University of Kent
Econ 569, Economic Growth
NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMIC SCIENCE
BREAKING NEWS: ⁰The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2018 to William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer. #NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/xUs6iSyI7h
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 8, 2018
But the Nordhaus-Romer pairing makes sense, because they each point to contradictions at the heart of capitalism. It's all about market failure. Left alone, markets will generate too much pollution (Nordhaus) and too few ideas (Romer).
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) October 8, 2018
Romer on Growth, EconTalk Podcast
How we create and destroy growth: The 2018 Nobel laureates https://t.co/26RqKCX0B8
— VoxEU (@voxeu) October 12, 2018
Chad Jones in @voxeu on @paulmromer's important contribution to our understanding of economic growth. Excellent explanation of why Paul received the Nobel https://t.co/kfV3GHwCgC
— Brandon Fuller (@fuller_brandon) October 13, 2018
William Nordhaus & the costs of climate change, @voxeu appreciation of the new #EconomicsNobel laureate by Ken Gillingham @YaleGlobal https://t.co/vHIrWzndgw
— Romesh Vaitilingam (@econromesh) October 18, 2018
INTRODUCTION
Until the 1950s people in Japan, Korea, and Singapore were as poor as people in Haiti, the Congo, Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan.
— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) November 5, 2018
Since then the first three economies achieved growth and the others did not.
[From our entry on economic growth: https://t.co/e5f38sFGAf] pic.twitter.com/mmfP236eeZ
Notes on Global Convergence (Wonkish and Off-Point) via @NYTimes https://t.co/QAKxi1KEMe
— Giammario Impullitti (@gimpullitti) November 8, 2018
Three new findings: (1) There was more policy reform than you think during and after the much-maligned Washington Consensus; (2) Growth is strongly correlated with reforms; (3) Reforms could explain increased growth in Africa and Latin America since the late 1990s @nberpubs pic.twitter.com/ThGKkS0uFN
— William Easterly (@bill_easterly) September 30, 2019
1) Why are countries near the Equator so poor?
— Alice Evans (@_alice_evans) December 4, 2019
2) Did Christianity strengthen democratisation in Europe?
3) Why is Acemoglu more productive in MA than Istanbul? Human capital vs institutions?
4) How to be a great advisor to brilliant young minds?https://t.co/kYb5bnFD0h pic.twitter.com/GioLbcJANV
Prof. Acemoglu @NarrowCorridor is FANTASTIC!
— Alice Evans (@_alice_evans) October 30, 2019
I asked: what explains the global heterogeneity in social capital, & labour coercion?
What about innovation in 🇨🇳 ?
And is the state-society binary really the best way to understand threats to liberty today?https://t.co/OYgRxCRsJG
OPENNESS
How trade boosts productivity https://t.co/d5IC8xF4Hi @Noahpinion on trade wars & lessons from China trade https://t.co/NTRkee3i8Y
— John Van Reenen (@johnvanreenen) March 23, 2018
One of my favorite all-time interview experiences was with Russ Roberts on @EconTalker on 3/14/2016 on “Trade, China, and U.S. Labor Markets” https://t.co/dbYniMP9sG. It’s a lively debate: you can hear Russ and I learn from one another in real time! https://t.co/yd3BEJyoaM
— David Autor (@davidautor) April 5, 2018
Esteban Ortiz-Ospina – @eortizospina here – published a series of posts on the consequences of trade on @OurWorldInData this week.
— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) October 27, 2018
In the first one he reviews the empirical research on the link between trade and economic growthhttps://t.co/Rrg1wbI44e
(1/8) Thread: A selection of key facts about global trade.
— Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (@eortizospina) November 13, 2018
Everything here is from our new entry on this topic: https://t.co/x53mGQrKpx
A nice article about the important work by @davidautor
— Arindrajit Dube (@arindube) March 20, 2019
David Autor, the academic voice of the American worker https://t.co/LNRW3f912i via @TheEconomist
Foreign investment and economic growth https://t.co/6QStY1wMlX
— VoxEU (@voxeu) December 12, 2019
TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS
Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this.
