the political economy of clientelism in this paper we argue that the political commitment problem provides an explanation for why much income redistribution takes an inefficient form particularly employment in the public sector a job is a credible way of redistributing when it provides rents such as in situations with moral hazard and employment is optimal ex post moreover a job is selective and reversible and thus ties the continuation utility of a voter to the political success of a particular politician we show that the need to make offers of employment incentive compatible leads to inefficiencies in the supply of public goods we also show that such inefficient redistribution becomes relatively attractive in situations with high inequality and low productivity inefficiency is increased when the stakes from politics are high when inequality is high and when money matters less than ideology in politics

factors determining the location decisions of spanish mnes an analysis based on the investment development path on the basis of theoretical assumptions approached via the investment development path idp this study examines the most important factors for and against the location decisions in foreign direct investment taken by multinational enterprises considering host countries at very different stages of economic development latin american and european union countries we carry out different kinds of analysis on a sample of 103 firms belonging to a medium sized country that has recently achieved the status of developed country the results reveal that the importance that home country firm managers give to diverse location factors depends to a certain extent on the stage that each group of host countries has reached in the idp in line with prior research we find that firm managers consider mainly the group of factors associated with strategic asset seeking when deciding to locate their investments in the group of more developed countries european union in contrast our results show that when these firm managers choose the group of less developed countries latin america social and cultural factors play a more determinant role thus suggesting the importance of historical and cultural ties between the home and host countries

the political economy of public income volatility with an application to the resource curse abstract in recent years many countries have witnessed a great deal of volatility in public budgets be it due to volatility in the access to foreign loans in greece or to unstable oil prices in venezuela we study the political consequences of such public income volatility as is standard in our model political incentives create inefficient policies to increase re election probabilities but we show that making public income uncertain creates specific new effects future volatility reduces the benefit of being in power making policy more efficient yet at the same time it also reduces the re election probability of an incumbent and since some of the policy inefficiencies are concentrated in the future this makes inefficient policy such as patronage public employment less costly our model highlights a new political economy connection between the volatility of the public budget and economic growth in the case where volatility comes from natural resource prices a characteristic of many developing countries we show that volatility in itself may be a source of inefficient resource extraction jointly interacting with increased patronage employment

technology structural change and bop constrained growth a structuralist toolbox the latin american structuralism las is a significant part of the heterodox tradition in the theory of long run growth with a focus on the problems of developing economies which started their industrialization process when other regions had already accumulated substantial technological capabilities the emergence of a centre periphery system posed specific problems to growth and distribution in laggard economies which las discusses in a systematic way in this paper we presented a simple model which firstly captures key insights of the las school such as the persistency of technological asymmetries and structural heterogeneity secondly it can be used to analyze the impacts of shocks and policies based on how they affect supply side and demand side parameters of the model thirdly it links more closely post keynesian macroeconomics based on the bop constraint with the evolutionary microeconomics concerned with the dynamics of learning lastly it can be used as a toolbox and a teachable model in the analysis of the interactions between structural change technological catching up and long run growth

correctly analysing the balance of payments constraint on growth the balance of payments constrained growth bpcg model provides an interesting hypothesis regarding economic growth the main implication is that world demand places the dominant constraint to which individual country growth adjusts i discuss this implication and argue that tests of the bpcg model have essentially been tests of the hypothesis that trade is balanced over the long run a plausible hypothesis but one that need not hold mainly through responses to world demand as transmitted via income elasticities i then discuss the role of relative prices and investment point out logical inadequacies in the traditional bpcg framework and suggest an alternative theoretical framework to investigate its robustness our theoretical and empirical explorations suggest that traditional tests of the bpcg model may be misleading including investment as a proxy for the capacity to export and addressing endogeneity issues for example noticeably weakens the influence of world demand the evidence presented contributes to reconciling evidence supporting the bpcg hypothesis with recent work that consistently finds an important role for the level of the real exchange rate and investment independently of world demand

