We revisit the influential economic growth model by Lucas (1988) ["On the mechanics of economic development." Journal of Monetary Economics, 22(1):3-42], assuming that households optimally allocate consumption and education over the life-cycle given an exogenous interest rate and exogenous wages. We show that in such a partial equilibrium setting, the original two-state (physical capital and human capital) optimization problem can be decomposed into two single-state optimal control models. This transformation allows us to rigorously prove the existence of a singular control describing the allocation of education time along a balanced growth path. We derive a constructive condition for a singular control to exist and show that under this condition infinitely many singular controls are optimal in the individual household problem. In contrast to the original general equilibrium framework in which an agent always chooses part-time education and part-time work, in our framework such an agent might find it optimal to allocate her whole available time to education at the beginning of her life and to focus on labor supply only when she is older. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Les dépenses militaires constituent un phénomène économique important puisque 1630 milliards de dollars sont affectés au secteur de la défense en 2010 au niveau mondial. Les économistes se sont alors intéressés aux conséquences économiques de telles dépenses. Pourtant depuis près de 40 ans, force est de constater qu'aucun consensus n'émerge de cette littérature. Une telle absence se traduit par des difficultés pour formuler des conclusions de politique économique adaptée. L'objet de cette thèse est alors de déterminer quelles pourraient être les causes de la diversité des résultats de la littérature passée. Nous proposons alors deux pistes expliquant ce phénomène: d'une part une diversité de modélisations ayant des hypothèses diamétralement opposées quant à l'impact de la défense sur la croissance et d'autre part l'existence de non-linéarité, de nature à modifier cet impact pour un même modèle.La thèse se compose alors de quatre chapitres. Dans le chapitre un, nous proposons une revue de littérature permettant de mettre en exergue les régularités, en termes de résultats, associées à chaque modèle théorique. Le chapitre deux constitue alors une vérification empirique, pour un échantillon donné de pays de l'OCDE, de la contingence des conclusions quant à l'utilisation de différentes modélisations. Notre stratégie empirique permet de considérer les modèles comme complémentaires plutôt qu'en concurrence. Dans le troisième chapitre, nous étudions les phénomènes de non-linéarité au travers d'une démarche et d'une méthode empirique originales. Nous montrons que la régression non-linéaire est préférable à la régression linéaire et qu'elle conduit à caractériser un effet asymétrique de la défense sur la croissance. Le dernier chapitre a pour but d'étudier plus précisément le cas de la France afin de confirmer, en termes de politique économique, la stratégie développée dans les chapitres précédents. / Military spending constitutes an important economic phenomenon because in 2010, 1630b dollar are affected to the defense sector all around the world. Economists are interested in the economic consequences of such spending. However, since 40 years, one has to note that there is no consensus from this literature. This absence leads to difficulties to formulate relevant economic policy conclusions. The aim of this thesis is to determine what are the causes of the diversity of results in the past literature. Two ways are then considered: on the one hand, a diversity of models with hypothesis diametrically opposed concerning the impact of the defense sector on economic growth and on the other hand, non-linear behavior which may modify this impact for a same model.This dissertation contains four chapters. In the first one, we detail a literature review in order to draw the principal regularities in terms of results for each theoretical model. The chapter two constitutes an empirical verification of the contingency of results from different models, for a sample of OECD countries. Our empirical strategy leads to consider the complementary rather than the competition between models. In the third chapter, we examine the non-linear phenomenon with original steps and empirical method. We show that non-linear regression outperforms linear regression and characterizes asymmetric effects of the military spending on growth. The last chapter aims to analyze the case of France in order to confirm the usefulness of the strategy developed in past chapters for raising economic policy recommendations.

In all types of debates - regardless of topic - research findings, investigations, evaluations and media reports regarding aid will find one prominent question, namely whether there is any clear connection between aid and economic growth in countries that have received high amounts of foreign aid. One argument has been that the connection between a high amount of foreign aid and economic growth is none existing. However, this assumption has been questioned by reports that claims the opposite: that aid, with the right conditions, could have a positive effect on a country’s economic growth. This study makes an effort to examining the effects of foreign aid in Bolivia by looking at the country’s development process in terms of economic growth. Questions like - who were the main donors that contributed with foreign aid in Bolivia? In what way were this foreign aid applied? How do development agencies asses the macro economic impact of aid? - will be discussed and answered throughout the thesis. The findings of the study demonstrate the complexity of measuring development within a certain case. It depends on what one chose to include in the term as well as which area is being investigated. Furthermore, the results seems to vary between the different programs evaluated that has been shaped and implemented by foreign donors. However, drawing from the findings presented in this study, the result indicates that foreign aid in general has had a positive effect on Bolivia’s economic growth.

This dissertation is composed of three essays and analyzes the effects of both health outcomes and international trade on economic development and growth. In the first chapter, I develop a theoretical model using a Nelson-Phelps framework in order to establish a causal relationship between health outcomes and economic growth. I also econometrically test this approach to quantify the magnitude of the effects observed. Using the international epidemiological transition as a baseline and instrumental variable regression, I find that both life expectancy growth rates and initial levels of life expectancy are the main drivers of economic growth, and improvements in both indicators lead to significant, positive changes in the income per-capita growth rate. In the second chapter, I design an overlapping generations model that showcases how individuals determine their optimal fertility, education, labor supply, and life-cycle consumption decisions under uncertain survival probabilities. Under partial equilibrium, exogenous shocks in mortality lead to explicit changes in economic growth and development through the above mechanisms, but under general equilibrium, predictions are ambiguous due to offsetting substitution and income effects. I complement the theory with an empirical analysis, constructing age-specific birth rates, age-specific death rates, and life expectancies from the Demographic and Health Surveys in 36 Sub-Saharan African countries. Using system-GMM estimation, the results show that improvements in health will have a positive and statistically significant impact on economic growth and development. In the third chapter, I develop an analysis similar to Hausmann, Hwang, and Rodrik (2007), whose main argument is that what countries export has significant predicting power on its economic growth and development. Giving greater transparency to both the data collection and the empirical methodology, I replicate their research and instead use imports as a robustness check. The results confirm previous studies and shows that exports, not imports, matter for economic growth. Thus, we conclude that the type and quality of goods in which a country specializes and exports is directly related to its subsequent economic performance.

In this paper we put forward a Bayesian Model Averaging method aimed at performing inference under model uncertainty in the presence of potential spatial autocorrelation. The method uses spatial filtering in order to account for uncertainty in spatial linkages. Our procedure is applied to a dataset of income per capita growth and 50 potential determinants for 255 NUTS-2 European regions. We show that ignoring uncertainty in the type of spatial weight matrix can have an important effect on the estimates of the parameters attached to the model covariates. After integrating out the uncertainty implied by the choice of regressors and spatial links, human capital investments and transitional dynamics related to income convergence appear as the most robust determinants of growth at the regional level in Europe. Our results imply that a quantitatively important part of the income convergence process in Europe is influenced by spatially correlated growth spillovers.

Ce travail constitué de trois chapitres cherche à analyser l’impact du salaire minimum sur l’économie des départements français d’Amérique en se limitant aux effets sur la distribution des revenus et la croissance économique.Dans le premier chapitre, l’accent est mis sur les inégalités salariales telles qu’elles existent aux Antilles-Guyane, en comparaison avec la situation en France métropolitaine. Les inégalités de revenus restent fortes entre les catégories socioprofessionnelles dans les DFA. Le salaire moyen de l’ensemble des salariés de France métropolitaine est supérieur à celui des DFA.Le second chapitre présente tout d’abord les aspects historiques et réglementaires qui caractérisent le salaire minimum français et celui d’autres pays d’Europe. Le SMIC se classe en quatrième position parmi les salaires minimum les plus élevés d’Europe, et la France, le pays développé comptant la plus forte proportion de salariés au SMIC. Dans les Départements Français d’Amérique, les salariés payés au SMIC, bien plus nombreux en proportion qu’au niveau national, sont le plus souvent des femmes, des jeunes, des personnes peu qualifiées occupant un emploi à temps partiel dans les secteurs des services et du commerce. Il met également en évidence les effets du salaire minimum et de ses revalorisations sur la formation des salaires et le coût du travail. Les effets de diffusion du SMIC sont faibles et temporaires, variant de 0,1 à 0,2% tant en approche macroéconomique que microéconomique. Les hausses du SMIC entraînent une augmentation du coût du travail pour partie compensée par les allègements de charges octroyés aux entreprises.Le troisième chapitre contribue à la mise en lumière des interactions entre le salaire minimum, la croissance économique et la pauvreté dans la société Antillo-guyanaise. Il s’avère que le dynamisme de l’économie insulaire est loin d’avoir gommé tous les écarts de niveau de vie entre les DFA et la France métropolitaine, malgré l’alignement du salaire minimum et des prestations diverses. La simulation sur les données de l’enquête Budget de famille 2006 montre que la proportion de salariés au SMIC est faible dans le bas de l’échelle des revenus. Ces salariés sont répartis sur l’ensemble de l’échelle des niveaux de vie. Le SMIC occupe une place relativement importante dans le revenu disponible des ménages, y compris dans le haut de l’échelle des revenus.En conclusion, le niveau élevé du salaire minimum dans les départements français d’Amérique conduit au maintien d’un grand nombre de salariés payés au voisinage du SMIC. En dépit des allègements de cotisations sociales abaissant le coût du SMIC, les départements d’outre-mer demeurent des régions fortement touchées par le chômage et la pauvreté. De plus, les inégalités salariales se sont accrues entre les individus les plus modestes et les plus aisés de ces régions. La montée du chômage est un facteur aggravant de cet accroissement des inégalités. Si en effet, les résultats de notre étude permettent d’affirmer que le SMIC n’est pas le meilleur instrument pour lutter contre les inégalités salariales et la pauvreté, ils soulèvent en même temps la question d’un SMIC DOM en lien avec les conditions et capacités réelles des économies ultramarines. / This work consists of three parts seeking to analyze the impact of minimum wages on the French departments of America's economy by limiting the effects on the distribution of incomes and economic growth.In the first chapter, the focus is an overview of income inequality as they exist in the Antilles and Guiana, in comparison with the situation in France. Income inequalities remain high between occupational groups in the DFA. The average salary of all employees in mainland France is higher than the DFAThe second chapter first presents the historical and regulatory aspects that characterize the French minimum wage and that of other European countries. SMIC is the fourth highest minimum wage in Europe, and France developed country with the highest proportion of employees the minimum wage. In the French Departments of America, employees paid the minimum wage, many more in proportion than at national level, are most often women, youth, low-skilled people employed part-time in the service sectors and trade. It also highlights the impact of the minimum wage and its revaluation on the formation of wages and labor costs. SMIC diffusion effects are small and temporary, varying from 0.1 to 0.2% in both macroeconomic and microeconomic approach. The increases in the minimum wage lead to higher labor costs partly offset by expense reductions granted to companies. The third chapter contributes to highlighting the interaction between the minimum wage, economic growth and poverty in the Antillean-Guyanese society. It turns out that the dynamism of the island economy has all but erased all living differentials between overseas departments and metropolitan France, despite the alignment of the minimum wage and various benefits. The simulation on data from the 2006 survey of “Budget of families” shows that the proportion of employees with the minimum wage is low in the bottom of the income scale. These employees are spread over the entire scale of living. SMIC has an important place in household disposable income, including the top of the income scale.In conclusion, the high level of the minimum wage in the French departments of America led to the maintenance of a large number of employees paid near the minimum wage. Despite cuts in social security contributions lowering the cost of SMIC, departments remain areas with high unemployment and poverty. Moreover, wage inequality increased between the poorest and the wealthiest individuals in these areas. Rising unemployment is an aggravating factor of the increase in inequality. Since the results of our study make it possible to affirm SMIC is not the best tool to fight again wage inequalities and poverty, they also raise the question of a SMIC DOM linked with the real conditions and capacities of the overseas economies.

Trade unions and environmental movements are often seen as political opponents most prominently discussed in the form of the "jobs vs. environment dilemma". Based on historical examples of the conflict relations between trade unions and environmental groups in the Austrian energy sector, this paper showcases how the relationship between the two groups has changed from enmity to first attempts at alliance building. Drawing from analysis of union documents and problem-centred interviews conducted with Austrian unionists, it shows that newly emerging alliances between unions and environmental movements contain the seeds for a broad societal movement that can help overcome the paradigm of growth and actively engage in the creation of policies that support a social-ecological transformation.

The issue of energy consumption and its impact on economic growth is recurring today. Specifically in scenarios finiteness of energy sources, external price shocks of these inputs and the environmental agenda requiring replacement of the use of fossil fuels, this topic has found strong echo in the literature. Simultaneously, the existence of countries that have demonstrated strength for the growth of their economies, emerges as a privileged field of research which will put emphasis the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. In reference countries are the members of the group denominated BRICS. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are the members of this group and are characterized by growth rates above the world average, in addition to having leading positions in inflows of foreign direct investment, surpassing Europe and the United States. To carry out this study, we used World Bank data on time series on GDP, Consumption, Gross Fixed Capital and Number of Patents Required, the last two being employed as control variables and serving as a proxy for Capital Stock and Technological Progress, respectively. Were used as empirical methods of analysis two regression models with autoregressive and variables with a lag, so as to better capture the influence of time on the variables. The Energy Consumption was used as one of the dependent variable in one of the models and GDP as use in the other model, for each of the countries. The results showed, with the exception of South Africa, that the influence of the consumption of energy is fundamental to the maintenance of Economic Growth in the remaining four BRICS countries, so any government action aimed at changing the energy supply should consider this feature. / A temática do consumo de energia e seus impactos sobre o crescimento econômico é recorrente na atualidade. Especificamente em cenários de finitude de fontes de energia, choques externos nos preços desses insumos e a agenda ambiental exigindo a substituição do uso dos combustíveis fósseis, este tema tem encontrado forte eco na literatura especializada. Simultaneamente, a existência de países que tem demonstrado acentuado vigor quanto ao crescimento de suas economias, surge como um campo privilegiado de pesquisa onde será posto em destaque a relação entre consumo de energia e crescimento econômico. Os países em referência são os componentes do grupo denominado de BRICS. Brasil, Russia, India, China e África do Sul são os membros desse grupo e são caracterizados por taxas de crescimento acima da média mundial, além de apresentarem posições de liderança nos influxos de investimento direto estrangeiro, superando inclusive Europa e Estados Unidos. Para levar a efeito este estudo, utilizou-se dados do Banco Mundial em séries temporais referentes ao PIB, Consumo de Energia, Formação Bruta de Capital Fixo e Número de Patentes Regitradas, as duas últimas sendo empregadas como variáveis de controle e servindo como proxy de Estoque de Capital e Progresso Tecnológico, respectivamente. Foram utilizados como métodos empíricos de análise dois modelos de regressão com variáveis autorregressivas e com uma defasagem, como forma de captar melhor a influência do tempo sobre as variáveis. O Consumo de Energia foi utilizado como regressando em um dos modelos e o PIB como regressando no outro, para cada um dos países. Os resultados mostraram, com exceção da África do Sul, que a influência do Consumo de Energia é fundamental para a manutenção do Crescimento Econômico nos restantes quatro países do BRICS, portanto, qualquer ação governamental com o objetivo de alterar a oferta de energia deverá considerar este aspecto.