— Our World in Data (@OurWorldInData) September 20, 2019
Our latest post: https://t.co/UGNXfMxTrJ pic.twitter.com/c1MFcZobgX
The top 10 Economics of Innovation papers, as judged by me this morning. A 🧵 https://t.co/6QQ9LArMkZ
— Matt Clancy (@mattsclancy) December 23, 2019
What is #productivity? https://t.co/04FpRe2ZC5 #BLSdata
— BLS-Labor Statistics (@BLS_gov) August 15, 2018
Government spending on research and development has been relatively flat for several years. Why? https://t.co/xMGaizk6Y8 pic.twitter.com/2vDTmtO9qd
— St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) May 15, 2018
The productivity gap between leaders and laggard firms in both IT-intensive and non-intensive sectors is striking. https://t.co/coaGyTXNyW pic.twitter.com/sUZpHQBTWA
— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) April 25, 2018
Among the most thought provoking papers I read in past year, this one by @johnvanreenen et al. is up there for sure: sustaining Moore’s Law requires x18 as many researchers today as in 1970s and research productivity is falling everywhere. https://t.co/Chlm0Cfg3m pic.twitter.com/FJp8WsRqw0
— Thor Berger (@bergerthor) March 22, 2018
From Economic Synopses: Data on patents help clarify the claim that China is catching up to other innovative nations https://t.co/D40UgXp8XP pic.twitter.com/BfSOipvSCm
— St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) May 5, 2018
Who gains from local productivity growth? Big new @nberpubs paper by Hornbeck+Moretti. Toplines: 1) TFP growth in US cities cuts wage inequality 2) homeowners get more than renters 3) skilled in other cities also gain 4) inequality *between* cities rises. https://t.co/Sz1st9Ceqr pic.twitter.com/cM4ZyfrWm5
— Max Nathan (@iammaxnathan) June 4, 2018
Looking for something fun/timely/applied to include in your macro class?
— Elizabeth Pancotti (@ENPancotti) June 4, 2018
New NBER from Hornbeck and Moretti finds that increases in TFP reduce local inequality by disproportionally increasing wages of low-skilled workers. https://t.co/ZtnDGNWRmK pic.twitter.com/ODdYPixPgU
Where does innovation come from? https://t.co/GMYH8X9QvO
— VoxEU (@voxeu) March 19, 2019
Philippe Aghion discusses work on merged datasets from the UK – one detailing occupation & wages, the other looking at R&D and investment.
— LSE Department of Economics (@LSEEcon) March 18, 2019
Via @voxeuhttps://t.co/pE2aUvF0f0
Read Measuring the Explosive Growth in Chinese Research:
Summary of Xie and Freeman (2018) by Dwyer Gunn
“In 2000, China’s share of papers in Scopus, a bibliometric database, was only 4 percent; by 2016, it was 18.6 percent, higher than the United States’ share.”
