A surprising feature of resource-rich economies is slow growth. It is often argued that natural-resource production impedes development by creating market or institutional failures. This paper ...establishes an alternative explanation—a slow-growing resource sector. A declining resource sector is disproportionately reflected in resource-dependent countries. Additionally, there is little evidence that resource dependence impedes growth in non-resource sectors. More generally, this paper illustrates the importance of considering industry composition in cross-country growth regressions.
•Resource-dependence is a robust determinant of growth.•Sector-specific growth rates are not robustly correlated with resource dependence.•Cross-country growth heterogeneity largely reflects sector-growth heterogeneity.•Resource-dependent countries tend to grow slowly when the international price of the resource falls.
Health expenditures as a share of GDP in the United States have more than tripled over the past half-century. A common conjecture is that this is a consequence of rising income. We investigate this ...hypothesis by instrumenting for local area income with time series variation in oil prices interacted with local oil reserves. This strategy enables us to capture both partial equilibrium and local general equilibrium effects of income on health expenditures. Our central income elasticity estimate is 0.7, with 1.1 as the upper end of the 95% confidence interval, which suggests that rising income is unlikely to be a major driver of the rising health expenditure share of GDP.
Abstract
We use a general equilibrium model to show that a decrease in workers’ bargaining power amplifies the contribution to the output gap of adjustments along the extensive versus intensive ...margin of labour utilization. Under standard assumptions on the disutility of labour, this mechanism reduces the cyclical movements of inflation relative to those of the output gap. Micro-level evidence, based on a survey of Italian firms, provides support to the relationship between bargaining power and adjustments along the extensive margin versus the intensive one, as well as to attenuated price response when firms adjust labour input mainly through the extensive margin. A Bayesian estimation using Italian aggregate data for the samples 1970–1990 and 1991–2014 confirms that the decline in workers’ bargaining power has weakened the inflation–output gap relationship.
This paper analyzes the US Lanham Act of 1940, a heavily subsidized and universal child care program administered during World War II. I first estimate its impact on maternal employment using a ...triple-differences model. I find that employment increased substantially following the introduction of the program. I then study children’s long-run labor market outcomes. Using Census data from 1970 to 1990, I assess well-being in a life-cycle framework by tracking cohorts of treated individuals throughout their prime working years. Results from difference-in-differences models suggest the program had persistent positive effects, with the largest benefits accruing to the most economically disadvantaged adults.
We examine empirically the direct and indirect effects of natural resource abundance on economic growth. Natural resources have a negative impact on growth if considered in isolation, but a positive ...direct impact on growth if other explanatory variables, such as corruption, investment, openness, terms of trade, and schooling, are included. We study the transmission channels, that is, the effect of natural resources on the other explanatory variables, and calculate the indirect effect of natural resources on growth for each transmission channel. The negative indirect effects of natural resources on growth are shown to outweigh the positive direct effect by a reasonable order of magnitude.
Journal of Comparative Economics
32 (1) (2004) 181–193.
We use U.S. county data (3,058 observations) and 41 conditioning variables to study growth and convergence. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) and three-stage least squares with instrumental ...variables (3SLS-IV), we report on the full sample and metro, nonmetro, and and regional samples: (1) OLS yields convergence rates around 2%; 3SLS yields 6%–8%; (2) convergence rates vary (for example, the Southern rate is 2.5 times the Northeastern rate); (3) federal, state, and local government negatively correlates with growth; (4) the relationship between educational attainment and growth is nonlinear; and (5) the finance, insurance, and real estate industry and the entertainment industry correlate positively with growth, whereas education employment correlates negatively.
This paper examines the role of high-technology trade, IPRs and FDI in determining a country's rate of innovation and economic growth. The empirical analysis is conducted using a unique panel data ...set of 47 developed and developing countries from 1970 to 1990. The results suggest that: (1) high-technology imports are relevant in explaining domestic innovation both in developed and developing countries; (2) foreign technology has a stronger impact on per capita GDP growth than domestic technology; (3) IPRs affect the innovation rate, but this impact is more significant for developed countries; (4) the results regarding FDI are inconclusive.
Human capital and growth Sunde, Uwe; Vischer, Thomas
Economica (London),
April 2015, Letnik:
82, Številka:
326
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This paper suggests that the weak empirical effect of human capital on growth in existing cross-country studies is partly the result of an inappropriate specification that does not account for the ...different channels through which human capital affects growth. A systematic replication of earlier results from the literature shows that both initial levels and changes in human capital have positive growth effects, while in isolation each channel often appears insignificant. The results suggest that the effect of human capital is likely to be underestimated in empirical specifications that do not account for both channels.
Cities and cultures Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P.; Peri, Giovanni
Journal of urban economics,
09/2005, Letnik:
58, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We investigate whether cultural diversity across US cities (measured as the variety of native languages spoken by city residents) is associated with any effect on their productivity. Diversity of ...cultures may imply diversity of production skills, of abilities and of occupations that enhances the productive performance of a city. On the other hand transaction costs and frictions across groups may hurt productivity. Similarly, diversity in available goods and services can increase utility but distaste for (or hostility to) different cultural groups may decrease it. Using census data from 1970 to 1990, we find that wages and employment density of US-born workers were systematically higher, ceteris paribus, in cities with richer linguistic diversity. These positive correlations reveal a net positive effect of diversity on productivity that survives robustness checks and instrumental variable estimation. This effect is found to be stronger for highly educated workers and for white workers. We also show that better ‘assimilated’ non-native speakers, i.e. those who speak English well and have been in the US for more than five years, are most beneficial to the productivity of US-born workers.
This paper uses panel data to seek to characterize the determinants of imports of computers across countries. The strongest findings are that computer adoption is associated with high levels of human ...capital, and with manufacturing trade openness vis-a-vis OECD. Considerable evidence is also found that computer adoption is enhanced by good property-rights protection, high rates of investment per worker, and a small share of agriculture in GDP. There is also some evidence for a negative role of the size of government and a positive role of the share of manufacturing in GDP. After controlling for the above mentioned variables, an independent role is not found for the English language skills of the population. The quantitative importance of these findings, as well as their theoretical interpretation, is discussed.
PDF
