The rate of economic growth varies extensively between different countries. The underlying reasons to the differences are dissimilarities in productivity and efficiency, which in turn seem to be affected by factors such as the institutional setup, the rate of economic freedom, the level of human and social capital, corruption and interpersonal trust.This thesis investigates the relationship between economic growth and the level of democracy in developing countries, as a well-functioning democracy to a large extent corresponds to an inclusive institutional setup. The empirical investigation is conducted with a regression analysis. Using secondary data from acknowledged organizations and institutes, possible factors that may affect average GDP per capita growth are examined. The estimations included in the regression are democracy, foreign direct investment, education expectancy, initial GDP per capita, population growth rate, life expectancy, corruption, Rule of Law and Internet users. The empirical result shows that democracy has no significant effect on growth, but suggests that the effect might be indirect since factors such as good maintenance of Rule of Law, low level of corruption, high interpersonal trust, a high level of economic freedom and enhanced property rights are empirically proven to correspond to well functioning institutions. This result is in accordance with previous research and seems to support the idea that a good institutional setup is important for economic growth.

<p>This dissertation presents two essays on endogenous growth and renewable resources.</p><p>The first essay explores the role of renewable resources in a tractable</p><p>model of endogenous growth driven by horizontal and vertical innovation in the closed economy.</p><p>The model is tractable in that it yields a complete, analytical characterization</p><p>of the path of utility and the associated welfare level. This property</p><p>is exploited to compare two cases of renewable resource management:</p><p>open access and full property rights. The first case involves a common</p><p>property problem in which agents ignore the long-term resource viability;</p><p>the second fully internalizes the dynamics of the resource stock.</p><p>Analysis shows that if the natural regeneration rate of the renewable</p><p>resource is too low, the tragedy of the commons occurs. If, instead,</p><p>the natural regeneration rate is sufficiently high, the steady-state</p><p>growth rate of the economy is identical across the two management</p><p>regimes. The reason is because there is no scale effect; that is,</p><p>the steady-state growth rate of the economy does not depend on the</p><p>labor or the resource endowment. However, the development path on</p><p>which the economy transits from the developing stage (no R\&D activity)</p><p>to the developed stage (positive R\&D activity) depends on the resource</p><p>management regime. In particular, a developing economy under full</p><p>property rights will cross its development threshold prior to one</p><p>under open access. This threshold depends on the size of the manufacturing</p><p>firms. When it becomes sufficiently large as a result of the decline</p><p>in the number of firms over time, there will be an incentive for the</p><p>remaining firms to conduct R\&D. Given the same number of manufacturing</p><p>firms, the firm size is larger under full property rights than under</p><p>open access due to higher nominal expenditure per capita. Therefore,</p><p>the development threshold will be reached sooner under full property</p><p>rights. In other words, the economy will start engaging in R\&D activities</p><p>sooner and more quickly accumulate knowledge, which is the source</p><p>of long-run growth. Moreover, switching from full property rights</p><p>to open access is welfare reducing due to two effects. The first is</p><p>through the price of the harvest good. Although the economy initially</p><p>enjoys a lower price of harvest good, the price gradually increases</p><p>as the resource becomes scarcer. Secondly, the competitive household</p><p>instantaneously loses the resource income and thus spends less on</p><p>manufacturing goods. This decreases the incentive for manufacturing</p><p>firms to conduct R\&D and results in a temporary deceleration of the</p><p>growth rate of TFP relative to the baseline case of full property</p><p>rights. The economy therefore experiences a cumulative loss of TFP</p><p>relative to the baseline, which is the novel feature of our model</p><p>of endogenous innovation. This mechanism has interesting and wide-ranging</p><p>implications for the role of resources in development and growth</p><p>The second essay extends the model of endogenous growth and renewable </p><p>resources into the open economy framework. The paper examines the effect of trade liberalization on resource-rich</p><p>countries, based on a two-country model in which the difference in</p><p>endowment of a renewable resource leads to asymmetric trade. In this</p><p>model, the resource-rich economy trades its harvest good and final</p><p>good for the final good from the resource-poor economy. Furthermore,</p><p>the renewable resource is considered to be under open access, where</p><p>there is no clear ownership over the resource, leading to overexploitation.</p><p>Long-term productivity, in this case, stems from endogenously-determined</p><p>knowledge accumulation. Under these circumstances, analysis shows</p><p>that the resource-rich country will lose from trade due to two effects.</p><p>The first effect is the instantaneous loss of income. Higher demand</p><p>for the harvest good, from the combined domestic and international</p><p>demand, diverts labor away from the production of technological goods</p><p>to the harvest sector, where rent is zero. The second effect is a</p><p>scarcity effect, which becomes more severe when trade results in a</p><p>greater demand for the harvest good. Overexploitation of the renewable</p><p>resource today leads to falling resource stock in the future, which</p><p>is then reflected in the higher price of harvest good, other things</p><p>being constant. Since the harvest good is an essential input to produce</p><p>the final good, given the same amount of the other inputs, the amount</p><p>of final good produced will also fall in the long run.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis aims to propose a policy-relevant science, technology and innovation indicator for developing countries. I firstly develop a model to examine the determination of innovativeness for a sample of 38 developing countries, based on endogenous growth theory and innovation systems literature. From econometric estimation, I find that R&D inputs, technology imports, and international connectedness are influential determinants of innovativeness in these countries. From this finding, I develop the Predicted Innovativeness Index for Developing Countries (INNÔDEX), a composite indicator that ranks countries according to their innovative capabilities.

