The conditions for sustainable growth and development are among the most debated topics in economics, and the consensus is that institutions matter greatly in explaining why some economies are more successful than others over time. This book explores the relationship between economic conditions, growth, and inequality.
The study provides a major reassessment of the scale and scope of China’s resurgence over the past half century, employing quantitative measurement techniques which are standard practice in OECD countries, but which have not hitherto been available for China.
One of the most enduring questions in economics involves how a nation could accelerate the pace of its economic development. One of the most enduring answers to this question is to promote exports -either because doing so directly influences development via encouraging production of goods for export, or because export promotion permits accumulation of foreign exchange which permits importation of high-quality goods and services, which can in turn be used to expand the nation's production possibilities. In either case, growth is said to be export-led; the latter case is the so-called "two-gap" hypothesis (McKinnon, 1964; Findlay, 1973). The early work on export-led growth consisted of static cross-country com parisons (Michaely, 1977; Balassa, 1978; Tyler, 1981; Kormendi and Meguire, 1985). These studies generally concluded that there is strong evidence in favour of export-led growth because export growth and income growth are highly correlated. However, Kravis pointed out in 1970 that the question is an essen tially dynamic one: as he put it, are exports the handmaiden or the engine of growth? To make this determination one needs to look at time series to see whether or not exports are driving income. This approach has been taken in a number of papers (Jung and Marshall, 1985; Chow, 1987; Serletis, 1992; Kunst and Marin, 1989; Marin, 1992; Afxentiou and Serletis, 1991), designed to assess whether or not individual countries exhibit statistically significant evidence of export-led growth using Granger causality tests.
Human capital is of utmost importance for the future of our knowledge economies and societies. However, it is unequally distributed in Europe, contributing to marked spatial patterns of economic prosperity within and across countries. In many cases, these patterns have a long history. To understand them better, it requires to go back in time, when mass schooling was starting to become a reality across Europe. Taking a long-run perspective over more than 150 years, this book shows the development and the distribution of human capital in the regions of Europe and its connections with the economy. It provides insights into recent research findings in this area, including theoretical advances and the use of new empirical data.
This volume honours the contributions Claudia Goldin has made to scholarship and teaching in economic history and labour economics. The chapters address some closely integrated issues: the role of human capital in the long-term development of the American economy, trends in fertility and marriage, and women's participation in economic change.
Why are poor countries poor and rich countries rich? How are wealth and poverty related to changes in nutrition, health, life expectancy, education, population growth and politics? This modern, non-technical 2005 introduction to development studies explores the dynamics of socio-economic development and stagnation in developing countries. Taking a quantitative and comparative approach to contemporary debates within their broader context, Szirmai examines historical, institutional, demographic, sociological, political and cultural factors. Key chapters focus on economic growth, technological change, industrialisation, agricultural development, and consider social dimensions such as population growth, health and education. Each chapter contains comparative statistics on trends from a sample of twenty-nine developing countries. This rich statistical database allows students to strengthen their understanding of comparative development experiences. Assuming no prior knowledge of economics the book is suited for use in inter-disciplinary development studies programmes as well as economics courses, and will also interest practitioners pursuing careers in developing countries.
This book is the first quantitative description of Europe’s economic development at a regional level over the entire twentieth century. Based on a new and comprehensive set of data, it brings together a group of leading economic historians in order to describe and analyze the development of European regions, both for nation states and for Europe as a whole. This provides a new transnational perspective on Europe’s quantitative development, offering for the first time a systematic long-run analysis of national policies independent from the use of national statistical units. The new transnational dimension of data allows for the analysis of national policies in a more thorough way than ever before. The book provides a comprehensive database at the level of modern NUTS 2 regions for the period 1900–2010 in 10-year intervals, and a panoramic view of economic development both below and above the national level. It will be of great interest to economic historians, economic geographers, development economists and those with an interest in economic growth.