James B Ang

The budgetary implications of an aging population in the OECD are often considered dire. This study argues that this need not be the case provided that older educated workers are more innovative than their younger counterparts, and that workers with tertiary education stay in the labor force until their 60s. Using a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1870-2009, this paper estimates the productivity growth effects of education for different age groups, through the channels of innovation and imitation. The results show that educated workers are highly innovative and that the propensity to innovate increases sharply with age.

This paper tests Jared Diamond’s influential theory that an earlier transition from a hunter-gatherer society to agricultural production induces higher levels of technology adoption. Using a proxy for the geographic diffusion barriers of Neolithic technology and an index of biogeographic endowments to isolate the exogenous component of the timing of agricultural transition, the findings indicate that countries that experienced earlier transitions to agriculture were subsequently more capable of adopting new technologies in 1000 BC, 1 AD and 1500 AD. These results lend strong support to Diamond’s hypothesis.

It is well established in the literature that financial development (FD) is conducive to growth, and yet the channels through which FD affects growth are not well understood. Using a unique new panel data set for 21 OECD countries over the past 140 years, this paper examines the extent to which FD transmits to growth through ideas production, savings, fixed investment, and schooling. Unionization and agricultural share are used as instruments for FD. The empirical results show that FD influences growth through all four channels. In particular, ideas production is found to be the most important channel through which FD impacts on growth.

The importance of the length of state history for understanding variations in income levels and growth rates across countries has received a lot of attention in the recent literature on long-run comparative development. The literature, however, is silent about its origins. This paper explores the determinants of statehood by considering the potential roles of an early transition to fully-fledged agricultural production, the adoption of state-of-the-art military innovations, and the opportunity for economic interaction with the regional economic leader. The results demonstrate that only the association between economic interaction and the rise and development of the state is statistically robust.

This paper attempts to shed some light on the role of financial sector policies in generating new knowledge, drawing on the experience of one of the fastest growing and largest developing countries. Using time series data for India over the period 1963–2005, the results indicate that interest rate restraints help generate ideas. Other financial repressionist policies, in the form of high reserve and liquidity requirements, as well as significant directed credit controls, appear to have a dampening effect on ideas production. These results lend some support to the argument that some form of financial sector reforms may help stimulate economic growth via increasing technological innovation.

This article examines the influence of quality-adjusted educational attainment on growth and tests whether it facilitates the transfer of technology developed at the frontier for a panel of 60 countries. Using outcomes of pathogen stress as instruments, the results show that quality-adjusted educational attainment and its interaction with distance to the frontier play important roles for growth.

We demonstrate that existing differences in financial development between countries can be explained by the cumulative variations in their levels of state experience since 1 AD. This dimension of early historical development has not been considered so far in studies that analyze the determinants of financial development. The estimation allows for all major theories established in the literature as possible explanations for the disparity of financial development across the globe. Significance of state antiquity is robust to the use of alternative indicators of financial development, the consideration of different lengths and periods of statehood, and controlling for a range of variables or country characteristics. Our results highlight the important role of statehood in propelling financial system development, and thus provide some support to the view that historically determined differences in the early-start developmental advantage provide the basis for explaining the fundamental sources of variations in financial development between countries today.

We study the role of institutional development as a causal mechanism of history affecting current economic performance. Several indicators capturing different dimensions of early development in 1500 AD are used to remove the endogenous component of the variations in institutions. These indicators are adjusted with large-scale movements of people across international borders using the global migration matrix of Putterman and Weil (2010) to account for the fact that the ancestors of a population have facilitated the diffusion of knowledge when they migrate. The exogenous component of institutions due to historical development is found to be a significant determinant of current output. By demonstrating that the relationship between early development and current economic performance works through the channel of institutions and that better institutions can be traced back to historical factors, the results of this paper shed some light on how history has played a role in shaping long-run comparative development.

Theory, historiography, and empirical evidence suggest that agriculture is the key to economic development. This article examines the extent to which productivity advances in British agriculture during the period 1620–1850 were driven by technological progress. Measuring technology by patents and new book titles on agricultural methods, the results are consistent with endogenous growth theory, indicating that technological progress has played a significant role in agricultural productivity advances.

This paper examines the importance of the domestic research and development stock and foreign knowledge spillovers on total factor productivity for six Asian miracle economies over the period from 1955 to 2006. The productivity effects of international knowledge spillovers through the following channels are considered: imports, exports, inward foreign direct investment, patents, geographical proximity, and the general channel. The general channel is a transmission mechanism where knowledge spillovers occur automatically and do not pass through any specific channel. The estimates show that knowledge has been transmitted through all the channels considered but that the import channel and the general channel have probably been the most important ones for the Asian miracle economies.

