total factor productivity intangible assets and spatial dependence in the european regions dettori b marrocu e and paci r total factor productivity intangible assets and spatial dependence in the european regions regional studies the aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of the efficiency levels across the european regions firstly a regression based measure of regional total factor productivity is derived by estimating a spatial cobb douglas production function secondly the role played by intangible factors human capital social capital and technological capital on total factor productivity levels is investigated by applying the spatial two stage least squares 2sls method and the spatial heteroskedasticy and correlation consistent shac estimator to account for both heteroskedasticity and spatial autocorrelation it turns out that a large part of total factor productivity differences across the european regions is explained by disparities in the endowments of these intangible assets dettori b marrocu e and paci r

beyond gdp the quest for a measure of social welfare this paper critically examines the various approaches to the measurement of individual well being and social welfare that have been considered for the construction of alternatives to gdp special attention is devoted to recent developments in the analysis of sustainability in the study of happiness in the theory of social choice and fair allocation and in the capability approach it is suggested in the conclusion that although convergence toward a consensual approach is not impossible for the moment not one but three alternatives to gdp are worth developing jel i31 e23 e01

is social capital green cultural features and environmental performance in the european union this paper analyses the relationship between social capital and environmental performance in the european union in a first stage environmental performance is measured by an index of eco efficiency at the country level computed using data envelopment analysis techniques and data for the year 2013 in a second stage the influence of social capital and other relevant control variables on eco efficiency is assessed by means of truncated regressions and bootstrapping as proposed by simar and wilson j econom 136 1 31 64 2007 for several model specifications tests fail to reject the hypothesis of no effect of social capital on environmental performance and the main driver of environmental performance is found to be the level of economic development measured by gdp per capita furthermore this result is robust to different definitions of social capital and sample periods

trade liberalisation and plant exit in new zealand manufacturing data on new zealand manufacturing plants are used to examine the impact of trade liberalization on plant exit recent theories suggest that the prospect of a declining market might cause firms to adopt strategic behavior that causes low cost plants to exit first this hypothesis is generally unsupported surviving plants were larger lower cost and were owned by specialized firms with few plants plant costs were more important than firm size for explaining the plant closing behavior of single plant firms diversified multiplant firms were more likely to close plants and were influenced by plant size but not plant costs copyright 1996 by mit press

stature and the standard of living research on the standard of living now emphasizes alternatives or supplements to the national income accounts this paper reviews the results of two decades of research using stature as a measure of health aspects of human welfare after comparing and contrasting stature with per capita income i consider height patterns discovered by economic historians that challenge traditional beliefs about the past including long term trends cycles in heights and the dreadfully small stature of slave children that was followed by catch up growth the paper concludes with comparisons to work in development economics and suggestions for research

do unions reduce investment evidence from canada the authors test for a link between unionization and net investment rates in canadian manufacturing analysis of data on 18 industries for the years 1967 87 reveals a negative non linear relationship the presence of unions appears to have reduced investment when the percentage of firms in the industry that were unionized was between 0 and approximately 50 with a plateau or slight positive marginal effect above this level in an industry moving from no unions to the mean level of unionization net investment and gross investment are predicted to fall by 66 74 and 18 25 respectively

on the empirics of social capital this paper critically examines the way in which empirical evidence is developed in support of a role for social capital in socioeconomic outcomes three leading studies of social capital are reviewed and in each case argued to suffer from various identification problems a general set of conditions under which social capital effects may be identified in linear models is given careful attention to these conditions combined with greater openmindedness as to what constitutes appropriate evidence seems the best route to improving empirical studies of social capital

rough and lonely road to prosperity a reexamination of the sources of growth in africa using bayesian model averaging this paper takes a fresh look at africa s growth experience by using the bayesian model averaging bma methodology bma enables us to consider a large number of potential explanatory variables and sort out which of these variable can effectively explain africa s growth experience posterior coefficient estimates reveal that key engines of growth in africa are substantially different from those in the rest of the world more precisely it is shown that mining primary exports and initial primary education exerted differential effect on african growth these results are examined in relation to the existing literature copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

determinants of regional economic growth by quantile crespo cuaresma j foster n and stehrer r determinants of regional economic growth by quantile regional studies the robustness of growth determinants across european union regions is analysed using quantile regression using bayesian model averaging bma on the class of quantile regression models it is proposed that the set of relevant covariates is assessed allowing for different effects across growth quantiles the results indicate that the robust growth determinants differ across quantiles the set of robust variables includes physical investment when taking country fixed effects into account and skill endowment and initial gross domestic product per capita when not even when a variable is found to be robust across quantiles its estimated impact on growth is often found to vary across quantiles crespo cuaresma j foster n et stehrer r les determinants de la croissance economique par quantile regional studies a partir d une regression par quantile on analyse la solidite des determinant

the slave trade and the origins of mistrust in africa in a recent study nunn 2008 examines the long term impacts of africa s slave trade he finds that the slave trade which occurred over a period of more than 400 years had a significant negative effect on long term economic development although the article arguably identifies a negative causal relationship between the slave trade and income today the analysis is unable to establish the exact causal mechanisms underlying this reduced form relationship in this article we examine one of the channels through which the slave trade may affect economic development today combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we ask whether the slave trade caused a culture of mistrust to develop within africa initially slaves were captured primarily through state organized raids and warfare but as the trade progressed the environment of ubiquitous insecurity caused individuals to turn on others including friends and family members and to kidnap trick and sell each other into slavery sigismund wilhelm koelle 1854 p e h hair 1965 charles piot 1996 we hypothesize that in this environment a culture of mistrust may have evolved which may persist to this day we show that current differences in trust levels within africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and indian ocean slave trades combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today evidence from a variety of identification strategies suggests that the relationship is causal examining causal mechanisms we show that most of the impact of the slave trade is through factors that are internal to the individual such as cultural norms beliefs and values jel j15 n57 z13

inherited trust and growth this paper develops a new method to uncover the causal effect of trust on economic growth by focusing on the inherited component of trust and its time variation we show that inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants is sig nificantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears we thus use the inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants as a time varying measure of inherited trust in their country of origin this strategy allows to identify the sizeable causal impact of inherited trust on worldwide growth during the twentieth century by controlling for country fixed effects jel n11 n12 n31 n32 o47 z13

economic growth population theory and physiology the bearing of long term processes on the this lecture sketches a theory of the secular decline in morbidity and mortality that takes account of changes induced in physiological functioning since 1700 the synergism between technological and physiological improvements has produced a form of human evolution biological though not genetic rapid culturally transmitted and not necessarily stable which is still ongoing in both oecd and developing countries thermodynamic and physiological aspects of economic growth are defined and their impact on growth rates is assessed implications of this theory for population forecasting measurement of national income demand for leisure pension policies and demand for health care are considered excerpt

self enforcing union contracts efficient investment and employment unions an application of the theory of self lead to underinvestenforcing contracts 1983 provides a rich ment we show that set of strategies firm might employ to counter the punishments baldunion opportunism in the context of long lived win considers credible relation specifi capital this work both antici exclude tougher threats that only have the appated and in an important dynamic sense out pearance of being selfflanke the collective voice view of unionism destructive if the e g freeman and medoff 1984 and the en firm discount factor suing slew of union productivity effects studies is sufficientl close to e g addison and hirsch 1989 our purpose one union opportunism can indeed be dehere is to update baldwin s influentia work re terred moreover we newing it to incorporate advances in game theory show that given the that have taken hold since 1983 firm discount factor baldwin s work has had staying power be a shorter lifetime of cause it is a leading edge application of the idea capital does not necessarily promote effi that long term interests can form the foundation ciency although as for credible self enforcement of contracts her baldwin emphasizes it core conclusion is that the union s temptation for does enhance the opportunistic conduct is strongest if the life of firm ability to punish sunk capital is long in relation to the union s hori union opportunism it also creates adverse inzon because unions represent current member centives for the fir to ship and property rights in the unionare not trans engage in opportunistic ferable these tendencies are likely to prevail employment cuts

social capital innovation and growth evidence from europe this paper investigates the interplay between social capital innovation and economic growth in the european union we identify innovation as an important mechanism that transforms social capital into economic growth in an empirical investigation of 102 european regions in the period 1990 2002 we show that higher innovation performance is conducive to economic growth and that social capital affects growth indirectly by fostering innovation our estimates suggest that there is only a limited role for a direct effect of social capital on economic growth

survey of social and economic growth in se europe a new conceptual frame for sustainability metrics the practice so far has indicated that there is a sensitive relationship that exists between social and economic subsystem of sustainable development therefore this research suggests comparison of the states of these two subsystems as a new conceptual frame which is essential for strategic conceptualization of development the research pointed out a rather visible collision between the achieved degree of economic and social development in the countries of south eastern europe in respect to germany and france which were taken into consideration as two of the most developed countries in the european union and in the entire world the indicators which are given in this research point to the necessity of further scientific and practical consideration of strategic conceptualization of relationship between economics and society

inequality and convergence in europe s regions reconsidering european regional policies europe s regions income disparities and regional policies in this paper we take a critical look at current european regional policies first we document the motivation for such policies that is the large income disparities across the regions of the eu15 large disparities are certainly present second we illustrate the various instruments adopted and discuss their underpinnings in established economic theories next we look at available data searching for three kinds of evidence 1 if disparities are either growing or decreasing we conclude they are neither 2 which are the major factors explaining such disparities and in particular if they are the factors predicted by the economic models adopted by the commission to justify current policies we conclude this is most certainly not the case 3 if there are clear signs that eu policies as opposed to other social and economic factors are actually reducing such disparities we cannot find any clear sign of such desired impact our conclusion is that regional and structural policies serve mostly a redistributional purpose motivated by the nature of the political equilibria upon which the european union is built they have little relationship with fostering economic growth this casts a serious doubt on their social value and furthermore strongly questions extending such policies to future members of the european union a successful eu enlargement in our view calls for an immediate and drastic revision of regional economic policies michele boldrin and fabio canova

unions and the economy what we know what we should know the wages and working conditions of about one in three canadian workers are determined by collective bargaining in this paper current knowledge about the economic effects of collective bargaining is surveyed unions raise wages by about 15 percent on average and reduce wage dispersion for their members while also reducing profits unions do not seem to reduce employment levels in affected firms or cause nonunion wages to fall efficiency losses due to sectoral misallocation of labor and to strikes are small but some evidence suggests lowered investment in unionized firms union effects on total factor productivity need more careful study using firm level data

the role of social capital in financial development to identify the effect of social capital on financial development we exploit social capital differences within italy in high social capital areas households are more likely to use checks invest less in cash and more in stock have higher access to institutional credit and make less use of informal credit the effect of social capital is stronger where legal enforcement is weaker and among less educated people these results are not driven by omitted environmental variables since we show that the behavior of movers is still affected by the level of social capital of the province where they were born

trust in large organizations several authors suggest that trust is an important determinant of cooperation between strangers in a society and therefore of performance of social institutions we argue that trust should be particularly important for the performance of large organizations in a cross section of countries evidence on government performance participation in civic and professional societies importance of large firms and the performance of social institutions more generally supports this hypothesis moreover trust is lower in countries with dominant hierarchical religions which may have deterred networks of cooperation trust hold up remarkably well on a cross section of countries this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

longitudinal studies of human growth and health a review of recent historical research this paper reviews recent literature using stature and weight as measures of human welfare with a particular interest in cliometric or historical research we begin with an overview of anthropometric evidence of living standards and the new but fast growing field of anthropometric history this literature is always implicitly and often explicitly longitudinal in nature we then discuss i systematic empirical research into the relationship between conditions in early life and later life health and mortality and ii historical evidence on the relationship between body mass morbidity and mortality we conclude with a discussion of the importance of historical sources and understandings to health economics and population health

unionization and plant closure in canada this paper examines for the first time the role of unionization as a determinant of plant closings in canada using the 1999 to 2001 canadian workplace and employee survey the paper contributes to the north american evidence by showing that the share of a plant s workers covered by collective bargaining has a robust positive partial correlation with the probability of larger plants closing for smaller plants the extent of unionization tends to be much lower and its variation plays no role in plant closure the study highlights the theoretical and statistical importance of examining closure separately for large and small plants ce memoire examine pour la premiere fois le role de la syndicalisation en tant que determinant de la fermeture d usines au canada a l aide des resultats de l enquete sur le milieu de travail et les employes de 1999 et de 2001 emte le texte contribue a enrichir le dossier qui montre qu il y a correlation positive partielle robuste entre la portion des travailleurs d usines couverts par une convention collective et la probabilite de fermeture des grandes usines pour les plus petites usines le degre de syndicalisation tend aetre plus faible et sa variation ne joue pas de role dans le processus de fermeture d usines cette etude montre l importance theorique et pratique qu il y a aetudier separement les fermetures des grandes et des petites usines

who benefits from financial development new methods new evidence abstract this paper takes a fresh look at the impact of financial development on economic growth by using recently developed kernel methods that allow for heterogeneity in partial effects nonlinearities and endogenous regressors our results suggest that while the positive impact of financial development on growth has increased over time it is also highly nonlinear with more developed nations benefiting while low income countries do not benefit at all we also conduct a novel policy analysis that confirms these statistical findings in sum this set of results contributes to the ongoing policy debate as to whether low income nations should scale up financial reforms

do societal values influence financial development new evidence on the effects of post materialism and institutions on stock markets in this paper we present new evidence on the effects of social values on stock market development using panel data for a heterogeneous set of 43 countries we use the inglehart post materialism index to identify the relation between the degree of post materialism and the size of stock markets controlling for a range of macro economic and institutional country characteristics and accounting for endogenous relationships between the main variables of interest we find a robust and sizeable positive effect of post materialism on stock markets legal political and democratic institutions also promote the development of stock markets furthermore we find that the effect of post materialism consists of a direct effect and a substantial indirect effect that runs via several types of institutions this latter finding indicates that it is important to account for interrelationships between social values and institutions when estimating their full economic effects

between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions rodriguez pose a and fratesi u 2004 between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions reg studies 38 97 113 european regional support has grown in parallel with european integration the funds targeted at achieving greater economic and social cohesion and reducing disparities within the european union eu have more than doubled in relative terms since the end of the 1980s making development policies the second most important policy area in the eu the majority of the development funds have been earmarked for objective 1 regions i e regions where gdp per capita is below the 75 threshold of the eu average however the european development policies have come under increasing criticism based on two facts the lack of upward mobility of assisted regions and the absence of regional convergence this paper assesses using cross sectional and panel data analyses the failure so far of european development policies to fulfil their objective of de

on the turnover of business firms and business managers this paper develops a model of small business failure and sale that is motivated by recent evidence concerning how the failure and sale of small businesses vary with the age of the business and the tenure of the manager this evidence motivates two key features of the model a match between the manager and the business and characteristics of businesses that survive beyond the current match the parameters of the model are estimated and the properties of this parametric model are studied this analysis results in a simple characterization of the workings of the small business sector

does social capital matter for european regional growth abstract this paper analyzes the role of different elements of social capital in economic growth for a sample of 85 european regions during the period 1995 2008 despite the remarkable progress that social capital and european regional economic growth literatures have experienced over the last two decades initiatives combining the two are few and entirely yet to come for the post 1990s period recent improvements in data availability allow this gap in the literature to be closed since they enable the researcher to consider the traditionally disregarded eastern and central european ece regions this is particularly interesting as they are all transition economies that recently joined the european union with relatively low levels of social capital on the methodological side we follow the bayesian paradigm which enables us to make direct inferences on the parameters to be estimated and deal with parameter uncertainty leading to a deeper understanding of the relationships being investigated in particular we analyze three indicators of social capital namely social trust associational activities and social norms results suggest that the two former might have some implications for regional growth while social norms are a weaker predictor for growth

is god in the details a reexamination of the role of religion in economic growth summary barro and mccleary 2003 religion and economic growth across countries american journal of sociology 68 760 781 is a key research contribution in the new literature exploring the macroeconomic effects of religious beliefs this paper represents an effort to evaluate the strength of their claims we evaluate their results in terms of replicability and robustness overall their analysis generally meets the standard of statistical replicability though not perfectly on the other hand we do not find that their results are robust to changes in their baseline statistical specification when model averaging methods are employed to integrate information across alternative statistical specifications little evidence survives that religious variables help to predict cross country income differences copyright 2011 john wiley sons ltd

unionization incomplete contracting and capital investment this article examines empirically the hypothesis that incomplete contracts and resulting opportunistic behavior over the return to sunk assets reduces investment union firm contracts are incomplete because they 1 do not prevent all actions aimed at changing the existing contract 2 cover a relatively short time period and 3 do not extend to union members yet to be hired the primary response of firms is to reduce investment in specific durable assets and also to reduce employment growth and increase debt the authors find fairly strong evidence of these effects in a sample of large publicly traded firms using firm specific measures of unionization copyright 1993 by university of chicago press

is trust the missing root of institutions education and development we report evidence that trust is the missing root relating education institutions and economic development we observe that more trust both increases education and improves legal and bureaucratic institutions which in turn spurs economic development we substantiate this intuition with a series of regressions that provide evidence that trust determines both education and the quality of institutions and that education and institutions in turn affect gdp per capita

biological measures of the standard of living when economists investigate long term trends and socioeconomic differences in the standard of living or quality of life they have traditionally focused on monetary measures such as gross domestic product which has occupied center stage for over 50 years in recent decades however scholars have increasingly recognized the limitations of monetary measures while seeking useful alternatives this essay examines the unique and valuable contributions of four biological measures life expectancy morbidity stature and certain features of skeletal remains to understand levels and changes in human well being people desire far more than material goods and in fact they are quite willing to trade or give up material things in return for better physical or psychological health for most people health is so important to their quality of life that it is useful to refer to the biological standard of living biological measures may be especially valuable for historical studies and for other research circumstances where monetary measures are thin or lacking a concluding section ruminates on the future evolution of biological approaches in measuring happiness

trust and development in this paper we examine linkages between social trust and economic development using for the first time a panel of data we confirm earlier cross sectional studies finding that trust is a significant factor in development and also show for the first time that trust significantly interacts with both investment in physical and human capital we provide a robustness analysis of our results via a set of jackknife experiments on our main equations and the trust coefficients and interactions are very tightly distributed indicating that the results are not highly sample dependent we also consider whether trust directly influences investment and find that in a panel framework it does not unless we allow for a trust education interaction in the investment equation

inequality in sub saharan africa new data and new insights from anthropometric estimates reliable information on inequality within countries is highly scarce especially for less developed countries ldcs using anthropometric measures we extend the inequality database for sub saharan africa to no less than 28 countries over six five year periods from 1950 to 1980 and to some 200 regions within those countries in this process we also test in depth the validity of objections against the derivation of inequality measures from height data in a second step we test the determinants of inequality within and between the 200 regions under study our set of explanatory variables includes protein supply cash cropping industrial structure mineral resources distance to the countries capital urbanization education population density and ethnic fractionalization we find that monoculture cash cropping increases inequality whereas diversified cash cropping has the opposite effect

height health and inequality the distribution of adult heights in india this paper explores the relationship between adult heights and the distribution of income across populations of individuals there is a long literature that examines the relationship between mean adult heights and living standards if adult height is set by the balance between food intake and charges to disease in early childhood it is informative about economic and epidemiological conditions in childhood because taller populations are better off more productive and live longer the relationship between childhood conditions and adult height has become an important focus in the study of the relationship between health and wealth here i follow one of the tributaries of this main stream a relationship between income and height at the individual level has implications for the effects of income inequality on the distribution of heights these relationships parallel but are somewhat more concrete than the various relationships between income inequality and health that have been debated in the economic and epidemiological literatures richard g wilkinson 1996 angus deaton 2003 if height is an increasing but concave function of income average height will be negatively related to income inequality richard steckel 1995 income inequality will also have implications for the dispersion of height so that inequality in height might serve as an indicator of inequality of income in the absence of data on the latter just as mean height might serve as an indicator of mean income aravinda m guntupalli and joerg baten 2006 and alexander moradi and baten 2005 differences in height between subpopulations such as lords and vassals or highlanders and lowlanders may also provide information on the distribution of resources between such subpopulations carles boix and frances rosenbluth 2006 in section 2 below i present a theoretical discussion of what to expect in section 3 i provide an analysis of adult heights in india where i can look at the relationship across states between a mean heights and expenditure inequality b inequality in height and expenditure inequality c men s and women s heights the difference in heights between men and women is of considerable importance in its own right india has one of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world with around 55 percent of young children stunted a leading explanation for this is health discrimination against women vulimiri ramalingaswami urban jonsson and jon rohde 1996 if discrimination starts in early childhood and since all evidence suggests that there are regional differences in the treatment of women there should be clear traces in spatial patterns of relative heights between men and women