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The underlying central theme that drives this thesis is endogenous technological progress and its contributions to long run economic growth. Over the past four hundred years we have seen dynamic patterns of growth that have varied across countries and over time. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Britain was the technological leader, with Germany and France catching up, and then in the twentieth century the world saw a new technological leader, where the United States forged ahead of Europe. This thesis is a collection of three self-contained studies where in each chapter one important technological epoch is examined back in time. Moreover, to understand the different forces of economic growth and to characterize each stage of development a time series estimation method is chosen, using dynamic time series techniques and estimation methods. The first study of this thesis is a journal article co-authored with my thesis supervisors (revised and resubmitted to Journal of Economic Growth), where, using long historical data for Britain over the period 1620-2006, we seek to explain the importance of innovative activity and population growth in inducing the transition from the Malthusian trap to the post-Malthusian growth regime in Britain. Furthermore, the paper tests the ability of two competing second-generation endogenous growth models to explain the British Industrial Revolution. The results suggest that innovative activity was an important force in shaping the Industrial Revolution and that the British growth experience is consistent with Schumpeterian growth theory. The second study in this thesis is a chapter solely written by me; however findings from this chapter have also been written up as a journal article and submitted to "European Economic Review", where the article is currently under review. The journal paper titled "Innovation, Technological Change and the British Agricultural Revolution" and is co-authored with my thesis supervisors. In the second study, the roles of technological progress in advancing the productivity growth in British agriculture in the period 1620-1850 are examined. Two different indicators of technological progress are considered, namely, agricultural patents issued and number of technical books published on farming. In doing so, the modern endogenous growth models have been tested, namely, the Schumpeterian and Semi-endogenous models of economic growth, where support was acquired in favour of Schumpeterian growth model. The third and final study explores the contributions of technological progress on a sectoral basis to shed some light on the phenomenon of 'America's catching-up and forging ahead of Britain'. This study finds that agriculture and service sectors contributed significantly to the US take-off period. Furthermore, increased research intensity, R&D investments, together with increasing returns to land in the agricultural sector; and major transformations in the transport sector, paved the way for the American economy to grow faster than its counterparts in Britain. Overall, contributions from all three chapters fill a number of important gaps in the literature and show that accurate explanations of the mechanisms behind technological epochs back in time can have significant policy implications for both advanced and currently growing economies.
This thesis covers a broad range of topics in the general area of economic growth theory and economics of technological change. It is primarily about the ultimate sources of growth and its ultimate limitations. We scrutinize the implications of several specifications of long-run growth “engines” found in the theoretical literature and put forward their generalizations and extensions. At the highest level of generality, we provide a formal proof that balanced (i.e. exponential) growth requires knife-edge assumptions which cannot be satisfied by typical values of model parameters. This result implies that at least one such knife-edge assumption must be made if a given model is supposed to deliver balanced growth over the long run. Next, we deal with the issue of resource-based limits to long-run growth. We propose to promote technological progress which would improve the substitutability between non-renewable and renewable resources: if the elasticity of substitution between the two kinds of resources exceeds unity, production will not fall down to zero even after the non-renewable resources will have been completely depleted. Another question asked is whether it is plausible that R&D-based growth, fueled by steady increases in the world’s population, can be extended into indefinite time. We answer this question by introducing endogenous fertility choice, with population entering the utility functional multiplicatively, into an R&D-based semi-endogenous growth model. The next issue addressed here are the idea-based microfoundations of aggregate production functions. We discuss the correspondence between the shape of production functions, the direction of technical change, and the possibility of sustained endogenous growth. A broad class of production functions, nesting both the Cobb-Douglas and the CES function, is derived. Finally, we discuss the impact of the heterogeneity of innovations on long-run economic dynamics: we augment the semi-endogenous growth model with a distinction between radical and incremental innovations. Total R&D output is assumed to depend on technological opportunity which is depleted by incremental innovations but renewed by radical innovations. The dynamic interplay of the arrivals of the two types of innovations is shown to give rise to transitional oscillations.