Although ideas production plays a critical role for growth, there has been only a modicum of research on the role played by financial forces in fostering new inventions. Drawing on Schumpeterian growth theory, this paper tests the roles of risk capital and private credit in stimulating knowledge production. Using panel data for 77 countries over the period 1965–2009, we find that countries with more developed financial systems are more innovative. A stronger patent protection framework, on the other hand, curbs innovative production.

Using data for six Asian miracle economies over the period
from 1953 to 2006, this paper examines the extent to which growth has been driven by R&D and tests which second-generation endogenous growth model is most consistent with the data. The results give strong support to Schumpeterian growth theory but only limited support to semiendogenous growth theory. Furthermore, it is shown that R&D has played a key role for growth in the Asian miracle economies.

In this article, we provide a comparative account of the evolution of private saving in India and Malaysia, and analyze how policy changes in the financial sector and pension system help explain differences in their saving performance. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds estimation procedure, we find a fairly robust long-run relationship between private saving and its determinants in both countries. Consistent with the predictions made in the life cycle model, our results indicate that higher income growth stimulates private saving and an increase in age dependency retards private saving. The results provide some support for the hypothesis that financial liberalization results in lower private saving in both countries. The evidence also indicates that expected pension benefits tend to stimulate private saving in India, but that the reverse is found in Malaysia.

This paper attempts to identify the key factors behind Malaysia’s remarkable savings performance. Drawing on the life cycle theory, the saving function is estimated by incorporating other relevant structural features and institutional settings of the Malaysian economy into the specification. Particular emphasis has been placed on the roles of financial factors in mobilizing funds in the private sector. The results suggest that financial deepening and increased banking density tend to encourage private savings. Development of insurance markets and liberalization of the financial system, however, tend to exert a dampening effect on private savings.

The main objective of this paper is to explore the determinants of private consumption growth volatility in India, focusing on the role of financial sector policies. Using data for India over the period 1950–2005, the results show that the implementation of financial repressionist policies is strongly associated with lower consumption volatility. The results remain robust after controlling for a wide range of macroeconomic shocks and variables. The presence of a threshold effect implies that the benefits of financial reforms in reducing consumption volatility can only be reaped when the financial system becomes sufficiently liberalized. The results also indicate that the presence of a more open financial system may serve to dampen fluctuations in private consumption.

This paper focuses on examining the effects of financial development and liberalization on knowledge accumulation. The results consistently show that while financial development facilitates the accumulation of new ideas, the implementation of financial reform policies is negatively associated with it. The undesirable effects of financial liberalization are found to operate through the triggering of crises and volatility in the financial system. There is also evidence supporting the hypothesis that financial liberalization reallocates talent from the innovative sector to the financial system, thus retarding technological deepening. Moreover, the findings also suggest that increased R&D activity and the presence of a stronger intellectual property rights protection framework tend to have beneficial effects on knowledge accumulation.

Using long historical data for Britain over the period 1620–2006, this paper seeks to explain the importance of innovative activity, population growth and other factors in inducing the transition from the Malthusian trap to the post-Malthusian growth regime. Furthermore, the paper tests the ability of two competing second-generation endogenous growth models to account for the British growth experience. The results suggest that innovative activity was an important force in shaping the Industrial Revolution and that the British growth experience is consistent with Schumpeterian growth theory.

The main objective of this paper is to explore the impact of financial sector reforms, financial deepening, and intellectual property protection on the accumulation of knowledge for one of the world’s largest developing countries. The findings indicate that increased intellectual property rights protection is associated with higher knowledge accumulation. While financial deepening facilitates the accumulation of ideas, the implementation of a series of financial liberalization policies is found to have a non-linear effect. The results show that financial liberalization will exert a beneficial impact on technological deepening only if the financial system is sufficiently liberalized.

This paper examines the determinants of private investment in Malaysia, with an emphasis on the postcrisis investment slumps. A static private investment function is derived from the neoclassical framework, with appropriate modifications to account for the structural features observed in the country. To introduce dynamics into the model, we adopt a cost minimization problem, which assumes firms optimize investment levels with respect to a quadratic loss function. The results suggest that the availability of financial resources in the economy has a significant positive impact on private investment. Macroeconomic uncertainty exerts a negative influence on the investment climate in the private sector. Both foreign direct investment and public investment are found to have a complementary effect on private investment. Consistent with the prediction of the neoclassical model, a higher level of aggregate output raises private investment, whereas the user cost of capital has the opposite impact.

