Demographic Transition and the Unobservable Scale Effects of Economic Growth

Kaixing Huang ()

No 2016-08, School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers from University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy

Abstract: Idea-based growth models usually predict that economic growth rates are increasing with the level or growth rate of the population. This scale effect prediction is intuitive and derived directly from the nonrivalry of ideas. However, time-series data over the last century generally did not support this scale effect prediction. This article illustrates why scale effects were unobservable. A modified idea-based model shows that economic growth rates increase with investments in human capital accumulation and population growth rates. The offsetting movements of these two factors during the demographic transition of the last century obscured the scale effects.

Keywords: Economic growth; scale effects; human capital; population; demographic transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E27 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-evo, nep-gro and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://media.adelaide.edu.au/economics/papers/doc/wp2016-08.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:adl:wpaper:2016-08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers from University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Qazi Haque ().