from curse to blessing institutional reform and resource booms in colombia abstract is it possible to reverse the resource curse through institutional reform evidence suggests that there is a negative relationship between abundance of natural resources and economic growth political stability democracy and peace however evidence illustrating how institutional reform can reverse this situation is scarce in this paper we exploit a component of an institutional reform that modified the allocation rule of oil royalties in colombia and evaluate a set of effects of this reform on the living standards of colombian households using international variations in the price of oil for identification we find that the reform had important effects on several household welfare indicators we find positive impacts on important dimensions such as reductions in multidimensional poverty and improvements on income employment housing conditions health and education among others results are mixed or null in other outcomes such as formality or employment in the service sector importantly we find no effects on monetary poverty but larger income effects for rich and urban households we test for the different channels boosting these effects and provide tentative evidence that supports the role of fiscal and administrative capacity mechanisms

technological regimes catching up and leapfrogging findings from the korean industries abstract this paper examines the experiences of selected industries in korea to identify the stylized facts in the process of technological capability building and thereby to sort out the conditions for the catching up to occur to explain the process we have built a model of technological and market catching up a special attention has been given to the question of whether there has been a case of leapfrogging in any industry in korea and if so what are the conditions for its incidence in our framework we first measure the degree of catching up in terms of market shares in the world then we focus on catching up in technological capabilities in explaining the different record and prospects of korean industries in market catching up in the model technological capability is determined as a function of both technological effort and the existing knowledge base as determinants of technological effort we look at the technological regimes of the industries such as cumulativeness of technical advances fluidity predictability of technological trajectory and the properties of knowledge base using this model we explain the different technological evolution of the selected industries in korea including the d ram automobile mobile phone consumer electronics personal computer and machine tool industries we find three different patterns of catching ups path creating catching up cdma mobile phone path skipping catching up d ram and automobile and path following catching up consumer electronics personal computers and machine tools we interpret the first two case of catching up as leapfrogging unlike the argument by perez and soete perez c soete l 1988 catching up in technology entry barriers and windows of opportunity in dosi et al eds technical change and economic theory pinter publishers london we find that important r d projects except automobiles where only private r d was involved involved both private and public capacities and that entry was not driven by endogenous generation of knowledge and skills but by collaboration with foreign companies

political foundations of the resource curse a simplification and a comment in this note we show how a considerably simpler model than the one in our original jde 2006 paper generates all the same results we also acknowledge an error in the specification of a utility function in our previous paper

contributions to canadian economic history the last 30 years the cliometric revolution that transformed economic history in the us in the 1960s was soon embraced by canadian economic historians many of the important issues surrounding canadian development remained the same the role of resources the place of international trade immigration capital accumulation and interactions with native americans among others but beginning in the 1960s and certainly over the last 30 years economic historians of canada have addressed them with the tools of modern economics both theoretical and empirical we highlight the recent work emphasizing not just the methods but also the fundamental ways our understanding of canadian history has been changed

on the form of transfers to special interests an important question in political economy concerns the form of transfers to special interests the chicago view is that political competition leads politicians to make such transfers efficiently the virginia position is that lack of information on the part of voters leads politicians to favor inefficient sneaky methods of redistribution this paper analyzes the form of transfers in a model of political competition in which politicians have incentives to make transfers to special interests it shows that when voters have imperfect information about both the effects of policy and the predispositions of politicians inefficient methods of redistribution may be employed

an econometric estimation of hicksian and marshallian elasticities in indian manufacturing the knowledge of substitution possibilities between different factors of production is essential in evaluating the impact of public policies on productivity employment industrial growth and factor intensity since the advent of flexible functional forms in the early 1970s a large number of studies have estimated the ease of factor substitution however to date most of the empirical evidence on factor substitution is based on a cost function a drawback with the cost function

are universities and university research under threat towards an evolutionary model of university speciation according to some universities and academic research are under threat as we move towards a more knowledge intensive economy academics face pressures to link their work more closely to economic needs with potentially adverse long term consequences this has been characterised as a fundamental change in the social contract between universities and the state with the latter now having more specific expectations regarding the outputs sought from the former others have described this as a transition from mode 1 to mode 2 knowledge production or in terms of the emergence of a triple helix relationship between universities government and industry this article critically examines these claims setting them in historical context we analyse the history of the university and its evolving functions as it responded to changing external demands adopting an evolutionary model we describe how different university species emerged and co evolved each with different emphases on the functions of teaching research and contributing to the economy and society turning to the current environment facing universities we identify the main drivers for change and assess their likely impact before arriving at conclusions about the future of the university and university research what we are witnessing today appears to be not so much the appearance of a new and hence worrying phenomenon but more a shift back towards a social contract for the university closer to the one in effect before the second half of the twentieth century one which as it did then may bring about the emergence of new university species

redistributive public employment abstract politicians may use disguised redistributive policies in order to circumvent opposition to explicit tax transfer schemes first we present a theoretical model that formalizes this hypothesis next we provide evidence consistent with the prediction of the model namely that in u s cities politicians use public employment as such a redistributive device we find that city employment is significantly higher in cities where income inequality and ethnic fragmentation are higher

on the timing of political regime changes in resource dependent economies we consider a resource dependent economy initially ruled by the elite the transition from the autocratic to a more democratic regime takes place only if the citizens decide to revolt against the elite the occurrence of a revolution primarily depends on the autocratic regime vulnerability and the level of inequalities both being driven by the elite s redistribution and repression policies first we show that when a political transition is inevitable the elite choose the maximum rate of redistribution to lengthen their period in office second we find that the duration of the autocratic regime is linked to resource abundance and how it relates to the elite s policies more resources lead to a shorter reign of a redistributive regime which may not be the case of a repressive regime finally we interpret the arab spring sequence in light of our findings

uneven growth between interdependent economies an evolutionary view on technology gaps trade and growth preface part one theory and empirics of international growth rate differentials and technology gaps chapter 1 technology growth and welfare a historical perspective 1 1 the search for welfare and the role of technology 1 2 aim of the book 1 3 organisation of the rest of the book notes chapter 2 the literature on economic growth and technological change 2 1 a brief overview 2 2 the traditional literature on economic growth 2 3 new neoclassical growth models endogenous innovation 2 4 the role of technological change 2 5 explaining growth rate differentials notes chapter 3 an evolutionary theory of economic growth and technological change the basics 3 1 economic growth as an evolutionary process a macroeconomic interpretation 3 2 economic growth as an evolutionary process a microeconomic interpretation 3 3 towards an evolutionary theory notes chapter 4 technology and growth in an international perspective 1960 1990 an impressionistic approach 4 1 economic growth and structural change 4 2 technology 4 3 technology and growth catching up or falling behind a global issue 4 4 summary and conclusions appendix iv 1 postwar economic welfare and the selection of country samples appendix iv 2 the 3 digit isic sector classification revision 2 appendix iv 3 on measuring and graphing structural differences between countries appendix iv 4 some tests for the influence of multicollinearity on the regressions in section 4 2 notes part two technology spillovers between interdependent economies catching up or falling behind chapter 5 a model of catching up or falling behind 5 1 description of the model 5 2 solving the model 5 3 the outcomes of the model under varying parameter restrictions 5 4 conclusions of the model notes chapter 6 an empirical test of the model 6 1 testing procedure and data sources 6 2 result 6 3 interpreting the results 6 4 summary and some policy conclusions appendix vi l a description of the data appendix vi 2 the calculation of the n statistic notes part three technological change international trade and economic growth chapter 7 an evolutionary model of technological change specialisation and economic growth 7 1 a descriptive interpretation 7 2 the model 7 3 simulation results 7 4 summary and conclusions appendix vii 1 initial values of the simulation runs for the 3 country 2 sector case appendix vii 2 some mathematical details of the selection equation in discrete time notes chapter 8 an empirical view on the evolution of trade and technology 8 1 patents as indicators of innovation 8 2 summarising some known correlations 8 3 trade and technology a dynamic evolutionary framework 8 4 estimation of the replicator equation 8 5 some further tests on the robustness of the replicator estimates 8 6 explaining the results for the patent variables 8 7 summary and conclusions

dynamics of export specialization in the regions of the italian mezzogiorno persistence and change guerrieri p and iammarino s 2007 dynamics of export specialization in the regions of the italian mezzogiorno persistence and change regional studies 41 933 947 during the 1980s and 1990s the italian southern economy displayed signs of transformation in production and export structures accompanied by sharp geographical differentiation debate on these changes mainly spurred by growing international pressure has given rise to different views and expectations on the opportunities for endogenous growth on the italian periphery the aim of this paper is to contribute to this ongoing debate by looking at the evolution of sectoral export specialization patterns i e relative comparative advantage structures in the mezzogiorno regions in the period 1985 2000 focusing on inter provincial comparisons the analysis concentrates on the extent of persistence versus change in the evolution of provincial specialization patterns shedding light on the relationship between export structure and performance

