Economic Growth

This study explores the long-term impact of population ageing on labour supply and human capital investment in Canada, as well as the induced effects on productive capacity. The analysis is conducted with a dynamic computable overlapping generations model where ...

6 Fiji is an exception in some respects in that political parties are fairly stable and there is little party hopping and not a high turnover of politicians. However, this political party stability is based on the ethnic Indian-indigenous Fijian racial divide, and so at the heart of the stability and the lack of party hopping is the desire to hold power by appealing to ethnic differences. 7 Such clientelism politics is not restricted to the Pacific. Keefer (2004) mentions similar behavior in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It is also not restricted to developing countries but appears to be much less common in developed countries. argues that this is because national candidates and parties are more able to make credible promises about the delivery of public good provision.

This study takes a new look at the non-linear dynamics of the relationship between taxes and growth by considering six major tax instruments, namely personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, consumption taxes, social security contributions, payroll & workforce taxes, and property taxes, which account for a significant share of total tax revenues in the countries in the sample. To do so, we use a panel data set of nine economies selected on the basis of the availability of data for the period 1981-2017. Unlike most other studies, we calculate marginal tax rates for each tax instrument in the sample countries. We also use a relatively new and more appropriate econometric approach, namely the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model developed by González et al. (2017) to address endogeneity and heterogeneity issues. The main empirical result of the study is that there is a threshold effect in the relationship between individual tax instruments and growth. More specifically, the results show that there is a robust negative relationship between individual tax instruments and growth both below and above the thresholds that are endogenously determined. Overall, the empirical results suggest that corporate income taxes are the most detrimental (or least beneficial) to long-run growth, followed by personal income taxes, consumption taxes, social security contributions, payroll & workforce taxes, and property taxes, respectively. These results suggest that income taxes are growth-harming taxes, suggesting that policymakers should focus on other taxes rather than income taxes to promote growth in the long run.

Numerous studies have focused on delineating the relationship between tourism and economic growth. In this article, we present the results of a rigorous meta-regression analysis based on 545 estimates drawn from 113 studies that empirically tested the tourism-led growth hypothesis (TLGH). The results suggest the presence of publication bias in the literature on this topic, where the majority of studies report positive and statistically significant estimates. Findings provide support for the TLGH, but they also suggest that the estimates are sensitive to a number of factors that are related to country, data, specification, and estimation characteristics, and time span. Such sensitivities suggest that greater emphasis should be placed on reporting estimates of the relationship between tourism and economic growth across a variety of methodological characteristics and specification and estimation choices. The implications of the results for theory development are also discussed.

Hamburg: Junius-Verlag, 2019.

Degrowth oder Postwachstum ist ein dynamisches Forschungsfeld und Bezugspunkt vielfältiger sozial-ökologischer Bewegungen. Postwachstum ist nicht nur eine grundlegende Kritik an der Hegemonie des Wirtschaftswachstums. Es ist auch eine Vision für eine andere Gesellschaft, die angesichts von Klimawandel und globaler Ungleichheit Pfade für grundlegende Gesellschaftsveränderung skizziert. Dieser Band macht erstmals den Versuch einer systematischen Einführung. Er diskutiert die Geschichte von Wachstum und Wirtschaftsstatistiken und rekonstruiert die zentralen Formen der Wachstumskritik: ökologische, soziale, kulturelle, Kapitalismus-, feministische, Industrialismus- sowie Süd-Nord-Kritik. Und er gibt einen Überblick zu den wichtigsten Vorschlägen, Konzepten und Praktiken, die er zugleich politisch einordnet.

»Souverän, aber bündig, breit gefächert, aber nuanciert – eine solche Einführung in das Postwachstumsdenken hat gefehlt! Konkrete Utopien haben ihre heimlichen Schlüsselwörter: Obergrenze und selektives Wachstum, Gemeinwohl und Solidarität, Commons und Konvivalität. Es ist an der Zeit, sie auszuprobieren und einzuüben, bevor sie unversehens in aller Munde sind!«
Wolfgang Sachs, Herausgeber des Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power

»Kompakt, sorgfältig, inspirierend. Degrowth/Postwachstum zur Einführung bietet sowohl einen spannenden und differenzierten Einstieg für Anfänger_innen, als auch eine systematische, tiefgreifende und kritische Analyse der verschiedenen Strömungen, die auch Expert_innen überraschen wird. Von Kritik und Utopie bis hin zu aktivistischen Interventionen geben die Autor_innen einen umfassenden Überblick über die internationale Degrowth-Debatte in ihren Differenzen, Widersprüchen und Potentialen für eine radikale sozial-ökologische Transformation.«
Barbara Muraca, Autorin von Gut Leben: Eine Gesellschaft jenseits des Wachstums

Adaptive radial-based direction sampling (ARDS) algorithms are specified for Bayesian analysis of models with nonelliptical, possibly, multimodal target distributions. A key step is a radial-based transformation to directions and distances. After the transformations a Metropolis-Hastings method or, alternatively, an importance sampling method is applied to evaluate generated directions. Next, distances are generated from the exact target distribution by means of the numerical inverse transformation method. An adaptive procedure is applied to update the initial location and covariance matrix in order to sample directions in an efficient way.

Environmental pollution is nowadays one of the main challenges of the world. The global economic growth and the associated environmental degradation have put environmental protection at the forefront of attention. Regarding the aim of economic growth and its impact on environmental quality, the effect of various economic and human factors on environmental pollution and degradation is increasingly gaining importance in Iran. This study investigated the effects of economic growth, energy consumption, trade liberalization, urbanization, financial development, and human development on ecological footprint and environmental degradation in Iran over the period 1971-2015 using the Markov switching-error correction method (MS-ECM). Based on the results, the environmental Kuznets hypothesis was confirmed for the ecological carbon footprint with a reversed-U shape. Economic growth, urbanization, and energy use were found to have a positive and significant effect on environmental degradation, while financial development negatively influenced environmental degradation. Also, human development had a positive effect on the ecological carbon footprint. Finally, it is recommended to save energy, especially fossil fuels, by using clean energy, increase environmental awareness, and enforce strict environmental monitoring.

The convergence hypothesis maintains that an economy whose productivity lags behind other economies has a potential to grow faster. We introduce a procedure for testing this hypothesis and apply it to 24 OECD countries for the period 1950 ± 1990. Our approach is an attempt to capture the economics of the convergence hypothesis, while avoiding the problems associated with two popular tests of convergence, namely b-convergence and s-convergence. An application of an ARMA process to our sample data finds only modest support for the convergence hypothesis in the OECD during the postwar era. Patterns of investment, government consumption, and exports largely explain the observed convergence in the OECD. D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.