Search results for "Poverty trap"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
Human Capital Inequality, Life Expectancy and Economic Growth
2006
This article presents a model in which inequality affects per capita income when individuals decide to invest in education taking into account their life expectancy, which depends to a large extent on the human capital of their parents. Our results show the existence of multiple steady states depending on the initial distribution of education. The low steady state is a poverty trap in which children raised in poor families have low life expectancy and work as non-educated workers. The empirical evidence suggests that the life expectancy mechanism explains a major part of the relationship between inequality and human capital accumulation. Increases in life expectancy and human capital accumu…
Space-time analysis of GDP disparities among European regions : a Markov chains approach
2004
The purpose of this paper is to study the evolution of the disparities between 138 European regions over the 1980-1995 period. We characterize the regional per capita GDP cross-sectional distribution by means of nonparametric estimations of density functions and we model the growth process as a first-order stationary Markov chain. Spatial effects are then introduced within the Markov chain framework using regional conditioning (Quah, 1996b) and spatial Markov chains (Rey, 2001). The results of the analysis indicate the persistence of regional disparities, a progressive bias toward a poverty trap and the importance of geography to explain the convergence process.
Neoclassical growth, manufacturing agglomeration, and terms of trade
2007
This paper presents an integrated view of economic growth, development traps, and economic geography. We explain why there is income convergence among some countries (neoclassical regime) and income divergence among others (poverty trap regime). Income convergence (divergence) and manufacturing industry diffusion (agglomeration) are re-enforcing each other in a cumulative process. Moreover, trade openness may trigger a catch-up process of an economy that is stuck in a \"poverty trap\". This catch-up is characterized by an increase in the investment-to-GDP ratio and an improvement of the terms of trade. A new dynamic welfare gain of trade liberalization is identified, which is likely to be l…
Appropriate technology in a Solovian nonlinear growth model
2007
We propose a Solovian growth model with a convex-concave production function and international technological spillovers. We test the empirical implications of the model, analysing the effects of the productivity slowdown that followed the oil shocks of the 1970s. We argue that this slowdown, altering the world income distribution, affected the pattern of international technological spillovers, taking the poorest countries further away from the technological leaders, and therefore unable to exploit their technologies. The result is the emergence of a poverty trap for low-income countries.