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The Relationship Between Health and Growth: When Lucas Meets Nelson-Phelps
Full text linkThis paper revisits the relationship between health and growth in light of modern endogenous growth theory. We propose a unified framework that encompasses the growth effects of both the rate of improvement of health and the level of health. Based on cross-country regressions over the period 1960-2000, where we instrument for both variables, we find that a higher initial level and a higher rate of improvement in life expectancy both have a significantly positive impact on per capita GDP growth. Then, restricting attention to OECD countries, we find supportive evidence that only the reduction in mortality below age forty generates productivity gains, which in turn may explain why the positive correlation between health and growth in cross-OECD country regressions appears to have weakened since 1960
Institutions, Finance and the Level of Development: the Impact on Entrepreneurship in Transition
Full text linkWe investigate the impact of institutions on entrepreneurial entry, based on a large cross-country sample, combining working age population data generated by the GEM project with macro level indicators. Our four key findings indicate that: (a) institutional obstacles to entrepreneurship have different impact in rich countries compared to poor countries; (b) institutional obstacles have a stronger impact on 'opportunity entrepreneurship' than on 'necessity entrepreneurship'; (c) two institutional indicators - property right protection and access to finance - appear to have a dominant impact on entrepreneurship; (d) institutions have a long term impact. More than ten years after the Soviet system imploded in Central and Eastern Europe, these countries still experience significantly lower levels of entrepreneurship than economies coming from different legal traditions
The Financing of Innovative Firms
Full text linkTo what extent are new and/or innovative firms fundamentally different from established firms, and therefore require a different form of financing? The theoretical background for this proposition is presented, and the empirical evidence on its importance is reviewed. Owing to the intangible nature of their investment, asymmetric-information and moral-hazard, these firms are more likely to be financed by equity than debt and behave in some cases as though they are cash-constrained, especially if they are small. Recognizing the role for public policy in this area, many countries have implemented specific policies to bring the cost of financing innovation more in line with the level that would prevail in the absence of market failures
Recent Trends in Household Wealth, 1983-2009: The Irresistible Rise of Household Debt
Full text linkI find here that the early and mid 2000s (2001 to 2007) witnessed both exploding debt and a consequent “middle class squeeze.” Median wealth grew briskly in the late 1990s and even faster in the 2000s. The inequality of net worth was up slightly during the 2000s. Indebtedness, which fell substantially during the late 1990s, skyrocketed in the early and mid 2000s. Among the middle class, the debt-income ratio reached its highest level in 24 years. The disparity in wealth holdings between African-American and white households was about the same in 2007 as in 1983, though Hispanics did show some relative gains on non-Hispainc whites over the years 2001 to 2007. Young households (under the age of 45) after some relative gains from 1983 to 1989, saw their relative wealth position deteriorate over the years 1989 to 2007. Projections to July 2009 on the basis of changes in stock and housing prices suggest that median wealth plunged by 36 percent and there was a fairly steep rise in wealth inequality, with the Gini coefficient advancing from 0.834 to 0.865.