Stephen Knowles

Health capital and cross-country variation in income per capita in the Mankiw-Romer-Weil model

Abstract This paper examines the effects of incorporating a proxy for health capital in Mankiw, Romer and Weils empirical growth model. Results suggest a stronger and more robust relationship between income per capita and health capital, than between income per capita and educational human capital.

Inequality and Economic Growth: The Empirical Relationship Reconsidered in the Light of Comparable Data

Almost all the recent empirical work on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth has used inequality data that are not consistently measured. This article argues that this is inappropriate and shows that the significant negative correlation often found between income inequality and growth across countries may not be robust when income inequality is measured in a consistent manner. However, evidence is found of a significant negative correlation between consistently measured inequality of expenditure data and economic growth for a sample of developing countries.

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE: A CROSS-SECTIONAL ANALYSIS

Using cross-country data from a sample of low-, middle-, and high-income countries, this article provides the first empirical test of the empirical relationships between national measures of social capital (civic and public), social divergence, and social capacity on various indicators of national environmental performance. Overall, the results provide little empirical support for the hypothesis that social determinants have a statistically beneficial effect on national indicators of environmental quality but do show that higher population density is associated with increases in environmental degradation. The findings suggest that the presumption that social capital is always good for the environment may be as flawed as the previously widely held view that higher incomes are always associated with increased environmental degradation. The policy implication is that improved national environmental performance may be best achieved by limiting future increases in population density and lowering emission and input intensities.

Which Institutions are Good for Your Health? The Deep Determinants of Comparative Cross-Country Health Status

We extend the literature on the deep determinants of economic development by focusing on life expectancy, instead of income per capita, as an indicator of economic development, and by examining the role of informal, as well as formal, institutions. Our empirical results suggest that formal and informal institutions are substitutes. Improving informal institutions has positive effects on life expectancy that are statistically significant for most countries and stronger than the effects of improving formal institutions. The gains from improving informal institutions are greatest for countries in which institutions are weakest. Geographical factors also help explain cross-country variation in life expectancy.

Are the Penn World Tables data on government consumption and investment being misused

Abstract This paper argues that it is inappropriate to measure G/Y and I/Y using Penn World Tables data. The empirical results of Barro and Lee (Carnegie–Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, 40 (1994) 1–46) are sensitive to whether G/Y and I/Y are measured in local or international prices.

DOES AGRICULTURE CONTRIBUTE TO ECONOMIC GROWTH ? SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

This paper augments the Solow - Swan model of economic growth to include the share of the labour force working outside the agricultural sector as a labour augmenting variable in the aggregate production function. The cross-country empirical results suggest that transferring labour from the agricultural sector to other sectors of the economy is associated with economic growth. This result is robust to using instrumental variables to control for the potential endogeneity of the relative size of the agricultural labour force.

Developing Countries in Need: Which Characteristics Appeal Most to People when Donating Money?

Abstract A discrete choice experiment was conducted to discover the relative importance of five characteristics of developing countries considered by people when choosing countries to donate money to. The experiment was administered via an online survey involving almost 700 university student participants (potential donors). The most important recipient country characteristic for participants on average is hunger and malnutrition, followed by child mortality, quality of infrastructure, income per capita, and, least importantly, ties to the donor’s home country. A cluster analysis of participants’ individual ‘part worth utilities’ representing the relative importance of the country characteristics reveals they are not strongly correlated with participants’ demographic characteristics.

Social Capital and Cross-Country Environmental Performance

Previous empirical work on the effects of social capital on measures of environmental performance across countries has been limited by data on social capital only being available for a relatively small number of countries. This article makes use of a new data set measuring different dimensions of social capital for a much larger number of countries to analyze the relationship between social capital and the environment across countries. There is evidence that some aspects of social capital are associated with better environmental performance.

Barro's Fertility Equations: The Robustness of the Role of Female Education and Income

Barro and Lee (1994) and Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1995) find that real per-capita GDP and both male and female education have important effects on fertility in their cross-country empirical studies. In order to assess the robustness of their results, their estimated models are subjected to specification and diagnostic testing, the effects on the model of using the improved Barro and Lee (1996) cross-country data on educational attainment of the population aged 15 and over are examined, and the different specifications used by Barro and Lee and by Barro and Sala-i-Martin compared. The results obtained suggest that their fertility equations do not perform well in terms of diagnostic testing, and are very sensitive to the use of different vintages of the educational attainment proxies and of the Summers-Heston cross-country income data. A robust explanation of fertility, to link with empirical growth equations, has, therefore, not yet been found; further work is required in this area.

Who Votes Expressively, and Why? