faculty ratings of major economics departments by citations the predominant ranking criterion for judging the comparative quality of economics departments has been the faculty publication record in a set of major journals in this tradition is a recent article which generates rankings based on volume of pages published in twenty four top journals during 1974 78 philip graves et al 1982 separate rankings are calculated for total and per capita contributions and credit is accorded to the institution at which the author is employed at the time of publication 2

the demographic transition and the emergence of sustained economic growth the demographic transition that swept the world in the course of the last century has been identified as one of the prime forces in the transition from stagnation to growth the unprecedented increase in population growth during the early stages of industrialization was ultimately reversed and the demographic transition brought about a significant reduction in fertility rates and population growth in various regions of the world enabling economies to convert a larger share of the fruits of factor accumulation and technological progress into growth of income per capita this paper examines various mechanisms that have been proposed as possible triggers for the demographic transition assessing their empirical validity and their potential role in the transition from stagnation to growth jel o11 o14 o33 o40 j11 j13

the neolithic revolution from a price theoretic perspective article i nfo the adoption of agriculture during the neolithic period triggered the first demographic explosion in history when fertility returned to its original level agriculturalists were more numerous more poorly nourished and worked longer hours than their hunter gatherer ancestors we develop a dynamic price theoretic model that rationalizes these events in the short run people are lured into agriculture by the increased labor productivity of both adults and children in the long run the growth in population overrides the productivity gains and the later generations of agriculturalists end up being worse off than the hunter gatherers counter intuitively the increase in the labor productivity of children causes the long run reduction in welfare in the long run the increase in adult labor productivity only contributes to population growth 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

indeterminacy intergenerational redistribution endogenous longevity and human capital accumulation abstract this paper sets up an olg economy with endogenous life expectancy to study how fiscal policy that redistributes between generations can open the door to sunspot equilibria agents invest independently in their own human capital produce and consume output and receive a pension upon retirement the model produces an expectations coordination problem that can explain significant differences in growth paths followed by otherwise identical countries in particular we show that our economy may be characterized by local indeterminacy of dynamic equilibria and hence feature fluctuations which are driven by extrinsic uncertainty

applied econometrics rankings 1989 1995 this paper ranks academic institutions by publication activity in applied econometrics over the period 1989 1995 fourteen leading international journals that publish applied econometrics articles are used to provide the database the rankings are based on standardized page counts of articles published in these journals over the stated period a hall of fame is developed listing the top 100 individual producers of applied econometrics in the fourteen journals considered to control for quality differences among the applied journals separate rankings are provided both for institutions and for individuals according to econometrics publications by journal

the effect of life expectancy on fertility saving schooling and economic growth theory and evidence we construct a simple growth model where agents with uncertain survival choose schooling time life cycle consumption and the number of children we show that rising longevity reduces fertility but raises saving schooling time and the growth rate at a diminishing rate cross section analyses using data from 76 countries support these propositions life expectancy has a significant positive effect on the saving rate secondary school enrollment and growth but a significant negative effect on fertility through sensitivity analyses the effect on the saving rate is inconclusive while the effects on the other variables are robust and consistent these estimated effects are decreasing in life expectancy

whom can we trust to run the fed theoretical support for the founders views abstract the federal reserve has been called a bizarre policymaking structure this paper documents and formalizes a historical argument that the fed s structure was a response to public conflict over inflation s redistributive powers the paper shows that in the face of conflict over redistributive inflation policy by majority can lead to policy that is worse even for the majority than obvious alternatives in balancing the interests for and against surprise inflation the fed s structure can lead to a better outcome

rankings methodology for international comparisons of institutions and individuals an application to economics in australia and new zealand abstract the objectives of this paper are threefold first we critically survey and analyse the different methodologies that have been adopted in the rankings literature second using journal articles included in the econlit database and on the basis of two criteria one based on citations and the other on perceptions of journal quality we rank economics teaching departments in australia and new zealand for 1988 2002 and 1996 2002 and for individual academic economists for the periods 1988 2002 1988 1995 and 1996 2002 furthermore we identify individual star performers and recognize them in a designated hall of fame for 1988 2002 third our methodology enables us to make international comparisons on total and per capita bases previous multi country ranking studies in economics do not rank economics departments they provide rankings based on total publications in economics in universities regardless of whether the economists are in the economics departments or in other departments thus no rankings on per capita bases are provided we correct this shortcoming by providing total and per capita rankings and analysing the correlations between total and per capita rankings this is the first study to examine whether the size of the economics department matters with regard to productivity

life expectancy schooling and lifetime labor supply theory and evidence revisited this paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of life expectancy for optimal schooling and lifetime labor supply the results of a simple prototype ben porath model with age specific survival rates show that an increase in lifetime labor supply is not a necessary or a sufficient condition for greater life expectancy to increase optimal schooling the observed increase in survival rates during working ages that follows from the rectangularization of the survival function is crucial for schooling and labor supply the empirical results suggest that the relative benefits of schooling have been increasing across cohorts of u s men born between 1840 and 1930 a simple quantitative analysis shows that a realistic shift in the survival function can lead to an increase in schooling and a reduction in lifetime labor hours publication abstract

some macroeconomics for the 21st century this note describes a numerical simulation of a model of economic growth a simplified version of robert tamura s 1996 model of world income dynamics based on technology diffusion the model makes predictions for trends in average world income growth and about the evolution of the relative income distribution that accord well with observation the model is used to forecast the course of world income growth and income inequality over the century to come

from malthusian stagnation to modern growth this paper investigates the historical evolution of the relationship among population growth technological change and standard of living the analysis focuses on two most important differences among the malthusian regime post malthusian regime and modern growth regime these were the behavior of income per capita and the relationship between the level of income per capita and the population growth rate the modern growth regime is characterized by steady growth in both income per capita and the level of technology in the malthusian regime technological progress and population growth was glacial by modern standards and income per capita was fairly constant in contrast to the modern growth regime the relationship between per capita income and population growth in the malthusian regime was positive post malthusian regime shared one characteristic with each of the two regimes in addition this paper developed and described an endogenous growth model consistent with the above mentioned transition process

central bank independence economic behavior and optimal term lengths the authors parameterize central bank independence in terms of partisanship and term length focusing on the implications of alternative policy structures for real economic activity while long terms of office for the central banker can reduce the role of electoral surprises term lengths that are too long are costly if societal preferences are subject to permanent shifts the appointment of a conservative central banker increases the optimal term length and leads to lower average inflation but need not increase the volatility of output copyright 1996 by american economic association

post malthusian dynamics in pre industrial scandinavia theories of economic growth hypothesize that the transition from pre industrial stagnation to sustained growth is associated with a post malthusian phase in which technological progress raises income and spurs population growth while offsetting diminishing returns to labor evidence suggests that england was characterized by post malthusian dynamics preceding the industrial revolution however given england s special position as the forerunner of the industrial revolution it is unclear if a transitory post malthusian period is a general phenomenon using data from denmark norway and sweden this research provides evidence for the existence of a post malthusian phase in the transition from stagnation to growth in scandinavia

cheap children and the persistence of poverty this paper develops a theory of fertility that offers an explanation for the persistence of poverty within and across countries if educated individuals have a comparative advantage in raising educated children then parental fertility choice is shown to give rise to a poverty trap in which the poor choose high fertility rates with low investment in child quality moreover the impact of child quality choice on economic performance is amplified by the diluting effect of higher fertility on physical capital accumulation the theory proposes insights regarding the effects of inequality globalisation and life expectancy on economic growth and demographic transitions this paper develops a theory of fertility and child educational choice that offers an explanation for the persistence of poverty within and across countries the joint determination of the quality education and quantity of children in a household is studied under the key assumption that individuals productivity as teachers increases with their own human capital in contrast the minimum time cost associated with raising a child regardless of the child s quality the quantity cost is not affected by parental education as a result the price of child quantity relative to the price of child quality increases with individuals wages in particular for low wage individuals for whom the opportunity cost of time is low children of minimal quality are cheap this assumption therefore generates a comparative advantage for the poor in child quantity whereas high wage educated individuals have a comparative advantage in raising quality children consistent with the well known evidence poor households thus choose relatively high fertility rates with relatively low investment in their offspring s education and therefore their offspring are poor as well in contrast high income families choose low fertility rates with high investment in education and therefore high income persists in the dynasty evidence from the us provided by hanushek 1992 suggests that a trade off between quantity and quality of children does indeed exist hanushek argues that movements in family size could explain over half the variance in some test scores and that the elasticity of achievements with respect to the number of children in the family is 0 03 implying that the annual achievement growth of each child in a family will fall about 2 when a second child is added and about 0 5 when a sixth child is added 1

malthus revisited fertility decision making based on quasi linear preferences abstract malthus 1798 population hypothesis is inconsistent with the demographic transitions and the massive income expansion observed among industrialised countries the current study shows that eliminating the income effect on the demand for children from malthus theory makes consistent with industrial development

contributions to economics journals by the canadian economics profession 1981 90 this paper provides measures of average publication rates and frequency distributions of articles and pages in all journals indexed by the index of economics articles over the 1980s the study covers 733 economists holding tenured or probationary appointments at canadian universities in the 1989 90 academic year all article and page counts are converted to single author equivalent sae measures by dividing by the number of authors over the decade economists published on average one sae article every 2 5 years the paper also generates measures of publications rates in quality journals of the profession as well as rankings of university departments

a population macroeconomic growth model for currently developing countries abstract this paper constructs a theoretical model that predicts as observed in some currently developing countries that the average school enrollment ratio may fall even when the average fertility rate declines unlike existing models the current analysis indicates that economic growth may slow down when a fertility transition starts asymmetric behavior with respect to fertility and education between households stemming from income inequality plays an important role in generating this result we examine the implications of an education subsidy policy contrary to intuition in some circumstances this policy may decrease the average school enrollment ratio and future economic growth

growth and enduring epidemic diseases abstract this paper analyzes the interplay of human capital formation and economic growth when there is premature adult mortality failing adequate insurance arrangements a long wave of such mortality can so undermine human capital formation as to induce an economic collapse in nuclear family structures random matching of partners is superior to assortative mating only if the shock is not too big and initial levels of human capital are not too low full pooling of mortality risks with equal treatment of all children in extended families may fend off a general collapse depending on the initial conditions and the size and duration of the shock to avoid undesirable effects on expectations awareness campaigns should be complemented by policies that credibly promise to reduce future mortality if mortality depends on the general level of human capital indeterminacy can arise in the form of more than one rational expectations path

monetary policy committees and interest rate setting abstract this paper shows that it is preferable for monetary policy to be conducted by a committee instead of a single policy maker if there is uncertainty about potential output we examine three decision procedures an optimal procedure averaging and voting and find that the latter is the appropriate way to reach decisions if policy makers are not equally skilled finally we demonstrate that efficient decision procedures reduce the persistence of shocks

on the robustness of alternative rankings methodologies australian and new zealand economics departments 1988 to 2002 just as friendly arguments based on an ignorance of facts eventually led to the creation of the definitive guinness book of world records any argument about university rankings has seemingly been a problem without a solution to state the obvious alternative rankings methodologies can and do lead to different rankings this article evaluates the robustness of rankings of australian and new zealand economics teaching departments for 1988 to 2002 and 1996 to 2002 using alternative rankings methodologies and compares the results with the rankings obtained by macri and sinha 2006 in the overall mean rankings for both 1988 to 2006 and 1996 to 2002 the university of melbourne is ranked first followed by uwa and anu

trends in rankings of economics departments in the u s an update economics departments in the u s are ranked based on 1 the number of pages published in thirty six economics journals 2 publications in five of the top journals 3 output per faculty member and 4 an index of the concentration of research in a department evidence shows that the top twenty departments have generally retained their positions since the 1970s but rather large changes have occurred in departments ranked from 240 to 100 an economists hall of fame is developed listing the top fifty individual producers of research in the thirty six journal set and the top five journals

from rent seeking to human capital a model where resource shocks cause transitions from stagnation to growth we present a growth model where agents divide time between rent seeking in the form of resource competition and working in a human capital sector the latter is interpreted as trade or manufacturing rent seeking exerts negative externalities on the productivity of human capital adding shocks in the form of fluctuations in the size of the contested resource the model can replicate a long phase with stagnant incomes and high levels of rent seeking interrupted by small failed growth spurts eventually followed by a permanent transition to a sustained growth path where rent seeking vanishes in the limit the model also generates a rise and fall of the so called natural resource curse before the takeoff an increase in the size of the contested resource has a positive effect on incomes shortly after the takeoff the effect is negative and on the balanced growth path the growth rate of per capita income is independent of resource shocks les auteurs presentent un modele de croissance ou les agents divisent leur temps entre la chasse aux rentes sous la forme de concurrence pour la ressource existante et le travail productif dans le secteur du capital humain cette derniere activite peut se faire dans le commerce ou le secteur manufacturier la chasse aux rentes a des effets externes negatifs sur la productivite du capital humain si l on injecte des chocs prenant la forme de fluctuations dans la taille de la ressource contestee le modele peut generer une longue periode durant laquelle les revenus stagnent et le niveau de chasse aux rentes est eleve periode interrompue par des petits sursauts de croissance qui tournent court et suivie eventuellement par une transition permanente a un sentier de croissance soutenue ou a la limite les activites de chasse aux rentes disparaissent le modele genere aussi l apparition et la disparition de la malediction des ressources naturelles avant que la croissance prenne son envol un accroissement de la taille de la ressource contestee a un effet positif sur les revenus peu apres le decollage l effet est negatif et sur le sentier de croissance equilibree le taux de croissance des revenus per capita est independant des chocs sur la ressource

on the distributional consequences of epidemics we develop a tractable general theory for the study of the economic and demographic impact of epidemics notably its distributional consequences to this end we build up a three period overlapping generations model where altruistic parents choose optimal health expenditures for their children and themselves the survival probability of adults and children depends on such investments agents can be skilled or unskilled in this paper epidemics are modeled as one period exogenous shocks to the adults survival rates we first show that such epidemics have permanent effects on the size of population and on the level of output however the income distribution is shown to be unaltered in the long run second we show that this distribution may be significantly altered in the medium term in particular the proportion of the unskilled will necessarily increase at that term if orphans are too penalized in the access to education c 2009 elsevier b v all rights reserved

sex equality and growth abstract we set up a model of economic and demographic long run development where inequality in income and reproductive success polygynous mating plays a central role the model generates a slow and gradual compression of the income gap between landholders and landless together with rising levels of human capital this process spurts at some stage as society endogenously transits into sustained growth simultaneously inequality in income and reproductive success drops society becomes monogamous

socially optimal social security and education subsidization in a dynastic model with human capital externalities fertility and endogenous growth abstract this paper considers socially optimal government policies in a dynastic family model with physical capital human capital endogenous fertility and positive spillovers from average human capital such spillovers reduce human capital investment but raise fertility from their social optimum we first characterize the social optimum with a non convex feasible set due to the quantity quality tradeoff concerning children we then show that social security and education subsidization together financed by labor income taxes can fully eliminate the efficiency losses of the spillovers and achieve the social optimum under plausible conditions however none of the policies can do so alone

social class and the spirit of capitalism one of the key social transformations that accompanied the british industrial revolution was the economic decline of the aristocracy standard theories of wealth inequality cannot explain why the aristocrats in spite of their superior wealth and education failed to be the main protagonists and beneficiaries of industrialization we discuss recent research based on a model of endogenous preferences that is consistent with the demise of aristocracy jel 010 040

what s an economics seminar worth information authors and organizers should know es de lille abstract this paper is an empirical study of the publication records of communications to a weekly seminar continued from 1997 we look at the quality of publications and also at the determinants of publications our results offer lessons for both presenters and organizers of research seminars in academia

gender differences in education in a dynamic household bargaining model in this paper we explore the issue of gender differences in education in the context of a two sex overlapping generations model where men and women of each generation bargain over consumpt ion number of children and investment in education of their children conditional on gender and parents are altruistic toward their children we show that the difference in the education levels of boys and girls implied by our model is smaller than the one that would result from a pure investment model also we show that as long as the time cost associated with bearing children is positive women bear the entire time cost associated with child rearing we use our model to estimate the cost to a woman of having a child the estimate we obtain using cross country data suggests that such cost amounts to about 5 of the working lifetime of a woman

population technology and fragmentation the european miracle revisited abstract the effects of political fragmentation on long run development seem to have changed over the course of human history technological leaders used to be empires but the industrial revolution started in the fragmented europe this paper sets up a model to help us think about this puzzle there are two sets of mechanisms at play a standard scale effect which benefits unified regions since technology is a non rivalrous good and several competition effects both negative like wasteful armies and positive incentives to invest in new technologies we apply the model to analyze the preindustrial divergence between china and europe

equilibrium inflation as determined by a policy committee building upon the work of kydland and prescott 1977 barro and gordon 1983b developed a model explaining excess socially suboptimal inflation as the result of a policy game between the monetary authority and wage setters in an economy in a follow up paper barro and gordon 1983a modified their original model to achieve a lower inflation rate by allowing the monetary authority to acquire a reputation for good behavior in essence this extension models monetary policy as the outcome of an infinitely repeated game between a monetary authority and wage setters in this game wage setters adopt punishment rules for bad monetary authority behavior where bad behavior is an inflation rate higher than expected this extended model of barro and gordon and hence the conclusions derived from it is open to several criticisms see for example canzoneri 1985 and rogoff 1987 first the results hinge on the theory of infinitely repeated games and thus would appear to be of questionable relevance in any economy with finitely lived policy makers second and more fundamentally it is difficult to accept the description of policy as a game between the monetary authority and wage setters one can accept that under certain circumstances an individual wage setter would adopt punishment rules of the type barro and gordon discussed if the individual thought all wage setters were doing so what is left unexplained in the barro and gordon analysis is how or why each individual wage setter when left alone would think and act in such a manner it would seem that some formal coordination among wage setters would be needed to establish punishment rules which suggests a limited applicability of the model to countries with a dominant union or with an aggregate wage setting authority of course this criticism is relevant to other papers in this literature for example backus and driffill 1985 and aspects of canzoneri 1985 the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how these criticisms can be voided and how the barro and gordon 1983a results can be rehabilitated by modeling monetary policy more realistically

das human kapital a theory of the demise of the class structure this paper suggests that the demise of the capitalists workers class structure was a socio economic transformation orchestrated by the capitalists in reaction to the increasing importance of human capital in sustaining their profit rates physical capital accumulation in the process of industrialization enhanced the importance of human capital in production and generated incentives for capitalists to support the provision of public education for the masses triggering the demise of the existing class structure the implications of the theory are consistent with the voting patterns on england s education reform of 1902

european economics an analysis based on publications in the core journals abstract in this paper we provide a ranking of european economics institutions and countries based on publications in a core set of 10 economic journals from 1991 to 1996 we find that the three leading universities in europe are the london school of economics tel aviv university and oxford university while the three top ranked countries are the u k france and israel

policy boards and policy smoothing partisan politics and random election outcomes generate policy uncertainty and partisan business cycles to reduce policy uncertainty society must design the policy making environment to overcome electoral uncertainty and partisanship i show that delegating policy to an independent policy board with discretionary powers will produce substantial policy smoothing and lower policy uncertainty relative to a simple model in which elected officials set policy board members are chosen in a partisan noncooperative environment yet in the benchmark model policy variability is eliminated and the cooperative bargaining solution is replicated

violence and property rights abstract since the middle ages when europe was still at a malthusian stage of development interpersonal violence has been in steady decline and institutions and norms limiting violence in particular property rights have expanded here we put forward a malthusian model of violence where these trends can be interpreted as a response to easing population pressure following an acceleration in technological progress the idea is that agents rationally risk dying in violent resource competition in order to make more of their children survive starvation violence carries a positive externality because those who die free up resources for survivors this generates a socially optimal level of violence which can be implemented with the right amount of property rights protection it is shown that faster technological progress can lead to a decline in violence and improved property rights protection similar to the path followed by europe

communication by central bank committee members different strategies same effectiveness the paper assesses the communication strategies of the federal reserve the bank of england and the european central bank and their effectiveness we find that the effectiveness of communication is not independent from the decision making process the paper shows that the federal reserve has been pursuing a highly individualistic communication strategy amid a collegial approach to decision making while the bank of england is using a collegial communication strategy and highly individualistic decision making the european central bank ecb has chosen a collegial approach both in its communication and in its decision making assessing these strategies we find that predictability of policy decisions and the responsiveness of financial markets to communication are equally good for the federal reserve and the ecb this suggests that there may not be a single best approach to designing a central bank communication strategy

revealed performances worldwide rankings of economists and economics departments 1990 2000 in this paper i study the production of academic research by economics departments and economists worldwide rankings are provided based on both citations and publications these rankings reveal a dominant position of the united states in the production of economics literature over time however the extent of this dominance is decreasing jel a10 a14

malthus in sweden this paper presents some new and unique cross county data from 19th century sweden over birth death and marriage rates grain prices and harvests local grain prices correlate negatively with local harvests suggesting imperfectly integrated food markets the so called positive and preventive checks are also present good local harvests are associated with high birth and marriage rates and low death rates we also find that the fertility and marriage effects from changes in prices but not harvests are greater in counties that rely more on manufacturing consistent with an open economy model of fertility choice where agents earn income from both agriculture and manufacturing

fecundity fertility and the formation of human capital exploiting a genealogy of english individuals living in the 16th to the 19th centuries this study shows that lower parental reproductive capacity positively affected the socio economic achievements of offspring using the time interval between the date of marriage and the first birth as a measure of reproductive capacity we find that parental fecundity positively affected the number of siblings and that children of parents with lower fecundity were more likely to become literate and employed in skilled and high income professions this suggests there was a trade off between child quantity and quality in england during the industrial revolution supporting leading theories of the origins of modern economic growth

the ten commandments for ranking university quality in the rapidly changing world of higher education where increasing emphasis is being placed on the assessment of research and teaching quality as indicators of university quality the key issues that need to be considered have been debated widely in both the private and public sectors the uk and new zealand have undertaken rigorous research performance exercises over an extended period while australia is presently entering a similar phase of assessing research quality however ranking university quality is more general than assessing and ranking research quality alone to date the various stakeholders do not seem to have reached agreement on the most important indicators that need to be addressed in assessing and ranking university quality the ten commandments for ranking university quality address some of the key issues in the ongoing discussions starting with the original set of ten commandments most commandments seem to have been routinely ignored at least in part by all but the most conscientious and religious individuals for this reason the current set should perhaps be seen as guidelines rather than regulations

economic development and the escape from high mortality summary this paper studies the characteristic features of the escape from high mortality as recorded from the historical experience of northwestern europe and from the current experience of less developed countries the paper documents stylized facts of mortality change and measures the contribution of economic development represented by income per capita to the mortality decline during the second half of the 20th century the paper argues that improvements in economic conditions since the 18th century are an important factor behind the decline in death rates in developed countries and in the subsequent reduction of death rates in less developed countries we show that economic development lowers mortality through differential effects in infectious disease mortality and that quantitatively income growth is able to account for between one third and one half of the recent mortality decline

the relative impacts of economics journals 1970 1990 our data collection and database assembly efforts were assisted by john p sophocleus mark gwartney michele butler and scott ralston we received extremely valuable computer programming assistance from jon brunson and edward novak constructive comments were receivedfrom two anonymous reviewers financial supportfrom the faculty development committee at salisbury state university is gratefully acknowledged

the role of socio political and economic factors in fertility decline a cross country analysis summary in this paper we have examined the fertility transition across countries in four different income categories from social economic political and population policy perspectives we examine whether and how social economic political and population policy factors contribute to the decline in fertility rates in countries with different income levels and our findings suggest that these factors can have very different effects on fertility rates in these countries political freedom is found to play a role in shaping people s perceptions of fertility and has different effects on fertility for countries in different income categories worsening political freedom in upper middle income countries exerts downward pressure on fertility rates while it contributes a positive effect to fertility rates in lower middle and low income countries urbanization if implemented successfully can be an effective approach to further reduce the fertility rate for countries with lower income levels and higher rural populations population policies measured by the contraception prevalence rate have been found to be effective in reducing the tfr in upper middle income lower middle income and low income countries from the intra country analysis population policies are confirmed to be the main tool used by china and bangladesh to cut down their tfr human capital is confirmed to be one of the most important determinants in explaining the decline in fertility rates across all income categories the significant policy implication of these findings for policy makers in those lower middle income and low income countries is to invest more in education which can have a notable impact on people s perceptions of fertility and eventually this could help to effectively reduce their fertility levels in a more natural way than could be achieved by aggressive population policies

mortality versus morbidity in the demographic transition abstract the link between the mortality and epidemiological transitions is used to identify the effect of the former on the fertility transition a mortality transition that is not accompanied by improving morbidity causes slower demographic and economic change in a model where children may die from infectious disease childhood health affects human capital and noninfectious disease related adult mortality when child mortality falls from lower prevalence as it did in western europe labor productivity improves fertility falls and the economy prospers when it falls mainly from better cures as it has in sub saharan africa survivors are less healthy and there is little economic growth the model can quantitatively explain sub saharan africa s experience more generally it shows that the commonly used indicator life expectancy at birth is a poor predictor of population health and economic growth unless morbidity falls with mortality

human capital and economic development abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of fertility and human capital investment with young adult mortality because young adult mortality is negatively related to average young adult human capital human capital accumulation lowers mortality inducing demographic transition and industrial revolution data confirm that young adult mortality is related negatively to schooling and the rate of return to schooling and positively to fertility the data indicate a negative relationship between tfp growth and schooling accumulation the model fits the data on country populations per capita incomes human capital total fertility rates infant mortality life expectancy and conditional life expectancy

slavery and other property rights the institution of slavery is found mostly at intermediate stages of agricultural development and less often among hunter gatherers and advanced agrarian societies we explain this pattern in a growth model with land and labor as inputs in production and an endogenously determined property rights institution the economy endogenously transits from an egalitarian state with equal property rights to a despotic slave society where the elite own both people and land thereafter it endogenously transits into a free labor society where the elite own the land but people are free

life expectancy schooling time retirement and growth i analyze how changes in life expectancy affect retirement age education time and growth rates of economies i set up a continuous time overlapping generations model of endogenous growth with externalities in human capital production i find that increases in life expectancy give rise to first higher retirement ages and second higher education spans a threshold level for life expectancy exists such that per capita growth rates follow an inverted u pattern i introduction in this article i analyze how changes in life expectancy may affect optimal education time retirement age and the growth rates of economies to this end i set up a continuous time overlapping generations growth model with human capital accumulation that i solve numerically the issue of the effects of the reduction in mortality rates and the resulting increases in life expectancy on economic growth rates has been recently addressed in the literature through both empirical and theoretical studies along these lines i focus on human capital acquisition and its transmission across generations as the force driving the growth rate concerning empirical studies the hypothesis that the reduction in mortality rates has caused higher levels of investment in human capital and therefore augmented growth rates is partially supported for various economies thus kalemli ozcan et al 2000 show an increase in life expectancy at birth along with an increase in average numbers of years of schooling in england they claim that after averaging across lower income countries there is apparently a connection between increases in life expectancy at birth and increases in gross secondary school enrollment that is positively connected with higher growth rates observed preliminary data from latin american and caribbean countries show that gross domestic product gdp growth is statistically associated with life expectancy for instance estimates based on data from mexico suggest that for any additional year of life expectancy there will be an additional 1 increase in gdp 15 years later see world health organization 1999 box 1 2 9 along the same lines rodriguez and sachs 1999 also find a positive effect of life expectancy on gdp growth for the case of venezuela barro and sala i martin 1995 estimate for a sample of 97 countries that a 13 year increment in life expectancy would increase the per capita growth rate by 1 4 per year they also find however some exceptions where increments in life expectancy have not resulted in higher growth even though all of them exhibited higher schooling levels in the period 1960 85 malmberg 1994 gives another exception higher growth was achieved when middle aged persons were numerous whereas increases in dependent age groups led to lower per capita growth in sweden finally some other studies find mixed evidence so that increments in life expectancy result in higher growth rates for low levels of life expectancy but in lower growth rates for high levels of life expectancy see zhang et al 2003 and references therein a common result in most theoretical studies that include some sort of human capital is that an increase in life expectancy lengthens the period needed to recover investment in human capital which translates into higher returns to individual education or human capital investment this augmented return will give rise to higher levels of investment in human capital which in turn will raise growth rates ehrlich and lui 1991 show in a three overlapping generations model how improvements in longevity lower fertility thus raising educational investment and long term growth meltzer 1995 finds that mortality reductions may favor economic growth by increasing educational investment kalemli ozcan et al 2000 show in an overlapping generations model a la blanchard that if mortality drops life expectancy increases so that an augmented life horizon to enjoy the return to human capital investment gives rise to higher schooling human capital investment although growth is not affected because the growth rate in their model is identically equal to zero

foreign aid fertility and human capital accumulation this paper analyses the effect of foreign aid on population growth and human capital accumulation consistent with empirical evidence from sub saharan africa the model shows that foreign aid can work against its stated goal of alleviating poverty and promoting growth humanitarian aid fosters population growth and adversely affects the recipients incentive to invest in human capital the analysis suggests that foreign aid may lock a recipient economy in a low equilibrium trap

the child is father of the man implications for the demographic transition we propose a new theory of the demographic transition based on the evidence from natural sciences that physical development during childhood affects adult life expectancy positively this theory is embodied in a continuous time olg framework where fertility longevity and education all result from individual decisions we conclude that a sustained improvement in physical development is at the basis of the observed demographic transition in today s developed countries and may be an important factor in explaining the slow transition from the malthusian towards the modern era the dynamics of the proposed model reproduce the key features of the demographic transition including sustained improvements in child physical development permanent increase in life expectancy a hump shaped evolution of both population growth and fertility and late increases in secondary educational attainments

intergenerational trade longevity and economic growth we develop an overlapping generations model of endogenous growth in which human capital is the engine of growth and the generations are linked through material and emotional interdependencies within the family parents invest in their children to achieve both old age support care and emotional gratification and material support from children is determined through self enforcing implicit contracts we show that optimal intergenerational trade can then lead to maximization of growth opportunities our model produces a theory of the demographic transition linking longevity fertility and economic growth we also show that while population aging may raise the growth rate an increase in young age longevity is likely to produce a greater increase in the growth rate and a reduction in the fertility rate in a growth equilibrium these predictions and the model s implications concerning the behavior of private savings during the takeoff period appear consistent with empirical evidence

central bank design in general equilibrium we study the effects of alternative institutional arrangements for the determination of monetary policy in the context of a capital theoretic general equilibrium economy we consider three institutional arrangements for determining monetary policy the first unconditional majority voting always leads to a substantial inflation bias the second a simple form of bargaining which we interpret as a policy board generally improves on the unconditional majority voting outcome finally we consider a constitutional rule which always achieves the social optimum

mortality decline human capital investment and economic growth abstract we examine the role of increased life expectancy in raising human capital investment during the process of economic growth we develop a continuous time overlapping generations model in which individuals make optimal schooling investment choices in the face of a constant probability of death we present analytic results followed by results from a calibrated version of the model using realistic estimates of the return to schooling mortality decline produces economically significant increases in schooling and consumption allowing schooling to vary endogenously produces a much larger response of consumption and capital to mortality decline than is observed when schooling is held fixed

from malthus to modern growth can epidemics explain the three regimes we model demographic and economic long run development in a setting where mortality is endogenous and subject to epidemic shocks the model replicates the full transition from malthusian stagnation to modern growth consistent with the historical facts the economy also passes an intermediate post malthusian phase where growth rates of both population and per capita income increase simultaneously as mortality rates fall and become less volatile the escape from the malthusian trap is the result of a series of mild epidemic shocks making it inevitable at some stage but its timing random calibrations show that it can differ by thousands of generations absent differences in exogenous parameters

ranking and clustering of the faculties of commerce research performance in australia there is a growing policy focus in australian higher education on quantitative research performance assessment however most of the analysis has addressed aggregate performance at the institutional level an approach inconsistent with recent policy emphasis on diversity among universities and one that ignores performance variations across disciplines using averaged and all available data for 2000 2004 cluster analysis is used to classify australian commerce faculties into groups that exhibit similar research performance measured by publication phd completion and secured competitive research grant funding we also use factor analysis to generate full multidimensional rankings within the resulting two or three clusters it is found that in terms of total research output with the exception of adelaide all the group of 8 go8 members plus university of technology sydney and griffith always belong to clusters a however when research performance is expressed in per academic staff terms an additiona

early literacy achievements population density and the transition to modern growth the transition from economic stagnation to sustained growth is often modeled thanks to population induced productivity improvements which are assumed rather than derived from primary assumptions in this paper the effect of population on productivity is derived from optimal behavior more precisely both the number and location of education facilities are chosen optimally by municipalities individuals determine their education investment depending on the distance to the nearest school and also on technical progress and longevity in this setting higher population density enables the set up costs of additional schools to be covered opening the possibility to reach higher educational levels using counterfactual experiments we find that one third of the rise in literacy can be directly attributed to the effect of density and one sixth is linked to higher longevity moreover the effect of population density in the model is consistent with the available evidence for england where it is shown that schools were established at a high rate over the period 1540 1620

mortality and early growth in england france and sweden we set up a stochastic open economy growth model with endogenous fertility and mortality a three country version of the model is calibrated to pre industrial mortality data from england france and sweden by fitting parameters to match observed rates of correlation in mortality rates the model can also account for differences in both the volatility of mortality rates and the timing of the industrial revolution

dynamics and stagnation in the malthusian epoch this paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential malthusian theory according to which improvements in the technological environment during the pre industrial era had generated only temporary gains in income per capita eventually leading to a larger but not significantly richer population exploiting exogenous sources of cross country variations in land productivity and the level of technological advancement the analysis demonstrates that in accordance with the theory technological superiority and higher land productivity had significant positive effects on population density but insignificant effects on the standard of living during the time period 1 1500 ce

swedish economic growth and education since 1800 the contribution of this paper is twofold first it builds and makes use of long run data from sweden on formal education that have never been used to date second it provides a quantitative application of recent theoretical work on the link between demographic changes and economic growth through their effect on education it concludes that changes in longevity may account for as much as 20 of the observed rise in education over the period from 1800 2000 via a horizon effect but have little impact on income growth over the period on the contrary changes in population density and composition are central mainly thanks to their effect on productivity most income growth over this period would not have materialized if demographic variables had stayed constant since 1800

citations or journal quality which is rewarded more in the academic labor market research quality can be evaluated from citations or from the prestige of journals publishing the research we relate salary of tenured university of california uc economists to their lifetime publications of 5 500 articles and to the 140 000 citations to these articles citations hardly affect salary especially in top ranked uc departments where impacts of citations are less than one tenth those of journals in lower ranked departments and when journal quality is less comprehensively measured effects of citations on salary increase if journal quality is just measured by counting articles in journal tiers apparent effects of citations are overstated jel a14 j44

which journal rankings best explain academic salaries evidence from the university of california the ranking of an academic journal is important to authors universities journal publishers and research funders rankings are gaining prominence as countries adopt regular research assessment exercises that especially reward publication in high impact journals yet even within a rankings oriented discipline like economics there is no agreement on how aggressively lower ranked journals are down weighted and in how wide is the universe of journals considered moreover since it is typically less costly for authors to cite superfluous references whether of their own volition or prompted by editors than it is to ignore relevant ones rankings based on citations may be easily manipulated in contrast when the merits of publication in one journal or another are debated during hiring promotion and salary decisions the evaluators are choosing over actions with costly consequences we therefore look to the academic labor market using data on economists in the university of california system to relate their lifetime publications in 700 different academic journals to salary we test amongst various sets of journal rankings and publication discount rates to see which are most congruent with the returns implied by the academic labor market jel a14 i23 j44

the three horsemen of riches plague war and urbanization in early modern europe how did europe escape the iron law of wages we construct a simple malthusian model with two sectors and multiple steady states and use it to explain why european per capita incomes and urbanization rates increased during the period 1350 1700 productivity growth can only explain a small fraction of the rise in output per capita population dynamics changes of the birth and death schedules were far more important determinants of steady states we show how a major shock to population can trigger a transition to a new steady state with higher per capita income the black death was such a shock raising wages substantially because of engel s law demand for urban products increased and urban centers grew in size european cities were unhealthy and rising urbanization pushed up aggregate death rates this effect was reinforced by diseases spread through war financed by higher tax revenues in addition rising trade also spread diseases in this way higher wages themselves reduced population pressure we show in a calibration exercise that our model can account for the sustained rise in european urbanization as well as permanently higher per capita incomes in 1700 without technological change wars contributed importantly to the rise of europe even if they had negative short run effects we thus trace europe s precocious rise to economic riches to interactions of the plague shock with the belligerent political environment and the nature of cities

population and income is there a puzzle abstract this note presents wide evidence on the relationship between population and income for 125 countries for which data was available for the period 1950 2000 the main result is that there is a weak but negative relationship between population growth and per capita gdp as income increases population expands at a slower rate this relationship appears to be stronger for african countries and for asian countries before 1970

voting transparency in a monetary union we examine whether the monetary policy committee of a monetary union should publish its voting records when members are appointed by national politicians we show that the publication of voting records lowers overall welfare this finding also holds for arbitrary levels of private benefits from holding office and if governments incur costs when replacing committee members high private benefits of committee members always lower overall welfare as they induce nonpartisan members to care more about being reappointed than about beneficial policy outcomes nonrenewable but long terms for national committee members and delegating the appointment of all committee members to a union wide authority would be desirable

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

from foraging to farming explaining the neolithic revolution abstract this article reviews the main theories about the prehistoric shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture the transition also known as the neolithic revolution was ultimately necessary to the rise of modern civilization by creating the foundation for the later process of industrialization and sustained economic growth the article provides a brief historical survey of the leading hypotheses concerning the rise of agriculture proposed in the archaeological and anthropological literature it then turns to a more detailed review of the theories put forth in the economic literature

understanding per capita income growth in preindustrial europe in a malthusian environment per capita incomes are stagnant meaning they cannot exhibit sustained growth however they can still display volatility and persistence when hit by shocks this article simulates a malthusian model with realistic life cycle structure and stochastic and accelerating growth in land productivity we find that differences across simulated economies are quantitatively similar to those found in recently compiled data over gdp per capita for several european countries before 1800 this speaks to the relevance of the malthusian model for understanding preindustrial development in europe contrasting with contentions to the contrary in some of the existing literature

is migration a good substitute for education subsidies assuming a given educational policy the recent brain drain literature reveals that skilled migration can boost the average level of schooling in developing countries this paper introduces educational subsidies determined by governments concerned by the number of skilled workers remaining in the country the theoretical analysis shows that developing countries can benefit from skilled emigration when educational subsidies entail high fiscal distortions however when taxes are not too distortionary it is desirable to impede emigration and subsidize education the authors investigate the empirical relationship between educational subsidies and migration prospects obtaining a negative relationship for 105 countries based on this result the analysis revisits the country specific effects of skilled migration upon human capital the findings show that the endogeneity of public subsidies reduces the number of winners and increases the magnitude of the losses

how much influence do economics professors have on rankings the case of australia and new zealand this study ranks australian and new zealand economics teaching departments on the basis of the research productivity of its economics professors in economics teaching departments using quality adjusted journal articles listed on the econlit database for the periods 1988 to 2002 and for 1996 to 2002 the per capita research productivity of professors is highest for university of melbourne university of western australia and university of canterbury for a number of economics departments the per capita research productivity is lower than the research productivity of all faculty members using a number of criteria for 1988 2002 and 1996 2002 these universities are university of auckland royal melbourne institute of technology university griffith university and macquarie university

intergenerational transfers and demographic transition abstract this paper presents an analysis of demographic transition based on the endogenous evolution of intergenerational transfers along an economy s endogenous path of development two period lived agents belonging to overlapping generations choose optimally their desired levels of consumption and fertility together with their desired sizes of transfers to both parents and children parents are more efficient than children in producing output but some parental time must be devoted to child rearing at low levels of development fertility is high and the flow of net intergenerational transfers is from the young to the old at high levels of development fertility is low and the flow of net transfers is from the old to the young these results accord strongly with empirical observations and the analysis may be seen as formalising for the first time a long standing and well respected hypothesis in the demographic transition literature

research productivity of the economics profession in east asia i introduction research productivity is often ranked for economics departments based on page counts of journal publications for example graves marchand and thompson 1982 while others rate the departments by the number of citations attributed to their faculty for example davis and papanek 1984 recently scott and mitias 1996 used flow and stock concepts in their departmental rankings while the flow of research can be counted to give credit to the department where authors are affiliated at the time of publication the stock ranking counts a currently affiliated faculty s stock of past and current research the alternative rankings also use different sets of journals as well as varied weighting schemes to standardize the length of journal pages and to adjust for journal quality while several different methods have been used to rank economics departments in the united states no such assessment has been done for east asian universities this article aims to fill this gap by ranking economics professions in east asia based solely on research productivity for the purpose of comparison with u s universities our methodology closely follows that of scott and mitias 1996 with some variations in the sample length first the ranking counts the stock of past and current research for example hogan 1984 laband 1985 conroy and dusansky 1995 scott and mitias 1996 and dusansky and vernon 1998 fine research scholars move from one university to another a phenomenon that sometimes leads to dramatic changes in school performance however labor mobility depends to some extent on the degree of importance of research to which a university is attached more open and research oriented schools often hire researchers and their accompanying stock of published research from other institutions in the region or more often from abroad while others more or less insulate themselves from inflows of new research a more accurate reflection of current reality is therefore to know who is at a particular university today not who was at it in the past thus economics faculty affiliated with east asian universities during the autumn 1997 semester are counted for the stock ranking in east asia the economics faculty include all economists in business schools as well as all in economics departments 1 faculty names were obtained directly from department chairs and each school s home page on the internet second the basic ranking relies on page counts of articles published in a set of 36 quality journals over the period 1990 96 page counts are employed to capture many variations in the length of articles across journals the econlit cd rom september 1997 includes all international journals that have appeared in the journal of economic literature the choice of a set of quality journals is however open to question graves marchand and thompson 1982 for example examined publications in a set of 24 journals hogan 1984 looked at a set of 4 laband 1985 a set of 27 bairam 1994 a set of 5 and conroy and dusansky 1995 and dusansky and vernon 1998 each a set of 8 journals the criterion employed here for top 36 journals relies on the choice in scott and mitias 1996 in which the original set of top 24 journals in graves marchand and thompson 1982 was updated 2 to check the sensitivity of our findings with alternative sets of journals we ranked these schools based on top 24 and top 42 journals the list of 42 top journals was provided to us by dusansky and vernon 1998 3 third standardized page counts are employed for example graves marchand and thompson 1982 hirsch austin brooks and moore 1984 conroy and dusansky 1995 scott and mitias 1996 and dusansky and vernon 1998 the scott mitias 1996 conversion factors are used for the basic ranking in which the number of pages published in 36 journals were standardized to the average length of a page in the aer

malthus to solow a unified growth theory is developed that accounts for the roughly constant living standards displayed by world economies prior to 1800 as well as the growing living standards exhibited by modern industrial economies our theory also explains the industrial revolution which is the transition from an era when per capita incomes are stagnant to one with sustained growth the authors use a standard growth model with several technologies the first denoted the malthus technology requires land labor and reproducible capital as inputs the second denoted the solow technology does not require land the authors show that in the early stages of development only the malthus technology is used and due to population growth living standards are stagnant despite technological progress eventually technological progress causes the solow technology to become profitable and both technologies are employed at this point living standards improve since population growth has less influence on per capita income growth in the limit the economy behaves like a standard solow growth model excerpt