a technology gap interpretation of growth paths in asia and latin america abstract this paper presents a north south technology gap model which combines the schumpeterian approach to technical and structural change with the keynesian perspective on effective demand and the balance of payments bop constraint as drivers of growth three are the contributions of the paper first it develops a model in which the technology gap relative productivity and relative wages co evolve and may generate different paths of convergence or divergence between south and north depending on the parameters of the model second the parameters of the model are associated with different types of policies which allows for discussing how these policies may change the growth path finally the model is used to discuss the contrasting experiences of asia and latin america since 1970 convergence in asia and divergence in latin america have been extensively debated topics in the literature on comparative economic development which highlights the crucial role of industrial policy it is argued that the results of the technology gap model are consistent with the findings of this literature and helps understand the forces behind convergence and divergence

public policies and the art of catching up matching the historical evidence with a multicountry agent based model in this paper we study the effects of industrial policies on international convergence using a multi country agent based model which builds upon dosi et al 2019b the model features a group of microfounded economies with evolving industries populated by heterogeneous firms that compete in international markets in each country technological change is driven by firms activities of search and innovation while aggregate demand formation and distribution follows keynesian dynamics interactions among countries take place via trade flows and international technological imitation we employ the model to assess the different strategies that laggard countries can adopt to catch up with leaders market friendly policies industrial policies targeting the development of firms capabilities and rd protectionist policies focusing on tariffs only we find that markets cannot do the magic in absence of government interventions laggards will continue to fall behind on the contrary industrial policies can successfully drive international convergence among leaders and laggards while protectionism alone is not necessary to support catching up and countries get stuck in a sort of middle income trap finally in a global trade war where developed economies impose retaliatory tariffs both laggards and leaders are worse off and world productivity growth slows down

shifts in foreign trade competitiveness and growth potential from baltics to bal techs abstract the collapse of socialism and the ensuing transition process have revealed the position of estonia latvia and lithuania in an international economic perspective data presented in this paper suggest that the baltics are competitive in sectors that generate little value added as a result of their inferior level of technology relative to their trade partners mainly oecd europe this raises questions about the income levels attainable in these countries the question with respect to future economic growth is whether there is any potential in the baltic countries to increase the level of technology this paper argues that the socialist past especially the separation of research and development from production is an important obstacle to technological progress in the baltics in order to integrate research and production socialist institutions need to be transformed or abolished while new ones have to be created this will take considerable time and effort

sustainability in a post keynesian growth model for an open economy the paper expands the bop constraint growth model and kaldorian regimes productivity and demand regimes in order to include some of the concerns raised by ecological economics in post keynesian models for open economies the demand regime is modified by taking into account porter s hypothesis which suggests that environmental innovations spurred by environmental policies can foster competitiveness as a result the equilibrium bop constrained rate of growth increases leading to a different version of thirlwall s law which opens room for analyzing the impact of environmental innovations on convergence between developing and developed economies the productivity regime in turn considers the growth and employment implications of innovations in labor productivity standard innovations and environmental efficiency environmental innovations it is argued that the fiscal policy and composition of public expenditure matter for long run growth employment and sustainability

international competitiveness in post keynesian growth theory controversies and empirical evidence a fundamental starting point for post keynesian theory concerning growth in open economies is succinctly expressed in the following statement by kaldor t he main autonomous factor governing both the level and the rate of growth of effective demand of an industrial country is the external demand for its exports and the main factor governing the latter is international competitiveness which in turn depends on the level of its industrial cost relatively to other industrial exporters kaldor 1971 p 7 italics added moreover thanks to increasing returns in manufacturing export expansion and international competitiveness would interact so as to create vicious or virtuous circles of cumulative causation a few years later kaldor having found a positive correlation between the time changes of the main industrial countries relative manufacturing export shares and that of their relative unit costs a correlation that became known as the kaldor paradox dismissed his original cumulative causation theory and adopted a version close to harrod s foreign trade multiplier the purpose of this paper is to reaffirm the kaldorian cumulative causation theory in its original version by providing a firmer analytical basis and showing that contrary to the kaldor paradox time changes in export performance must be explained by levels rather than by changes in unit costs

