Countries commencing industrialization with relatively low levels of agricultural productivity, hence low wages, enjoy advantages that can also prove host to daunting challenges. The chief advantage ...is a relatively elastic supply of labor for manufacturing; the chief challenge is how to free up farm labor for factory employment through the raising of labor productivity in farming. Key to raising agricultural labor productivity is providing incentives to increase effort levels including hours worked — access to markets being crucial — and improving the quality of labor as measured by health indicators and educational attainment. The willingness of elites to promote improvements in infrastructure — physical infrastructure in the form of roads and railroads and hydroelectric systems; human capital enhancing infrastructure augmenting the educational attainment and health of populations in rural areas; and financial infrastructure — and to invest directly in factories is crucial to the process by which labor is transferred from farming to manufacturing activities. During the period 1850 to 1935 elites in China tended to resist the requisite changes while elites in Japan did not. This legacy played a crucial role in shaping the nature of post-1950 economic development in the two countries.
The discourseon the impact of natural resource endowment and its effect on financial development has been an important research area in the last few decades. This study attempts to test the “resource ...curse” hypothesis in case of China for the period of 1987–2017. Unlike others, we introduce additional variables such as technological innovations, human capital, and trade openness into the finance demand function. We used an augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test with and without structural breaks and Carrion-i-Silvestre et al.’s (2009) generalized least squares based test to examine the stationary properties of the variables. Similarly, to examine the presence of the cointegration relationship between financial development and its determinants, the Maki cointegration with multiple structural breaks approach is applied. The empirical results support the presence of the resource curse; that is, natural resources negatively affect financial development in China. Nonetheless, technological innovations, trade openness, and human capital affect financial development positively. The interaction of human capital and technological innovations is also positively linked with financial development. Our empirical findings have robust policy implications, highlighting the need to promote technological innovations and human capital development for effective use and management of natural resources to promote the development of financial sector.
•It employs the Maki cointegration with multiple structural breaks approach to examine the presence of the cointegration relationship.•Natural resources negatively affect financial development in China.•Technological innovation, trade openness, and human capital affect financial development positively.
Once again, the Horn of Africa has been in the headlines. And once again the news has been bad: drought, famine, conflict, hunger, suffering and death. The finger of blame has been pointed in ...numerous directions: to the changing climate, to environmental degradation, to overpopulation, to geopolitics and conflict, to aid agency failures, and more. But it is not all disaster and catastrophe. Many successful development efforts at ‘the margins’ often remain hidden, informal, sometimes illegal; and rarely in line with standard development prescriptions. If we shift our gaze from the capital cities to the regional centres and their hinterlands, then a very different perspective emerges. These are the places where pastoralists live. They have for centuries struggled with drought, conflict and famine. They are resourceful, entrepreneurial and innovative peoples. Yet they have been ignored and marginalised by the states that control their territory and the development agencies who are supposed to help them. This book argues that, while we should not ignore the profound difficulties of creating secure livelihoods in the Greater Horn of Africa, there is much to be learned from development successes, large and small. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars with an interest in development studies and human geography, with a particular emphasis on Africa. It will also appeal to development policy-makers and practitioners.
Local Space, Global Life engages with the expansive, ground-level and intertwined operations of international law and the development project by discussing the current international focus on local ...jurisdictions. Since the mid-1980s, and through the discourse of decentralization, municipalities and cities in emerging nations have become the preferred spaces in which to promote global ideals of human, economic and environmental development. Through an ethnographic study of Bogotá's recent development experience and the city's changing relation to its illegal neighbourhoods, Luis Eslava interrogates this rationale and exposes the contradictions involved in the international turn to the local. Attentive to historical and current transformations, norms and praxis, and both ideology and materiality, he provides an innovative reading of the nature of international law and the development project, and reveals their impact on local spaces and lives at the urban periphery of today's world order.
The provincial panel data from 2005 to 2018 in this paper classifies institutional variables into the degree of market resource allocation, market openness, and property rights diversification. It ...empirically analyzes the relationship between economic growth, natural resources, and institutions quality. The research results show that the “resource curse” proposition is valid at the provincial level in China. The low-quality market resource allocation system and property rights system curbed the potential advantages of natural resources to promote economic development and caused the “resource curse” effect. Similarly, the increase in market openness can ease the “resource curse” effect. Moreover, in the context of the spatial agglomeration of natural resources, there is a negative spatial correlation between economic growth, and the “resource curse” effect is more severe in areas where resources are more abundant. In addition, it is found that natural resource endowments will affect the quality of the system. Under the effect of the causal cycle mechanism, the lower the quality of the system, the more severe “resource curse” effect.
