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The Economy in the Long Run: Economic Growth
Read Chapter 11 & 12
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Week 12: The Economic Growth
1. What is economic growth?
2. What determines economic growth
3. How to promote economic growth
4. Costs/limits to growth?
5. Developing a model of economic growth
Read: Bernanke Chapter 10 and Chapter 11
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Measuring economic growth
long term growth refers to a rise in living standards,
not the rise in total GDP
Conventional to use real GDP per capita as a
measure of a country’s living standards and stage of
economic development
GDP Y
y
Real GDP per capita: POP POP
• Although not a perfect measure of economic
wellbeing, real GDP per person is positively related
to life expectancy, infant health and literacy.
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$A, cvm
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10000
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Sep‐1973 70000
Sep‐1974
Sep‐1975
Sep‐1976
Sep‐1977
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Sep‐1979
Sep‐1980
Sep‐1981
Sep‐1982
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Sep‐1984
Sep‐1985
Sep‐1986
Sep‐1987
Sep‐1988
Sep‐1989
Sep‐1990
Sep‐1991
Sep‐1992
Sep‐1993
2012
Sep‐1994
Sep‐1995
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Sep‐2000
Sep‐2001
Sep‐2002
Sep‐2003
Sep‐2004
Sep‐2005
Sep‐2006
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Sep‐2008
Sep‐2009
Sep‐2010
Sep‐2011
Real GDP per Capita for Australia 1973‐
Australia’s GDP Growth
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Real per capita GDP
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7
8
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Comparing growth rates
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Growth issues and questions
• Large differences in growth rates
• Large differences in real GDP per capita
• Small differences in annual growth rates matter
Why do countries grow at different rates?
Growth Facts
1. There are large differences in the level of real GDP per
capita across countries
• $US (2005 prices)
• US Japan China South Korea Chad
• 2010 41,376 31,453 7,746 26,614 1,332
•
2. An important cause of this inequality is the fact that
countries grow at different rates.
• Average % per annum
• US Japan China South Korea Chad
• 60‐90 1.4 5.0 2.4 6.0 ‐1.7
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Small Differences in Growth Rates Have
Big Level Effects
• Why some countries can grow rapidly while others lag
far behind is an important question.
• Economic growth rates are similar to compound
interest, in that relatively small rates over a long
enough time period can have large effects.
• Country Growth Initial Income after x years
• Rate Income 5 25 35
• A 1% 1000 1051 1284 1419
• B 2% 1000 1105 1649 2013
• B‐A 0 54 365 594
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Convergence and Catch‐up
• Idea that relatively poor countries will have
higher growth rates, than rich countries and
eventually catch‐up in terms of the level of per‐
capita GDP.
• If we look at the set of all countries in the world,
then there is no evidence of convergence in per‐
capita GDP
• But, for some groups of countries there is
evidence of convergence
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Convergence in Rich Countries
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Annual growth % (1950‐2000)
0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000
GDP‐per capita in 1950 (1995 USD)
JA, IT, GER, FR, UK, CA, AU, US
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2. What determines Economic Growth?
• Long term growth refers to growth in GDP per
capita
• GDP per capita = GDP/POP
• But, GDP/POP = GDP/N x N/POP
Where: N = number of employed workers
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2. What determines Economic Growth?
• Long term growth refers to growth in GDP per
capita
• GDP per capita = GDP/POP
• But, GDP/POP = GDP/N x N/POP
Share of population working
GDP per worker = average labour productivity
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What determines Economic Growth?
• Accordingly, real GDP can only grow if:
– the average labour productivity grows; and/or
– the share of the working population grows.
• From 1965 and 2006, real GDP per capita grew by 108%.