Our Vox Column on the link between tax and innovation (@S_Stantcheva John Grigsby and Tom Nicholas) Taxation and innovation in the 20th century | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal https://t.co/JYdSWixUuz
— Ufuk Akcigit (@ufukakcigit) October 16, 2018
Good paper by Matthew Backus. Evidence from the cement industry shows that competition pushes firms to be more productive. https://t.co/NuunObuXBN
— Martin Gaynor (@MartinSGaynor) April 19, 2019
Who becomes an inventor in America? Read @QJEHarvard article by Xavier Jaravel (@xjaravel) and colleagues A Bell (@AlexBellEcon), R Chetty (@oppinsights), N Petkova, and J Van Reenen (@johnvanreenen) https://t.co/9ahAd0XimQ pic.twitter.com/kCV0KPO9M2
— STICERD (@STICERD_LSE) April 25, 2019
A short non-technical discussion and comparison of two tax policies for innovation: R&D tax credits and reduced corporate taxes of income from intellectual property, from Bronwyn H. Hall https://t.co/EjKRiTPTtt pic.twitter.com/JH3g5SmRLQ
— NBER (@nberpubs) April 28, 2019
Declining knowledge diffusion from the ‘best to the rest’ lies behind the fall in US business dynamism and productivity growth in recent decades
— VoxEU (@voxeu) July 17, 2019
Ufuk Akcigit @ufukakcigit @UChi_Economics, Sina T. Ates @federalreservehttps://t.co/kZexhbiUtE pic.twitter.com/DhcteS1oIH
Does #technology hinder #development? @rodrikdani of @Harvard discusses if Low-income countries are disadvantaged by the introduction of new technologies due to being unable to access skilled #employment opportunities in this excellent #VoxDevVideo : https://t.co/zQHm2g3DNq pic.twitter.com/Nbnvhsb9ef
— VoxDev (@vox_dev) August 21, 2019
Blogpost with @iammaxnathan on measuring the effect of innovation on productivity inside firms: https://t.co/DgAbrvOZ0W via @LSEforBusiness @LaStatale
— Anna Rosso (@annac_rosso) October 2, 2019
Andy Haldane's survey of 'Productivity Puzzles' is v good. https://t.co/meAGLxqVv1
— Tony Yates (@t0nyyates) November 19, 2019
INEQUALITY
New CBO rpt. This fig shows
— Melissa S. Kearney (@kearney_melissa) March 27, 2018
(1) inc growth 1979-2014 much lower for low & mid quintiles than top
(2) over 40 yrs, pre-tax inc grew only ~27% for low & middle quintiles
(3) taxes/transfers mitigate unequal income growth to some extent
(Full report: https://t.co/E2B2QMeTTj) pic.twitter.com/biMiD3fToM
Exactly. Distributional issues aren't the whole story but they sure as hell are a large part of it. From that Haldane speech again: pic.twitter.com/wnhTmw0gFP
— liberal conspiracy theory (@jocanib) March 22, 2018
Inequality in pay between workers reduced productivity and cooperation when it was hard to see who is productive. But when productivity was easy to observe and pay inequality was based on productivity, it didn't cause problems. https://t.co/y2xTri3MqJ New in @QJEHarvard pic.twitter.com/cByePpL2fx
— David Evans (@tukopamoja) May 23, 2018
Populations in selected countries by %ile of global income distribution (2013, via @brankomilan). China, India & Brazil contain the richest & the poorest people in the world. I predict India will converge to the average income of Brazil but maintain the same income dispersion. pic.twitter.com/Fla31VRiP7
— Pseudoerasmus (@pseudoerasmus) August 21, 2018
When it pays to be an American (compared to a German)?
— Branko Milanovic (@BrankoMilan) September 2, 2018
If your income position in the US is above the 35th percentile (=4 person HH after-tax income of $54k) pic.twitter.com/u7JHCCLxTB
Income gains over the last generation were extremely unequal at different parts of the income distribution.
— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) March 8, 2019
In the UK during the 80s and in the US at most times incomes at the lower end of the distribution were mostly stagnating.
From our paper https://t.co/QhhfttrMT2 pic.twitter.com/3eAPZDQEE9
This is, IMO, the key graph from @fhgferreira today's presentation on global poverty. Whatever poverty line between $1 PPP and $15 PPP you choose, there is a decline in global poverty over the past 25y. pic.twitter.com/GYrFmpfFRC
— Branko Milanovic (@BrankoMilan) March 7, 2019
One of the biggest failures of development over the last decades is that incomes of the very poorest on the planet have not risen: https://t.co/iTcNoWDKEz
— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) February 6, 2019
This is not widely known because the extreme poverty line is not low enough to focus on what happens to the very poorest.
What keeps poor countries poor? This picture always reminds me of one important reason: "Resource misallocation".
— Atif Mian (@AtifRMian) August 13, 2019
Here's the story.