•Multi-dimensional selection institutional quality index.•The “resource curse” proposition is valid at the provincial level in China.•Negative correlation between natural resources and economic growth.•Low institutional quality leads to serious “resource curse".
East Asia has three of the most powerful economies on earth, but they are losing steam. Dwight Perkins draws on extensive experience in the region to explain the reasons for this rapid economic ...growth since the 1960s and to ask if the recent slowdown is a local phenomenon or typical of all economies at this stage of development.
Drawing on balanced panel data of 30 Chinese provinces in 1987–2017, this paper examines the impact of carbon emissions on economic growth through the panel smooth transition regression model. ...Estimation is conducted based on the whole sample as well as the northern region and southern region subsamples. Empirical results reveal that: i) noticeable non-linear relationships do exist among carbon emissions, financial development, openness, innovation, and economic growth; and ii) carbon emissions attenuate the promoting effects of financial development and innovation on economic growth, which is also confirmed by using energy consumption as the transition variable; and iii) subsample estimations further discover that the impact of carbon emissions on economic growth is significantly different between the two regions, with the northern region having a lower carbon emissions threshold but quicker transition speed.
•Carbon emissions will inhibit the positive effects of financial development, and innovation on economic growth.•A PSTR model is employed to study the effect of carbon emissions on China's economic growth.•There is a significant non-linear relationship among economic growth, carbon emissions, and other economic variables.•The effects of carbon emissions on economic growth vary significantly from region to region.
There are studies on renewable energy, natural resources abundance, and their impact on the environment especially in BRICS countries. However, none of the studies has considered human capital in the ...nexus, knowing fully well that ecological distortions mainly emanates from human activities. Therefore, this study explores the linkage between natural resource, renewable energy, human capital, and ecological footprint (EF) in BRICS using a battery of advance econometric techniques. The findings from the study, across all models, affirm that economic growth and natural resource increase the EF, renewable energy decreases it, while human capital is not yet at a desirable level as to mitigate environmental deterioration. The country-specific results are in harmony in terms of the deteriorating impact of economic growth, and the abating role of renewable energy on the environment. Further findings suggest a feedback causality between human capital, urbanization, and EF. Policies that can enhance renewable energy consumption, human capital development, natural resource sustainability, and curb urban anomaly are discussed.
•The study explores the linkage between natural resource, renewable energy, human capital, and ecological footprint in BRICS.•Economic growth and natural resource increase the ecological footprint.•Human capital is not yet at a desirable level as to mitigate environmental deterioration.•A feedback causality between human capital, urbanization, and ecological footprint.•Renewable energy decreases the ecological footprint.
When Poland and Ukraine introduced their political, social and economic system reforms at the beginning of the 1990s, both economies were at a similar level of economic development (GDP $9,500 per ...capita). However, in 2018, Ukrainian GDP per capita had remained at the same levels since 1991, while in Poland, it had increased significantly, to more than $27,000 per capita. This book assesses the reasons for the growing gap between the level of economic development in Ukraine and Poland. It examines the course of events and evaluates the effectiveness of the system transformations, both in the context of the economy, as a whole, and in individual regions (Polish ‘voivodeships’ (provinces) and Ukrainian ‘oblasts’). It also analyzes the consequences of the 2008–2009 Ukrainian-Russian gas conflict and 2013–2014 Euromaidan events for the Ukrainian economy. Additionally, the authors offer an insight into the migration movements, which have recently been observed in Poland and Ukraine. This is the first comprehensive, comparative analysis concerning the spatial diversification of economic development in these two countries, and the authors highlight the ways in which these reforms have proved effective in Poland and hardly effective in Ukraine. This analysis helps to identify the basic interrelations between the core macroeconomic variables at the regional level and the impact of political events from both a national and regional perspective. The book will appeal to academics, researchers and policy makers interested in the economic and political changes in these two countries, in a comparative setting and on national and regional levels, as well as those working on issues of EU integration.
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