Beginning with the paper of Zhang (2000), we develop a pecuniary transactions cost (TC) approach to build up a monetary endogenous growth model and examine the principal relationships and results concerning nominal interest rate targeting and growth. Meanwhile, according to Hahn (1991) and Eriksson (1995) pointed out there has been a trend decline in labor supply, we introduce the labor-leisure choice of Turnovsky (2000) to amend the utility function and the production function. In the comparison of two macro-models, we can conclude: 1. Under the inelastic labor supply endogenous growth model, if the central bank raises the nominal interest rate targeting will damage to the growth rate. 2. Under the elastic labor supply endogenous growth model, if the central bank raise the nominal interest rate targeting will induce ambiguous effect of the growth rate depending on the labor-leisure choice reaction of nominal interest rate, the bigger reaction may get the higher growth rate.

This dissertation adds to the literature on international openness and economic growth by studying and quantifying the effects of openness to trade and multinational production using a model of endogenous innovation with firm heterogeneity. The first chapter discusses the contribution of this dissertation to the theoretical and empirical literature on international openness. The second chapter studies and quantifies the long-run effects of openness to trade and multinational production in the context of advanced economies using a model of endogenous innovation with firm heterogeneity. Counterfactual experiments conducted using a calibrated version of a theoretical model find that the US would experience a significant welfare cost in consumption terms by restricting openness to both trade and horizontal multinational production with other OECD countries, with the growth effect accounting for a substantial part of the cost. Chapter Three extends the theoretical model presented in Chapter Two to include features specific to the North-South context. I show that allowing for the possibility that the South may switch from being an imitator to becoming an innovator is essential for examining the long-run growth effect of stronger intellectual property rights. In particular, the North and the South both prefer stronger intellectual property rights because this will achieve the fastest long-run economic growth. If the South is an imitator country, the North needs to maintain its absolute advantage in technology creation by maintaining a sufficiently large pool of uncopied ideas. Otherwise both countries will fall into a slow-growth equilibrium in the long run. In Chapter Four, I account for transitional dynamics and study the gains from openness and stronger intellectual property rights that arise in the North-South context. Counterfactual experiments based on a calibrated version of the model presented in Chapter Three find that the transitional welfare gains from further trade openness between China and the OECD countries can be significant. In contrast to the existing growth literature, a deterrence of imitation has limited welfare effects when the South can switch from being an imitator to becoming an innovator country. This points to a source of potential bias in the welfare estimates provided by the existing literature. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2012-05-18 10:18:34.338

