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Escaping Satiation
The collection of papers presented in this special issue arose out of two events. The first was the symposium "Escaping Satiation - Increasing Product Variety, Preference Change and the Demand Side of Economic Growth" which was held at the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, in December 1997. The Fritz Thyssen Foundation provided financial support for this seminal symposium which is gratefully acknowledged. Wilhelm Ruprecht was of great help in preparing the symposium and I would like to express my gratitude to hirn on this occasion. Many stimulating exchanges with hirn over the past few years while he was a research associate at the Institute working on long term changes in consumption convinced me of the relevance and importance of this problem for understanding modem economic growth. I also owe thanks to many people who encouraged me to go ahead with the symposium, among them Stanley Metcalfe, Carl Christian von Weizsäcker, and also Ehud Zuscovitch, who died so unexpectedly last year.
The Wealth of Religions
How religious beliefs and practices can influence the wealth of nations Which countries grow faster economically—those with strong beliefs in heaven and hell or those with weak beliefs in them? Does religious participation matter? Why do some countries experience secularization while others are religiously vibrant? In The Wealth of Religions, Rachel McCleary and Robert Barro draw on their long record of pioneering research to examine these and many other aspects of the economics of religion. Places with firm beliefs in heaven and hell measured relative to the time spent in religious activities tend to be more productive and experience faster growth. Going further, there are two directions ...
A Life Cycle for Clusters?
This book studies the determinants of cluster survival by analyzing their adaptability to change in the economic environment. Linking theoretic knowledge with empirical observations, a simulation model (based in the N/K method) is developed, which explains when and why the cluster's architecture assists or hampers adaptability. It is found that architectures with intermediate degrees of division of labor and more collective governance forms foster adaptability.
An Economist’s Guide to Economic History
Without economic history, economics runs the risk of being too abstract or parochial, of failing to notice precedents, trends and cycles, of overlooking the long-run and thus misunderstanding ‘how we got here’. Recent financial and economic crises illustrate spectacularly how the economics profession has not learnt from its past. This important and unique book addresses this problem by demonstrating the power of historical thinking in economic research. Concise chapters guide economics lecturers and their students through the field of economic history, demonstrating the use of historical thinking in economic research, and advising them on how they can actively engage with economic histor...
Consumption Structure and Macroeconomics
This book offers a novel perspective that allows to incorporate changing consumption and production structure into models of economic growth. Starting from the empirical observation that income and consumption structure are closely related, it develops a tractable theoretical framework which enables to analyze macroeconomic models consistent with these empirical facts. As a result, central macroeconomic phenomena are better understood: the reasons behind long-run growth, structural change, and the influence of inequality on innovations and growth.
Variable Income Equivalence Scales
1.1 A Brief Overview An extensive body of empirical and theoretical literature deals with the mea surement of social welfare. This body can be decomposed in several different but related topics, all of which have implications for empirical studies in wel fare economics. One of these topics are household equivalence scales which help to compare welfare levels across households that differ in composition. An equivalence scale relates the income of any arbitrary household type to the income ofa referencehouseholdsuch that both households are equally well-off. Differences in household needs arise from differences in the households' de mographic composition which is, for instance, given by the number, age, and sex of the household members. The increase of household needs is not neces sarily proportional to the increase in the number of household members. Such a non-proportionality, for example, results from differences in the needs of adults and children, economies ofscale arising from the division of fixed costs among the household members, welfare gains from household production, and from common consumption ofcommodities bearing a within-household public good component.
Unemployment Dynamics in the United States and West Germany
In writing this book, I increasingly became aware of the extent to which much of the finest social science research has been devoted to the issue of unemployment. Unemployment rightly is a key issue in the social sciences for search of social and political answers to the economic, social and psychological distress caused by un certainty and macroeconomic change. I was glad to find my own worries shared by eminent and respected scholars: George Akerlof once confessed to pursue the study of unemployment ultimately because of his father's distress from fear of un employment, and Wout Ultee started research on unemployment from the consid eration that parents' talk about unemployment risks shoul...
The Evolution of Industrial Districts
Italian industrial districts (IDs) recently attracted international attention because their performance during the last few decades contradicted the alleged weakness of industrial structures based on SMEs in "traditional" sectors. The book analyses some developments taking place in Italian IDs and local systems of production that can represent a new stage of evolution for the backbone of the Italian economy. Based on the extensive use of original databases three main trajectories of change in IDs are presented. The first trajectory is the increasing role of "groups" of manufacturing SMEs arising from mergers and acquisitions as well as spin-off growth processes at the "family firms" level. The second one is the consolidation of innovation capabilities in IDs. And the third one is the internationalisation process of Italian IDs through both trade and foreign direct investment. The essays suggest that Italian IDs are again evolving by coherent adaptations which will have, however, uncertain outcomes.
Public Debt and Endogenous Growth
This book considers public debt dynamics in various endogenous growth mod els, namely the AK model and explicit models of innovation and human cap ital accumulation. Furthermore, the closed economy, the small open economy and a two-country world are analysed. In the closed economy model, the focus is on budget deficit and public debt dynamics and their influence on capital growth and output growth. Then, in the open economy model, the effects on foreign debt growth are considered. In a two-country setting, public debt growth in one country affects growth in the other country. In each scenario the government either fixes the deficit ratio or the tax rate. For both strategies the steady state ...
Money Demand in Europe
The first of January 1999 marked the beginning of a macroeconomic experi ment without precedent in modern history. For the first time eleven European countries agreed to abolish their local currencies in favour of a single one, the Euro. Not surprisingly, the necessary preparatory process has been accompa nied by an intensive discussion about the best way to manage the new Euro currency properly. To spur on that discourse was the principal motivation for this thesis. The introductory chapter attempts to bridge economic and econometric views on money demand analysis. It should help to motivate estimation proce dures and to standardize interpretation techniques, hopefully initiating further discussion in that direction. It intends to make the following chapters more accessible. In this thesis I approach the general subject in two principle ways. In chapter 3 I consider technical issues dealing with time series with shifts in the mean. Two years ago, Helmut Liitkepohl and Pentti Saikkonen asked me to join in on a related project which became the cornerstone of this chapter. I have very much appreciated the highly instructive collaboration with both these scholars.
