Globalization and the Human Development Trap

The feeble results of liberalization policies in Latin America are explained in terms of a multiple steady state model including a dynamic human development trap, endogenous technological change, technology transfer and trade. Divergent and convergent steady states, with and without a human development trap, exist under both autarchy and free trade. The model explains why import substitution is inferior to export promotion. While globalization is a necessary condition for convergence to development, it is not sufficient. Both trade and foreign direct investment create innovation assymetries hindering lagging countries that need to be balanced with export promotion and technological transfer for their successful integration with the global economy. In addition, so long as the human development trap persists, unskilled and skilled workers will have a conflict of interest between supporting human capital investment and innovation. If only innovation is supported, the human capital trap will persist. If mainly human capital investment is pursued, technology levels will fall behind; switching to innovation will be necessary eventually. The world growth rate is maximized by regulating globalization so as to attain development in all countries.trade, investment, technology

Institutions and Long-Term Development Policy

Market failures in human capital investment and innovation explain the main features of human development and economic growth. This is shown in a Schumpeterian multi-country model with technology transfer and trade. Thus, only institutions expanding investments in nutrition, education, health, skills, know-how and research in LDC’s, beyond what markets can supply, will succeed in promoting long-term development. It is in the interest of leading countries to supplement home investments with concerted transfers, since the long-term world growth rate increases with world-wide knowledge levels and living standards. Underdevelopment consists of a series of policy-dependent lower steady states, with parallel or divergent growth rates, and with or without a human development trap. Free commerce raises the growth rate of countries able to support production at the global scale. Smaller or more backward countries grow slower and require aid to emerge. Skilled and unskilled workers in LDC’s have a conflict of interest between supporting innovation or human capital investment. If innovation is favored, the human capital trap can persist, provoking opposition to globalization. If human capital investment is prioritized, a switch to innovation will eventually be necessary, requiring institutional change.Human Capital Investment, Schumpeterian, Market Failures, Development Policy

Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market

Data from downtown Boston in the 1990s show that loss aversion determines seller behavior in the housing market. Condominium owners subject to nominal losses 1) set higher asking prices of 25-35 percent of the difference between the property's expected selling price and their original purchase price; 2) attain higher selling prices of 3-18 percent of that difference; and 3) exhibit a much lower sale hazard than other sellers. The list price results are twice as large for owner-occupants as investors, but hold for both. These findings are consistent with prospect theory and help explain the positive price-volume correlation in real estate markets.

A Measure of Emotional Empathy for Adolescents and Adults

A new, multi-dimensional scale of emotional empathy is described. The scale consists of 30 items and was administered to 793 adolescents and adults. A principal components analysis yielded six meaningful factors. Alpha reliabilities for all scale scores were moderate to high, and the scales demonstrate significant relationships to a number of behavioral criteria. The new empathy scale measures emotional aspects of empathy and can be used by researchers interested in a general measure of emotional empathy as well as providing detailed sub-scales

Discourse structure and information structure : interfaces and prosodic realization

In this paper we review the current state of research on the issue of discourse structure (DS) / information structure (IS) interface. This field has received a lot of attention from discourse semanticists and pragmatists, and has made substantial progress in recent years. In this paper we summarize the relevant studies. In addition, we look at the issue of DS/ISinteraction at a different level—that of phonetics. It is known that both information structure and discourse structure can be realized prosodically, but the issue of phonetic interaction between the prosodic devices they employ has hardly ever been discussed in this context. We think that a proper consideration of this aspect of DS/IS-interaction would enrich our understanding of the phenomenon, and hence we formulate some related research-programmatic positions

The Multidimensional Emotional Empathy Scale (MDEES)

The Multidimesional Emotional Empathy Scale (Caruso & Mayer, 1998) is a scale of self-reported empathy

R&D, Implementation and Stagnation: A Schumpeterian Theory of Convergence Clubs

We construct a Schumpeterian growth theory consistent with the divergence in per-capita income that has occurred between countries since the mid 19th Century, and with the convergence that occurred between the richest countries during the second half of the 20th Century. The theory assumes that technological change underwent a transformation late in the 19th Century, associated with modern R&D labs. Countries sort themselves into three groups. Those in the highest group converge to a steady state where they do leading edge R&D, while those in the intermediate group converge to a steady state where they implement technologies developed elsewhere. Countries in both of these groups grow at the same rate in the long run, as a result of technology transfer, but inequality between them increases during the transition. Countries in the lowest group grow at a slower rate, with relative incomes that fall asymptotically to zero. Once modern R&D has been introduced, a country may have only a finite window of opportunity in which to introduce the institutions that support it.

Food for Thought: Basic Needs and Persistent Educational Inequality

This research demonstrates that human capital accumulation by the poor is only possible if a minimum level of health and well-being has been attained. When families do not have enough resources to invest in the satisfaction of basic needs and health care, and finance is not available for this purpose, a poverty trap exists with low health, education and income. These poverty traps may persist if policies financing education are applied which do not also address deficiencies in nutrition and health impairing human potential, and in particular early child development. This link between health and education contributes to explain the important, long-term effects of nutrition and health on economic growth and implies that nutrition and health play a causal role in the persistence of inequality and in the effects of inequality on growth.Health, Human Capital, Growth, Credit constraints