Search results for " Economic Growth"
showing 10 items of 302 documents
Income Inequality and Technology Diffusion: Evidence from Developing Countries*
2011
We study the effect of within-country income inequality on the diffusion of mobile phones using data on market penetration in a sample of developing countries from 1985 to 1998. Mobile phones are an example of international technology, originating in industrialized countries and diffusing worldwide. We find that income inequality, as measured by the income share of the highest earning deciles, has a positive effect on the early diffusion of mobile phones and that the estimated effect becomes greater when a measure of agricultural endowments is used as an instrument. The instrumental variable results are robust to weak instruments. Our findings suggest that the diffusion of new technologies …
Forecasting Errors of New Venture Survival
2014
This article studies entrepreneurs' forecast errors around market entry. Using data on nascent entrepreneurs in the U.S. and start-ups in Finland, we find that besides being overoptimistic on average in both countries, entrepreneurs' survival expectations can barely distinguish survival from exits. Moreover, about one fourth of the entrepreneurs do not provide an estimate for the survival of a typical venture. However, among those that do provide it, the estimates are less overoptimistic. We also compare the forecast accuracy of entrepreneurs to those of macroeconomic forecasters. Our findings provide guidance for the development of positive theories of entrepreneurial belief formation and …
Small business and entrepreneurship: their role in economic and social development
2017
Since the 1980s, small business owners and entrepreneurs have been receiving greater recognition as drivers of economic growth. Recently, several studies (Forsman 2011; McKeever, Anderson, and Jack...
Asymmetric decentralisation, economic cycle, regional and local government’s borrowing in Spain
2014
This paper investigates the evolution of sub-central government borrowing in Spain over the period 1996–2011. The arguments and figures provided show that the intense process of political and fiscal decentralisation that took place over the 1990s and 2000s did not lead to higher debt ratios in terms of GDP at these tiers of government until 2007. Although a kind of overspending bias was in effect until the late 2000s, the paper shows that the evolution of GDP and tax revenues provided regional and local governments with enough resources to vigorously pursue their devolved public policy responsibilities and still keep their debt ratios under control. However, since 2008, when the world finan…
How do Banking Crises Impact on Income Inequality?
2012
We show that banking crises have an important effect on income distribution: inequality increases before banking crisis episodes and sharply declines afterwards. We also find that, while a large government size does not per se seem to reduce inequality, a rise in financial depth (i.e. better access to credit provided by the banking sector) contributes to a more equal distribution of income.
World Interest Rates and Inequality: Insight from the Galor - Zeira Model
2018
In this paper, we study the relationship between changes in the world interest rate and within-country inequality during the 1985–2005 period in which the world interest rate sharply declined. In line with the predictions of the seminal model of Galor and Zeira [Income distribution and macroeconomics. Review of Economic Studies 60, 35–52], the analysis suggests that the decrease in the world interest rate is associated with a decrease in inequality in poor countries and an increase in inequality in rich ones.
Decentralization and growth: what if the cross-jurisdiction approach had met a dead end?
2013
International audience; The relationship between decentralization and economic growth is generally studied from a perspective stressing universal or quasi-universal regularities across jurisdictions. That approach has generated many insights but seems to reach its limits. The paper explains why it allows contrasting positions with regard to the benefits of decentralization even among proponents of free and competitive markets. And it seems from the empirical literature that no robust and economically significant cross-jurisdiction relation between decentralization and economic performance or growth, except perhaps their independence, has been found. The absence of a relation valid across ju…
Does one size fit all? The impact of cognitive skills on economic growth
2016
Les Documents de Travail de l'IREDU, n°2016-1; This paper tests for heterogeneous effects of cognitive skills on economic growth across countries. Using a new extended dataset on cognitive skills and controlling for potential endogeneity, we find that the magnitude of the effect is about 60 per cent higher for low-income countries compared to high-income countries, and it more than doubles when low TFP countries are compared to high TFP countries. There are also marked differences across geographic regions. Using data on the share of the population with advanced and minimum skill levels, our results also indicate that high-income countries should focus on increasing the number of high skill…
Local development through social and territorial innovation: an exploratory case study
2017
This investigation aims to examine innovation in a selected successful Portuguese social venture (The Cooperative Terra Chã) and to analyse the extent to which innovative social ventures are able to contributeto local development. Specifically, the paper highlights the activities developed by the social organization in response to the needs of particular (micro) segments of society and illustrates which key factors triggered thesuccess of the examined social initiative. A case study methodology is used to describe the distinctive characteristics and strategies pursued by the managers of the social venture and to establish the links between the opportunities for social innovation and the ter…
Fiscal adjustments, labour market flexibility and unemployment
2014
Using a panel of 17 countries for 1978-2009, we find that tax-driven consolidations increase unemployment by 0.25 percentage points. Labour market flexibility mitigates this: a one-point rise in the flexibility index reduces youth (long-term) unemployment by 0.6-0.7 (1.8-2.2) percentage points.