• share of population working grew from 66% to 74%; as
women participated more fully in the workforce
• average labour productivity increased by 87%
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Australia’s recent performance
Figure 10.8 Share of the Australian population employed and average productivity, 1964–2010
Growth in Australian Real GDP per Capita
• Real GDP per capita can only grow if labour
productivity grows, and/or the employment share
grows
• From 1965 and 2006, real GDP per capita grew by
108%.
share of population working grew from 66% to
74%; as more women entered the workforce
average labour productivity increased by 87%
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Factors affecting labour productivity
Physical capital per worker
Human capital per worker
Land and natural resources per worker
The level of technology
Entrepreneurship and quality of management
Political and legal environment e.g. property rights
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Physical Capital per worker
• Includes the stock of machines, tools, plant
and equipment, buildings and structures
• Increases in quantity and quality of physical
capital increase labour productivity
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Human Capital
• Refers to education and training, skills and
talents of labour
• Can be formal education or schooling or on‐
the‐job training
• Think of N as “basic” or unskilled labour input.
Human capital accumulation raises “quality”
of N
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Land and Natural Resources
• Productive land, energy and mineral resources
have potential to improve labour productivity e.g.
Australia
• But,
• Not essential to high labour productivity e.g.
Japan, Singapore
• “Resource curse” Abundant natural resources
impede economic growth e.g. African countries
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Technology
• Stock of ideas and knowledge
• Development of new technologies is viewed
as the primary source of economic growth
• Combination of:
– Primary research and
– Development (applied research)
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Management and Entrepreneurs
• Development of new firms and the way firms
are organised
• Bill Gates and Microsoft, e.g. Entrepreneur
• Just‐in‐time inventory, theory of management
• Internal to a firm
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Political and Legal Environment
• External to the firm
• Includes the system of property rights,
degree of political stability
• What are the incentives for people to
produce goods or ideas?
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Factors affecting worker/population ratio
Age distribution of the population
birth rate, death rate, immigration
Social norms e.g. childcare, family size
Incentives provided by the taxation and welfare systems
e.g. retirement pension age
Long term trends affecting participation in the labour
force
Working parents, retirement ages, years in education
etc…
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3. How to promote Economic Growth?
Human capital: policies to improve education, training
and research
Physical capital: policies to increase investment,
especially in the newest technology
Level of technology: policies to increase research and
development
Other: sensible regulation, enforcement of property
rights, transparent and stable government and justice
system
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4. Costs of growth? limits to growth?
Costs of economic growth Can economic growth
continue indefinitely without depleting natural resources
and causing massive change to the global environment?
Are there limits to growth?
Limits to growth? is economic growth limited due to
environmental impacts and ongoing population growth?
- Environmental concerns – consider technological
improvements, higher wealth may → better solutions; •
Higher levels of real GDP per person are associated with lower
levels of pollution
- Population growth concerns – richer countries have
smaller families
- Serious problems with ability of market to deal with these
issues
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5. Developing a model of economic growth ‐ The
Production Function
A Production Function represents the relationship
between
– Primary Factors of Production
• Labour
• Capital
– Secondary Factors of Production
• Technology
• Management Expertise
• Skills
• Other Factors e.g. infrastructure, political stability etc..
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The Production Process
Figure 11.1 The production process
The Production Function
The production function shows the level of production
associated with different combinations of capital and
labour, holding other factors, particularily technology,
constant
As well, with inputs of labour and capital constant, it
shows the level of production with different inputs of
secondary factors
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Capital
• Capital is a key determinant in economic growth.
• The real rate of interest in the economy is an
opportunity cost of employing capital.
– It is a rate of interest the firm needs to pay if borrowing
funds, or a rate it could receive if it saved those funds
instead.
• A key question is how much capital the firm
should acquire.
– It is determined by the cost‐benefit principle.
The diminishing marginal productivity
of capital
Figure 11.3 The diminishing marginal productivity of capital
11‐35
The Demand for Capital
Fig. 11.4 The demand for capital
Marginal benefit (marginal product of capital)
= Marginal cost (real interest rate)
Supply of Labour
• When using the production function, economists
use labour, l, as the total number of hours or work
supplied.
• Individuals decide how much labour they supply by
comparing the benefits of working—the real wage
received against the cost of working—and
choosing the best alternative to their time.
• Relation between real wages and amount workers
wish to supply is extremely complex – gross
oversimplification to assume that it is a simple a
positive relation
Demand for Labour
• The factors that affect a firm’s demand for labour are
similar to the factors that affect a firm’s choice of the
capital stock.