This paper investigates the growth factors of EU regions in the 1990s. We test the hypothesis that regional growth is determined by endogenous growth factors, trade and technological catching-up in a growth accounting framework. Our estimations suggest that growth of EU regions is positively related to the accumulation of physical and human capital. Innovation activity as well as international technology transfer are important for growth. The latter is facilitated if a region is well endowed with human capital. Further, we observe that technological catching-up is promoted by intensive foreign trade, a result which underlines the importance of trade openness for EU regions. (authors' abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

In endogenous growth models, in contrast to the neoclassical growth models, government expenditure and taxation have an effect on the long run growth rate. In this thesis I examine whether the empirical evidence support the predictions of endogenous growth models or the neoclassical growth models in relation to fiscal policy. For this purpose I use panel data for fifteen European Union (EU) member and thirty-three developing countries between the years 1970 and 1999. I specifically test the following two propositions. The first proposition states that distortionary taxation decreases growth while non-distortionary taxation does not. The second, states that productive government expenditure increases growth while non-productive expenditure does not. The empirical results are quite different between European Union countries and developing countries. The results do not support endogenous growth especially for developing countries.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Researchers tend to disagree on the direction of the relation among R&amp;D and economic growth, suggesting that if economic performance determines R&amp;D investments countries might overinvest in their R&amp;D expenditure. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to shed new light to this question by first establishing a relation among the variables and thereafter investigate the Granger causality between them. This paper is based on a panel study consisting of 60 countries, with various levels of income during the period 1996-2015. Using a fixed effects model, we can establish a positive relation between growth in R&amp;D expenditure and GDP growth and using Granger causality tests and the Toda-Yamamoto augmented Granger causality tests, we can conclude that the growth of R&amp;D expenditure determines economic performance in the short-run for countries in all income levels, however no conclusions can be made regarding the direction of Granger causality in the long-run. Hence, our results show that R&amp;D investments stimulate economic growth and should, to some extent, be favoured by policy regardless of a nation's level of development.

Submitted by Daniella Santos (daniella.santos@fgv.br) on 2009-08-07T12:39:31Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Marcelo_Zouain_Pedroni.pdf: 659759 bytes, checksum: 3609c2455d6be1829e847dd880a510b3 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Antoanne Pontes(antoanne.pontes@fgv.br) on 2009-08-07T17:39:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Marcelo_Zouain_Pedroni.pdf: 659759 bytes, checksum: 3609c2455d6be1829e847dd880a510b3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2009-08-07T17:39:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Marcelo_Zouain_Pedroni.pdf: 659759 bytes, checksum: 3609c2455d6be1829e847dd880a510b3 (MD5) / Lucas (2009) has proposed a two-sector model to account for patterns in growth data. However, Lucas’s analysis does not involve any inter-temporal decision by the consumers. The behavior of the variables is determined a priori by the technology that is chosen. Rodriguez (2006) proposed a model with the twosector technology presented by Lucas adding an inter-temporal decision process for the consumer. In addition to the results obtained by Rodriguez, we characterize sufficiency and provide elucidating examples of particular cases of the model. Moreover, we make an effort to derive new insights from the model and clarify some technical points. Finally, we obtain conditions under which the economy invests in human capital even though benefits are deferred. / Lucas (2009) propôs um modelo com dois setores para explicar padrões observados em dados de crescimento. Entretanto, a análise de Lucas não envolve uma decisão intertemporal para o consumidor. O comportamento das variáveis é determinado à priori pela tecnologia escolhida. Rodriguez (2006) propôs um modelo com a tecnologia com dois setores apresentada por Lucas adicionando um processo de decisão intertemporal para o consumidor. Adicionalmente aos resultados obtidos por Rodriguez, nós caracterizamos suficiência e apresentamos exemplos esclarecedores de casos particulares do modelo. Ademais, nós fazemos um esforço para derivar novos insights e esclarecer alguns pontos técnicos. Finalmente, nós obtemos condições sob as quais a economia investe em capital humano mesmo com benefícios diferidos.