Eager to help his young country, Dr. Abdus Salam, the future Nobelist, returned to Pakistan in 1951 as a 25 years old star of the Physics world. pic.twitter.com/pFtrbewWld
DEMOGRAPHICS
Not just a democratic deficit, a demographic deficit --- good paper by NYU/Stern's Tom Cooley, my Coolidge colleague. pic.twitter.com/sDPI31dNQ2
— Amity Shlaes (@AmityShlaes) March 24, 2018
If the number of children no longer grows much, why is global population still projected to grow?
— Dina D. Pomeranz (@DinaPomeranz) March 20, 2018
Because younger generations are larger than the earlier ones. So as older -smaller- cohorts die & younger grow up, total population grows even if fertility & mortality are unchanged pic.twitter.com/FhDuGegw1Q
There is a strong correlation between women's education and the number of children they have. And this is true also in countries with very high average fertility rates.
— Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (@eortizospina) April 25, 2018
Link: https://t.co/pSPRNqNm5z pic.twitter.com/HPbgTtK6Be
For one thing, when population grows the labor force expands and so does demand, and both of these are more likely to be met by new firms. This means that population growth affects the startup rate, which affects productivity & dynamism. https://t.co/ZewetgWeVR
— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) May 23, 2018
HUMAN CAPITAL
Vietnam might be a high-learning-despite-low-income outlier today, but there have been others in the past (Japan, Korea, Thailand)
— Lee Crawfurd (@leecrawfurd) April 9, 2018
Great blog by @maryamakmal https://t.co/bZBe78u4dF
The percentage of prime-age people not working because of illness or disability has started to decline, but it would take 6 to 8 more years without another recession it to return to 2000 levels. Nice analysis by @ernietedeschi https://t.co/kTw9OXxJvW
— Ioana Marinescu (@mioana) March 26, 2018
Imperfect substitution and development accounting https://t.co/QqeiR4n8v7
— VoxEU (@voxeu) June 10, 2018
Exciting news
— Jan Zilinsky (@janzilinsky) April 24, 2019
For too long researchers have had to reply on *years of schooling* as a measure of "education".
We all knew those metrics could be misleading without adjusting for quality. We used them anyway.
We no longer have to - there is now a database measuring learning pic.twitter.com/Z23pwXtrpd
INSTITUTIONS
Happy 4th of July! https://t.co/4p6KCZRml4
— Matt Notowidigdo (@ProfNoto) July 4, 2018
Obviously the findings are interesting, but I also learned a lot of applied econometrics from this paper pic.twitter.com/fnvNzQH30E
What prevents economic growth? The latest cross-country research shows unnecessary protectionism, government misallocation, corruption, and financial instability keep countries down https://t.co/XNIedSNmar pic.twitter.com/XNphHe5pSE
— St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) September 27, 2018
GOVERNMENT
Whaddaya know? Infant industry (natural) protection did work in one important historical case: 19th century France. https://t.co/E91o3Hwh8i. Nice to see this paper in print.
— Dani Rodrik (@rodrikdani) October 29, 2018
CLIMATE CHANGE
Our latest: We were curious to see how far the US could cut emissions if it adopted just a handful of the most ambitious policies that are already in place around the world.
— brad plumer (@bradplumer) February 13, 2019
So @EnergyInnovLLC helped us explore, using their energy policy model: https://t.co/ZDmoSiLuoI /1
Of course many extinction rebellers don't believe that carbon pricing works. For some evidence that it does check out our work here https://t.co/cykJNuMQCF here https://t.co/jwIGNnhA9k (with @MirabelleMuuls) or here https://t.co/FwhGv0ZUVH (joint with @johnvanreenen )
— Ralf Martin (@mondpanther) April 24, 2019
A large-scale carbon-tax model intended to calculate what policy would deliver the highest uniform welfare gain to current and future generations, from @kotlikoff, @felixkubler, Andrey Polbin, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and @comp_simon https://t.co/xYBBhBHb0o pic.twitter.com/kMxNECfVc7
— NBER (@nberpubs) April 22, 2019