This study explores growth accounting under endogenous technological progress. It is well known that the Solow approach overstates (understates) the contribution of capital accumulation (technological progress) to economic growth and that the Mankiw-Romer-Weil approach addresses this issue. However, we find that the Mankiw-Romer-Weil approach is inconsistent (consistent) with the lab-equipment (knowledge-driven) specification for technological progress. We also examine the importance of capital accumulation on growth in China under the two approaches.
We analyse the effects of playing music, or doing sports on education and health outcomes of adolescents. After identifying adolescents who play music, do sports, or both, in the German Socio-Economic Panel, we use matching procedures to estimate causal effects. We find that playing music instead of doing sports fosters educational outcomes by about 0.1 standard deviations. Effects are stronger for girls, and for children from more highly educated families. Doing sports improves perceived health more strongly than playing music. Engaging in both activities, music and sports, improves educational outcomes by about 0.2 standard deviations and reduces smoking by about 10 percentage points compared to engaging in just one activity. Adolescents who engage in music spend less time watching TV or playing computer games, but more reading books. The robustness of the results is examined with respect to the identifying assumptions, including non-affected outcomes, a formal sensitivity analysis, and instrumental variable estimation. These checks do not reveal any serious problems.
Vor dem Hintergrund einer kontroversen Diskussion auf der Plattform "Ökonomenstimme" zu "Schwierigkeiten mit der Moral" in der Wirtschaftspraxis diskutiert der vorliegende Beitrag Probleme der traditionellen Wirtschaftswissenschaften hinsichtlich der Konzeptualisierung moralischer Dimensionen in ökonomischen Theorien. Die Autoren zeigen, dass eine reine Anreizethik, die lediglich auf veränderte Spielregeln abstellt, in theoretischer Hinsicht nicht plausibilisiert werden kann. Moralisches Handeln ist stattdessen als ein Handlungstypus sui generis zu verstehen und das Wechselspiel von moralischem Handeln und Institutionen ist in den Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung zu rücken. Aus diesen Perspektiven ergeben sich durchaus weitreichende ontologische und epistemologische Grundsatzfragen für die Ökonomik.
This paper looks at how income tax rates, consumption and public spending respond as venues for tax evasion open or close. The analysis draws on a 16-generation OLG model in which tax rates are determined in a repeated game between voters and a rent-seeking Leviathan government. Key insights are: (1) Effects on any generation alive when change takes place may differ substantially from steady state effects that accrue for generations yet to be born. (2) There is considerable intergenerational diversity in these effects that is not monotonous as we move from young to old. Combined, these results suggest that the political economy of pertinent institutional change may be quite complex.
[http://www.vwa.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2006/DP19_Ga.pdf Download full text]