This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on the process of economic development in India by controlling for the degree of financial liberalization.A composite index is constructed using the method of principal component analysis to capture the joint influence of various financial sector policies. The results show that while foreign aid exerts a direct negative influence on output expansion, its indirect effect via financial liberalization is positive. Therefore, an important implication of the findings in this paper is that adequate liberalization in the financial system of the host country is a crucial requirement for effective foreign aid. Our results are robust to a number of control variables and estimation techniques.

Drawing on the recent developments in innovation-based growth models that emphasize the importance of financial factors and R&D activity, this paper explores the impact of research efforts and financial sector reforms on inventive activity, using Korea as the case study. Based on time series data over the period 1967–2005, the results consistently show that the implementation of a series of financial liberalization policies is strongly associated with a higher rate of knowledge generation. They also show that R&D intensity has a significant positive influence on ideas production, providing some support for the Schumpeterian endogenous growth framework.

Although theory emphasizes the role of financial market frictions in explaining income inequality, there is little empirical research exploring how financial development and financial sector reforms influence the evolution of income inequality. This article examines how finance impacts income inequality in India using annual time series data for over half a century. The results indicate that while financial development helps reduce income inequality, financial liberalization seems to exacerbate it. The results are robust to the use of different measures for financial development and financial liberalization.

The objective of this article is to examine the long-run relationship and short-run dynamics of the health care expenditure in Australia during the period 1960–2003. Consistent with the conventional findings, the income elasticity for health care is found to be greater than one, suggesting that health care is a luxury good in Australia. Demographic structure is found to exert a significant positive impact on health care expenditure. An increase in the accessibility to health care services is associated with higher per capita real health care expenditure. Finally, public funding of health care appears to have a contributory effect on the formation of health care expenditure in Australia.

This paper examines the determinants of household saving in China and India over the last few decades using the life cycle model, with appropriate modifications to account for the
expected benefits of pension saving. Consistent with the predictions made in the life cycle model, higher income growth promotes more household saving, and higher age dependency does the opposite. An increase in the inflation rate appears to encourage household saving. Interestingly, the evidence suggests that an increase in expected pension benefits tends to discourage household saving in China in the long run, but the reverse is found in India.

performance has come at the expense of rapid environmental deterioration. Amidst animated debate on the issue of global warming, this study attempts to explore the determinants of CO2 emissions in China using aggregate data for more than half a century. Adopting an analytical framework that combines the environmental literature with modern endogenous growth theories, the results indicate that CO2 emissions in China are negatively related to research intensity, technology transfer and the absorptive capacity of the economy to assimilate foreign technology. Our findings also indicate that more energy use, higher income and greater trade openness tend to cause more CO2 emissions.

This paper examines the role of financial sector policies in determining private investment in the economies of India and Malaysia. The results suggest that significant directed credit programs favoring certain priority sectors tend to discourage private capital formation in both countries. Interest rate controls appear to have a positive impact on private investment, with the effect being more pronounced in Malaysia. While high reserve and liquidity requirements exert a negative influence on private investment in India, the effect is found to be positive in Malaysia.

This article examines the FDI-growth nexus in the small open economy of Malaysia by controlling for the level of financial development. Financial development is proxied by a composite index, which is a summary measure of four financial development indicators. Using time-series data from 1965 to 2004, the results show that FDI and financial development are positively related to output in the long-run. The impact of FDI on output is enhanced through financial development. To supplement these findings, we assess the causal relationships between the variables using the recent causality tests available in the literature. The results indicate that economic growth causes FDI growth in the long-run, but no feedback relationship is
observed.

This paper examines the roles of foreign direct investment and financial development in the process of economic development using Thailand as the case study. We argue that better developed financial systems allow an economy to exploit the benefits of foreign direct investment more efficiently. The estimation draws upon an unrestricted error-correction model to avoid omitted lagged variable bias, and an instrumental variable estimator to correct for endogeneity bias. Using annual time series data from 1970 to 2004, the results show that financial development stimulates economic development whereas foreign direct investment impacts negatively on output expansion in the long run. However, an increased level of financial development enables Thailand to gain more from foreign direct investment, suggesting that the impact of foreign direct investment on output growth can be enhanced through financial development. The results are robust to different measures of financial development.

Motivated by the concern of a persistent decline in total investment in Malaysia during the post-crisis era, this article examines the long-run relationship between private domestic investment (PDI), public investment and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Malaysia. Using multivariate cointegration techniques, the results indicate a fairly robust cointegrated relationship between these variables during the period 1960 to 2003. Both public investment and FDI are found to be complementary to, rather than competing with, PDI.

