Rajabrata Banerjee

Innovation and Productivity Advances in British Agriculture: 1620–1850

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.

Innovation, Technological Change and the British Agricultural Revolution

Theory, historiography and empirical evidence suggest that agriculture is the key to economic development. This paper examines the extent to which productivity advances in British agriculture in the period 1620-1850 were driven by technological progress. Measuring technology by patents and new book titles on agricultural methods, the results indicate that technological progress has played a significant part in productivity advances. Furthermore, the results show that research effort has permanent growth effects, consistent with the prediction of Schumpeterian growth theory.

The relative importance of capital inflows: some evidence from emerging market economies

ABSTRACT This article examines the relative importance of the main components of capital inflows for a sample of emerging market economies. Does composition matter? Is there a nexus between capital inflow components? We assess, firstly, how each capital inflow component reacts to important macro and policy variables, and secondly, how the components themselves interact. We find that bank inflows appear the most sensitive to macro factors, institutions matter more for Latin America and external financial factors matter more for Asia. Further, for Latin America, capital inflows interact largely as complements, while for Asia, any expansion of bank inflows might crowd out FDI and portfolio flows.

Roles of Education in Productivity Growth in Australia, 1860–1939

Despite a significant literature comparing Europe and the USA, and linking education and human capital to growth and development, there is virtually no research in the Australian context which attempts to investigate this link empirically. Australia is an interesting case because it was one of the worlds wealthiest nations in the late nineteenth century. The economy was built on agriculture and mining, but there was no obvious evidence of a natural resource curse despite losing ground on the leading nations. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining the effect of education and schooling on productivity growth between 1860 and 1939 using a unique dataset from the colony of Victoria. Using a growth accounting exercise, we examine the role of productivity changes in the overall growth picture of Victoria and Australia as a whole. We find evidence for productivity-led growth for both. Exploring the relationship between productivity and education measures, we find that while primary school enrolments were important to sustain productivity growth throughout the period, tertiary education was more effective in the first half of the twentieth century.