish and foreign sellers strategically raise fees due to intensified competition, which renders adoption subsidies less effective. Korea’s shift from adoption to innovation subsidies substantially contributed to growth and welfare. We also explore the optimal policy and its interaction with import tariffs. |
| Keywords: | Technology Adoption; Innovation; Industrial Policy; Strategic Interaction |
| Date: | 2024–07–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2024/154 |
| By: | Réka Juhász; Shogo Sakabe; David Weinstein |
| Abstract: | This paper studies technology absorption worldwide in the late nineteenth century. We construct several novel datasets to test the idea that the codification of technical knowledge in the vernacular was necessary for countries to absorb the technologies of the Industrial Revolution. We find that comparative advantage shifted to industries that could benefit from patents only in countries and colonies that had access to codified technical knowledge but not in other regions. Using the rapid and unprecedented codification of technical knowledge in Meiji Japan as a natural experiment, we show that this pattern appeared in Japan only after the Japanese government codified as much technical knowledge as what was available in Germany in 1870. Our findings shed new light on the frictions associated with technology diffusion and offer a novel take on why Meiji Japan was unique among non-Western countries in successfully industrializing during the first wave of globalization. |
| JEL: | F14 F63 N15 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32667 |
| By: | Michael Sposi; Kei-Mu Yi; Jing Zhang |
| Abstract: | We add to recent evidence on deindustrialization and document a new pattern: increasing industry polarization over time. We assess whether these new features of structural change can be explained by a dynamic open economy model with two primary driving forces, sector-biased productivity growth and sectoral trade integration. We calibrate the model to the same countries used to document our patterns. We find that sector-biased productivity growth is important for deindustrialization by reducing the relative price of manufacturing to services, and sectoral trade integration is important for industry polarization through increased specialization. The interaction of these two driving forces is also essential as increased trade openness transmits global technological change to each country's relative prices, sectoral specialization and sectoral trade imbalances. |
| Keywords: | structural change; international trade; Sector Biased Productivity Growth |
| JEL: | F11 F43 O41 O11 |
| Date: | 2024–08–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:feddgw:98630 |
| By: | Ishan B. Nath; Valerie A. Ramey; Peter J. Klenow |
| Abstract: | Does a permanent rise in temperature decrease the level or growth rate of GDP in affected countries? Differing answers to this question lead prominent estimates of climate damages to diverge by an order of magnitude. This paper combines indirect evidence on economic growth with new empirical estimates of the dynamic effects of temperature on GDP to argue that warming has persistent, but not permanent, effects on growth. We start by presenting a range of evidence that technology flows tether country growth rates together, preventing temperature changes from causing growth rates to diverge permanently. We then use data from a panel of countries to show that temperature shocks have large and persistent effects on GDP, driven in part by persistence in temperature itself. These estimates imply projected future impacts that are three to five times larger than level effect estimates and two to four times smaller than permanent growth effect estimates, with larger discrepancies for initially hot and cold countries. |
| JEL: | E01 O44 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32761 |
| By: | Campo, Francesco; Mendola, Mariapia; Morrison, Andrea; Ottaviano, Gianmarco |
| Abstract: | We investigate the importance of co-ethnic networks and diversity in determining immigrant inventors' settlements in the United States by following the location choices of thousands of them across counties during the Age of Mass Migration. To do so, we combine a unique United States Patent and Trademark Office historical patent dataset on immigrants who arrived as adults with Census data and exploit exogenous variation in both immigration flows and diversity induced by former settlements, WWI, and the 1920s Immigration Acts. We find that co-ethnic networks play an important role in attracting immigrant inventors. Yet, we also find that immigrant diversity acts as an additional significant pull factor. This is mainly due to externalities that foster immigrant inventors' productivity. |
| JEL: | F22 J61 O31 |
| Date: | 2022–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:124052 |