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the effects of financial sector policies on development of the financial system in Malaysia over the period 1959–2005. The technique of principal component analysis is used to construct a summary measure of interest rate policies in order to account for the joint influence of various interest rate controls imposed on the Malaysian financial system. The results show that economic development, interest rate controls, and capital liquidity requirements positively affect the level of financial development. However, greater trade openness, higher statutory reserve requirements, and the presence of directed credit programs appear to be harmful for development of the Malaysian financial system. The results provide some support to the argument that some form of financial restraints may help promote financial development.

This paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of financial development and economic growth. The survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of financial development in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables. Although the positive role of finance on growth has become a stylized fact, there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies. Several key issues unresolved in the literature are highlighted. The paper also points to several directions for future research.

Using annual time series data for the period 1960–2005, this paper examines the determinants of FDI for Malaysia to inform analytical and policy debates. Consistent with the prediction of the market size hypothesis, real GDP is found to have a significant positive impact on FDI inflows. There is evidence that growth rate of GDP exerts a small positive impact on inward FDI. From a policy point of view, the results suggest that increases in the level of financial development, infrastructure development, and trade openness promote FDI. On the other hand, higher statutory corporate tax rate and appreciation of the real exchange rate appear to discourage FDI inflows. Interestingly, the results also seem to suggest that higher macroeconomic uncertainty induces more FDI inflows.

This paper estimates a six-equation model of financial development and economic growth for Malaysia to shed light on the mechanisms linking these two variables. The results indicate that financial development leads to higher output growth via promoting both private saving and private investment. The findings also provide some support for the hypothesis of endogenous financial development and growth models that finance leads to higher growth through improved efficiency of investment. There is evidence that repressionist financial policies, such as interest rate controls, high reserve requirements and directed credit programs,
have contributed positively to financial development. However, other direct government interventions in the economy, such as
resource allocation through the operation of a broad-based employee provident fund (EPF) scheme and various public investment programs, seem to have impacted negatively on economic development in Malaysia.

The objective of this paper is to examine the long-run relationship between output, pollutant emissions, and energy consumption in Malaysia during the period 1971–1999. To supplement the findings of cointegrating analysis, we assess the causal relationships between the variables using the recent causality tests available in the literature. The results indicate that pollution and energy use are positively related to output in the long-run. We found a strong support for causality running from economic growth to energy consumption growth, both in the short-run and long-run.

The objective of this paper is to examine whether financial development leads to economic growth or vice versa in the small open economy of Malaysia. Using time series data from 1960 to 2001, we conduct cointegration and causality tests to assess the finance-growth link by taking the real interest rate and financial repression into account. The empirical evidence suggests that financial liberalization, through removing the repressionist policies, has a favorable effect in stimulating financial sector development. Financial depth and economic development are positively related; but contrary to the conventional findings, our results support Robinson's view that output growth leads to higher financial depth in the long-run.

This article examines whether domestic saving rate leads to higher domestic investment rate in the case of Malaysia. We argue that the results obtained from cross-sectional studies are not able to address this issue satisfactorily and highlight the importance of individual country case studies. Using the recently developed autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing procedure, the results reveal a robust cointegrated relationship between domestic saving and investment rates during the period 1965 to 2003.

This paper examines the extent to which financial development contributes to output expansion in Malaysia, during the period 1960–2003. An augmented neoclassical growth framework is adopted to provide an evaluation of the impact of financial sector development on economic development. Using the recently developed ARDL bounds procedure, the results show that aggregate output and its determinants are cointegrated in the long run. The results suggest that financial development, private capital stocks and the labour force exert a positive impact on economic development whereas the accumulation of public capital appears to curtail output expansion in the long run.

This paper examines the dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions, energy consumption, and output for France using cointegration and vector error-correction modelling techniques. We argue that these variables are strongly inter-related and therefore their relationship must be examined using an integrated framework. The results provide evidence for the existence of a fairly robust long-run relationship between these variables for the period 1960–2000. The causality results support the argument that economic growth exerts a causal influence on growth of energy use and growth of pollution in the long run. The results also point to a uni-directional causality running from growth of energy use to output growth in the short run.

The paper empirically examines the dynamic relationship between financial development and economic growth in Australia in terms of bank-based and market-based financial structure. A time-series approach using the VAR Model is used to provide evidence for the dynamic relationship. The paper provides empirical evidence on the causal impact of the financial market on the economic growth of the Australian economy. The results suggest that financial intermediaries and financial markets have different impacts on economic growth given their diverse roles in the domestic economy. In particular there is evidence of causality from economic growth to the development of the financial intermediaries. On the other hand, development in the financial markets causes economic growth but there is no evidence of any causality from economic growth to financial markets. The sensitivity test using different interest rates does not change the results.