Cette thèse s'intéresse à la mesure et à l'analyse des effets de la diversité liée aux lieux (pays) de naissance d'une population. Nous montrons que la «diversité des lieux de naissance» est une dimension nouvelle de la diversité d'une population, qu'elle est conceptuellement et statistiquement distincte de la diversité ethnolinguistique ou génétique et que, contrairement à celles-ci, elle est corrélée positivement avec la productivité à long terme. Cet effet est plus important pour les immigrants qualifiés dans les pays riches. Nous montrons également que l'effet productif de la diversité est plus grand pour les immigrants qui sont proches culturellement des natifs du pays d'accueil - mais pas trop proches - et qui sont originaires de pays plus riches. Encore, étudions le lien entre la diversité des lieux de naissance et les attitudes vis-à-vis de l'immigration. Nous utilisons le World Values Survey pour 72 pays et montrons que les natifs qualifiés augmentent leur soutien à l'immigration lorsque la diversité des immigrants qualifiés est élevée. Les résultats sont robustes à l'utilisation du European Social Survey. Enfin, nous analysons le lien entre la diversité des lieux de naissance et les attitudes vis-à-¬vis de la redistribution en Europe. En utilisant des données de 29 pays Européens, nous constatons que les autochtones ont tendance à réduire leur soutien aux politiques de redistribution lorsque l'immigration est élevée. En outre, cet effet varie le long de la répartition des compétences des natifs et converge vers zéro pour les personnes éduquées; il est de plus robuste à l'utilisation de mesures plus précises des niveaux de compétences sur le marché du travail. / This thesis deals with the economic analysis of population diversity, specifically diversity in terms of people's countries of origin. We propose an index of birth-place diversity for the work force of 195 countries in the years 1990 and 2000. We show that birthplace diversity is a new dimension of population diversity that is conceptually and empirically distinct from ethno-linguistic and genetic measures of diversity and, unlike these, is positively correlated with long-run economic output. This effect is larger for skilled immigrants in richer countries and robust in a SLS setting. We also find the productive effect of diversity to be larger for immigrants who are culturally close (but not too close) to natives and those who come from richer origin countries. We also investigate the link between birthplace diversity and attitudes to immigration. Using the World Values Survey with data for 72 countries, we find that skilled natives increase their support for immigration when diversity of skilled immigrants is high. results are robust to using the European Social Survey and also persist in a SLS model. We also find evidence for negative preference effects of immigrant diversity for more ethnocentric individuals. Lastly, we analyze the link between birthplace diversity and attitudes to redistribution in Europe. Using data for 29 European countries, we find that native workers tend to lower their support for redistribution of income when immigration is high. In addition, this effect varies along the skill distribution of natives, converges towards zero for highly educated individuals and is robust to using more detailed measures of labor market skill.

The literature addressing the resource curse has been extensive. Many studies have put forth theories to explain the curse, but these theories are often refuted by new studies. Recently, there has been a theory that natural resource abundance leads to decreased economic freedom, which causes slower economic growth. Many of these studies have using frequentist testing to arrive at their conclusions. Although frequentist testing is widely used, there are several drawbacks. In particular, there is no way of addressing model uncertainty. Unless a study is able to incorporate every significant explanatory variable, the results will suffer from omitted variable bias. Recently, researchers have been applying Bayesian statistics to address the problem of model uncertainty. In this study, we apply Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to build a growth model, and see if natural resources have a negative effect on growth. We take the implementation of BMA a step further to see if there is an indirect negative effect of natural resources on economic freedom. However, contrary to previous studies, we were not able to find a negative relationship between resource abundance and economic freedom.