keeping up with the technology pace a dns curve and limit cycle in a technology investment decision problem abstract in order to keep up with its economic environment a firm should respond to new technological developments in this paper we establish the optimal technology investment decision within a dynamic model in which the baseline technology level rises over time the problem is analyzed by designing a two state optimal control model it turns out that in the state space a dechert nishimura skiba dns curve can be determined that separates different long run outcomes viz zero investment constant positive investment or a cyclical sequence of zero and positive investment

scale biased technological development in canada s industrialization 1900 1929 the relationships between factor use and scale and technological change and scale are emphasized in a translog cost function analysis of technological development in four sectors of canadian manufacturing 1900 29 by paying particular attention to the role of electrification in this technological development the major findings are that the increased use of electricity was not in general scale dependent and that electrification may have been a factor in increasing the relative productivity of smaller scale units over the period a hypothesis that states that technical change is partially induced by increased scale is however confirmed copyright 1990 by mit press

measures of capacity utilization and its determinants a study of indian manufacturing we estimate capacity utilization cu rates in for selected industries in indian manufacturing for the 20 year period 1976 1996 we estimate a generalized leontief variable cost function with capital as a quasi fixed input to derive our cu measures using error component techniques we note substantial variations in cu both across industries and over time in general we find that cu rates were higher in the earlier time period dropped in the mid 80s and started rising again in the early 90s cu rates in our analysis are sensitive to input prices with the sole exception of the price of labor we also confirm the standard result that variations in demand are a significant driving force for variations in cu we find that cu is positively related to the magnitude of labor intensity in production this holds for both between industries and within industries empirical results also indicate that traditional measures of cu such as minimum capital output ratio and peak to peak are not appropriate proxies for

political foundations of the resource curse in this paper we argue that the political incentives that resource endowments generate are the key to understanding whether or not they are a curse we show 1 politicians tend to over extract natural resources relative to the efficient extraction path because they discount the future too much and 2 resource booms improve the efficiency of the extraction path however 3 resource booms by raising the value of being in power and by providing politicians with more resources which they can use to influence the outcome of elections increase resource misallocation in the rest of the economy 4 the overall impact of resource booms on the economy depends critically on institutions since these determine the extent to which political incentives map into policy outcomes countries with institutions that promote accountability and state competence will tend to benefit from resource booms since these institutions ameliorate the perverse political incentives that such booms create countries without such institutions however may suffer from a resource curse

dumping in a global world why product quality matters anti dumping actions are now the trade policy of choice of developing and transition economies to understand why these economies have increasingly applied anti dumping laws we build a simple theoretical model of vertical intra industry trade and investigate the strategic incentives of exporting firms to undertake dumping we show that the definition of dumping matters based on a comparison of low quality and high quality prices only unilateral dumping by the low quality firm obtains by contrast the standard wto definition leads to either reciprocal or unilateral dumping by the high quality firm depending on cross country differences in incomes the height of tariff protection and on exchange rate changes

trade policy and quality leadership in transition economies trade policy and quality leadership in transition economies are analyzed in a duopoly model of trade and vertical product differentiation we first show that the incidence of trade liberalization is sensitive to whether firms in transition economies are producers of low or high quality second we find that neither free trade nor the absence of a domestic subsidy are optimal both a tariff and a subsidy increase price competition and while the former extracts foreign rents the latter results in quality upgrading third there exists a rationale for a government to commit to a socially optimal policy to induce quality leadership by the domestic firm when cost asymmetries are low finally we establish an equivalence result between the effects of long run exchange rate changes and those of trade policy on price competition but not on social welfare

continental national and sub national innovation systems complementarity and economic growth the purpose of this paper is to discuss the relevance of innovation systems to economic growth rates over the last two centuries the focus is on complementarity or lack of it between sub systems of society and on models of active learning in catching up economies the paper discusses variations in rates of growth of economic regions and the extent to which variations may be attributed to innovation systems the analysis is applied to britain in the 18th century the united states in the second half of the 19th century and the innovation systems of catching up countries in the 20th century