​Analyzing the relation between population factors and technological progress is the main purpose of this book. With its declining population, Japan faces the simple but difficult problem of whether sustained economic growth can be maintained. Although there are many studies to investigate future economic growth from the point of view of labor force transition and the decreasing saving rate, technological progress is the most important factor to be considered in the future path of the Japanese economy. Technological progress is the result of innovations or improvements in the quality of human and physical capital. The increase in technological progress, which is measured as total factor productivity (TFP), is realized both by improvements in productivity in the short term and by economic developments in the long term. The author investigates the relationship of population factors and productivity, focusing on productivity improvement in the short term. Many discussions have long been held about the relation between population and technological progress. From the old Malthusian model to the modern endogenous economic growth models, various theories are developed in the context of growth theory. In this book, these discussions are summarized briefly, with an analysis of the quantitative relation between population and technological progress using country-based panel data in recent periods.
The Australian growth experience appears to be a three-act phenomenon with higher per capita income and living standards before 1890 and after 1940, disconnected by a 50-year period of no trend improvement in between. This article examines the roles of technological progress and population growth in Australian productivity growth since 1870. The empirical results confirm the three-act growth experience by Australia, and while population growth had a negative effect, innovative activity had a positive effect on productivity growth. Furthermore, the estimates strongly support the Schumpeterian growth hypothesis, which predicts that productivity growth is driven by the level of research intensity in the economy.
Determinants of economic growth: An overview Thijs de Ruyter van Steveninck, Nico van der Windt, and Maaike Oosterbaan Netherlands Economic Institute What causes economic growth? Why have some countries grown much faster than others? Why do some countries not grow at all, or even experience negative (per capita) growth rates? What can governments do to raise the growth rates of their country? These questions were discussed at a conference on March 23 and 24, 1998, organized by the Netherlands Economic Institute (NEI) on behalf of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This book contains the proceedings of the conference. Economic growth is widely considered as a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for poverty alleviation. During the past two decades, scholars and researchers have found a renewed interest in thinking about economic growth, and advances in the understanding of economic growth have taken place. On the one hand, the theoretical understanding of growth has progressed on various fronts, including endogenous technological innovation and increasing returns to scale; the interaction of population, fertility, human capital, and growth; international spill-overs in technology and capital accumulation; and the role of institutions. On the other hand, the increasing availability and use of data sets has given a large incentive to empirical research on cross-country growth, following the path-breaking work ofBarro (1991).
Why are some countries rich and others poor? David N. Weil, one of the top researchers in economic growth, introduces students to the latest theoretical tools, data, and insights underlying this pivotal question. By showing how empirical data relate to new and old theoretical ideas, Economic Growth provides readers with a complete introduction to the discipline and the latest research.
Specially selected from The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics 2nd edition, each article within this compendium covers the fundamental themes within the discipline and is written by a leading practitioner in the field. A handy reference tool.
Featuring survey articles by leading economists working on growth theory, this two-volume set covers theories of economic growth, the empirics of economic growth, and growth policies and mechanisms. It also covers technology, trade and geography, and growth and socio-economic development.
This book explains how changing technology and economizing behaviour induce vast changes in productivity, resource allocation, labour utilization, and patterns of living. Economic growth is seen as a process by which businesses, regimes, countries, and the whole world pass through distinct epochs, each one emerging from its predecessor, each one creating the conditions for its successor. Viewed from a long-run perspective, growth must be characterized as an explosive process, marked by turbulent transitions in social and political life as societies adapt to new opportunities, the demise of old ways of living, and to the vast increase and redistribution of human populations. The book is based on a synthesis of classical economics and contemporary concepts of adaptation and economic evolution. Although it is based on analytical methods, the text has been stripped of all equations and with few exceptions is devoid of technical jargon.
This paper makes the case that purposive, profit-seeking investments in knowledge play a critical role in the long-run growth process. First, we review the implications of neoclassical growth theory and the more recent theories of 'endogenous growth'. Then we discuss the empirical evidence that bears on the modeling of long-run growth. Finally, we describe in more detail a model of growth based on endogenous technological progress and discuss the lessons that such models can teach us.