– The benefits to the firm of employing an additional unit of
labour are measured by the marginal revenue product of
labour: MRPl = P x MPl
• As with capital, the MPl and MRPl decline due to the
fact that:
– successive workers are assigned to the most productive
tasks
– the pragmatic problems of adding more staff to fixed
capital.
What determines the amount of labour that is
available for production?
Determines equilibrium
amount of labour with
given aggregate demand
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The Production Function
• The production function shows how firms combine
those primary factors of production to produce
output:
• Assumptions on the production function:
– Adding more capital to fixed labour increases total
product but decreases marginal productivity.
– Adding more labour to fixed capital increases total
product but decreases marginal productivity.
– All secondary factors of production, such as
managerial expertise and the skill level of the
labour, remain constant.
important issues to do with increasing returns and actual
growth behaviour are ignored
Combining labour and capital
For example: Cobb–Douglas production function
Yt = AtKtα . Lt(1 – α)
Y = amount of real output
K = capital stock
L = amount of labour
A = secondary factors of production
0 < < 1
indicates share of capital, 1‐ indicates share of labour
Interesting in theory – not practically relevant
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Cobb–Douglas production function
Based on the observation that the shares of capital income (α)
and labour income (1 – α) in US national income have been
more or less constant until the 1990s
Widely used (around the world) to represent the production
function in empirical work
Properties:
– Displays diminishing marginal productivity for both labour
and capital
– Features constant returns to scale (ie, if double inputs of K
and L, then output is doubled)
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Illustrating these properties
Yt = AtKtα . Lt(1 – α)
Let A = 5
α = 0.2 , (1 – α) = 0.8
L = K = 1 in period t =1
1. Keeping labour (L) constant at 1, how will output change as
the quantity of capital (K) increases from 1 to 2, 3, 4, 5?
2. What happens to output when labour and capital each
increase from 1 to 5 ?
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Economic Growth and the Factors of
Production
• Start with our Cobb‐Douglas function:
yt = Atktαlt(1 – α)
• Given a 1% increase in the capital stock between one
period and the next, how much will output increase?
• We will use the mathematical rule that if Z = Xα , then a
percentage change in Z = α (the percentage change in
X).
Economic Growth and a Change in
Capital
Δyt = αΔkt
yt -1 kt -1
• The LHS is the economy’s rate of growth.
The RHS shows us that if α = 0.25 (which is
the share of GDP paid to owners of capital)
then a 1% increase in the capital stock will
lead to a 0.25% increase in growth.
Economic Growth and a change in
Labour Supply
• The same type of reasoning shows us how
output would change if all else is constant and
the labour supply changes:
Δyt = (1 – α)Δlt
yt -1 lt -1
• If α = 0.25 then a 1% increase in the labour
supply will lead to a 0.75% increase in growth.
Economic Growth and Total Factor
Productivity (TFP)
• The secondary factors of production are known
collectively as total factor productivity because
they impact on the ability to transform primary
factors
into output.
• We can calculate the contribution to growth by:
Δyt = ΔAt
yt -1 At -1
• This is a one‐to‐one relationship: if TFP increased
by 1% there would be a 1% increase in growth.
Sources of Economic Growth
Economic growth occurs either because the
capital stock has grown, the labour supply
has grown, or there has been an
improvement in the economy’s ability to use
labour and capital – such as through
improvements in technology
Growth accounting, Australia 1976 to 2009
Figure 11.11 Growth accounting, Australia, 1976 to 2009
Growth accounting, Japan, the United
Kingdom and the United States
Figure 11.12 Growth accounting, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States
Growth accounting, the Asian Tigers
and the Philippines, 1960–1994
Figure 11.13 Growth accounting, the Asian Tigers and the Philippines, 1960–1994
The Newer Growth models make TFP endogenous
Highlight factors influencing total factor productivity (TFP)
• Education and human capital
• Research and development
• Political structure
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Revision
• Go over the post lecture notes on Moodle
• Go over Tutorial questions
• Do sample written questions on Moodle
• Do MC quizzes on Moodle
• Attend Pitstop session for extra help
• Information about final exam on Moodle
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