Cross-Country Income Differences and Technology Diffusion in a Competitive World

This paper develops a new open-economy endogenous growth model where technology diffusion allows for a stable and non-degenerate world income distribution. In accordance with the empirical literature, I find that country characteristics such as the social infrastructure, the degree of openness, the investment rate, population growth, the level of human capital, or growth policies such as subsidies to innovation investments explain a country’s position in the eventual world income distribution. Club convergence in growth rates can be traced back to a country’s openness and to a minimum required level of human capital.Capital Accumulation, Technology Diffusion, Neoclassical GrowthModel

Steady-State Growth and the Elasticity of Substitution

In a neoclassical economy with endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change the steady-state growth rate of output per worker is shown to increase in the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. This confirms the assessment of Klump and de La Grandville (2000) that the elasticity of substitution is a powerful engine of economic growth. However, unlike their findings my result applies to the steady-state growth rate. Moreover, it does not hinge on particular assumptions on how aggregate savings come about. It holds for any household sector allowing savings to grow at the same rate as aggregate output.capital accumulation, elasticity of substitution, direction of technical change, neoclassical growth model

Frictional unemployment, labor market institutions, and endogenous economic growth

For a given set of labor market institutions, the rate of frictional unemployment depends on the evolution of the pool of job-seekers. Unemployment rises with the growth rate of labor supply that is proportionate to the rate of population growth. If economic growth is semi-endogenous, the steady-state growth rate depends positively on the rate of population growth. This suggests a trade-off between growth and unemployment: a faster growing economy has a higher unemployment rate. As a consequence, faster growth may not be desirable from a welfare point of view. We make this point in a parsimonious setting where semi-endogenous growth derives from the division of labor and the associated gains from specialization.

Malthus and Solow - a note on closed-form solutions

Recently, Jones (2002} and Barro and Sala-í-Martin (2004) pointed out that the neoclassical growth model with a Cobb-Douglas technology has a closed-form solution. This note makes a similar remark for the Malthusian model: I develop and characterize a closed-form solution. Moreover, I emphasize structural similarities between the Malthusian and the neoclassical model if the dynamic behavior is governed by a Bernoulli differential equation.

Population Aging and the Direction of Technical Change

An analytical framework is developed to study the repercussions between endogenous capital- and labor-saving technical change and population aging. Following an intuition often attributed to Hicks (1932), I ask whether and how population aging affects the relative scarcity of factors of production, relative factor prices, and the direction of induced technical change. Aging is equivalent to an increase in the old-age dependency ratio of an OLG-economy with two-period lived individuals. In this framework aging increases the relative scarcity of labor with respect to capital. Therefore, there will be more labor- and less capital-saving technical change. Unless there are contemporaneous knowledge spillovers across innovating firms technical change induced by a small increase in the old-age dependency ratio has no first-order effect on current GDP. The presence of capital-saving technical change is shown to imply that the economy's steady-state growth rate is independent of its age structure.demographic transition, capital accumulation, direction of technical change

Cross-Country Income Differences and Technology Diffusion in a Competitive World

This paper develops a new open-economy endogenous growth model where technology diffusion allows for a stable and non-degenerate world income distribution. In accordance with the empirical literature, I find that country characteristics such as the social infrastructure, the degree of openness, the investment rate, population growth, the level of human capital, or growth policies such as subsidies to innovation investments explain a country’s position in the eventual world income distribution. Club convergence in growth rates can be traced back to a country’s openness and to a minimum required level of human capital.capital accumulation, technology diffusion, neoclassical growth model

Population, Pensions, and Endogenous Economic Growth

We study the effect of a declining labor force on the incentives to engage in labor-saving technical change and ask how this effect is influenced by institutional characteristics of the pension scheme. When labor is scarcer it becomes more expensive and innovation investments that increase labor productivity are more profitable. We incorporate this channel in a new dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous economic growth and heterogeneous overlapping generations. We calibrate the model for the US economy. First, we establish that the net effect of a decline in population growth on the growth rate of per-capita magnitudes is positive and quantitatively significant. Second, we find that the pension system matters both for the growth performance and for individual welfare. Third, we show that the assessment of pension reform proposals may be different in an endogenous growth framework as opposed to the standard framework with exogenous growth.Growth, Demographic Transition, Capital Accumulation, Pension Reform

Long-Run Growth and the Evolution of Technological Knowledge

The long-run evolution of per-capita income exhibits a structural break often associated with the Industrial Revolution. We follow Mokyr (2002) and embed the idea that this structural break reflects a regime switch in the evolution of technological knowledge into a dynamic framework, using Airy differential equations to describe this evolution. We show that under a non-monotonous income-population equation, the economy evolves from a Malthusian to a Post-Malthusian Regime, with rising per-capita income and a growing population. The switch is brought about by an acceleration in the growth of technological knowledge. The demographic transition marks the switch into the Modern Growth Regime, with higher levels of per-capita income and declining population growth.crisis Industrial Revolution, Technological Change, Malthus, Demographic Transition

Property Rights, Optimal Public Enforcement, and Growth

We study the link between public enforcement of property rights, innovation investments, and economic growth in an endogenous growth framework with an expanding set of product varieties. We find that a government may assure positive equilibrium growth through public employment in the enforcement of property rights, if the economic environment is sufficiently favorable to growth and/or public enforcement is sufficiently effective. However, in terms of welfare an equilibrium path without property rights protection and growth might be preferable. In this case the enforcement of property rights involves too much reallocation of labor from production and research towards the public sector.technological change, economic development, property rights, public employment

On the Long-Run Evolution of Technological Knowledge

This paper revisits the debate about the appropriate differential equation that governs the evolution of knowledge in models of endogenous growth. We argue that the assessment of the appropriateness of an equation of motion should not only be based on its implications for the future, but that it should also include its implications for the past. We maintain that the evolution of knowledge is plausible if it satisfies two asymptotic conditions: Looking forwards, infinite knowledge in finite time should be excluded, and looking backwards, knowledge should vanish towards the beginning of time (but not before). Our key results show that, generically, the behavior of the processes under scrutiny is either plausible in the future and implausible in the past or vice versa, or implausible at both ends of the time line.endogenous technological change, Malthus, long-run growth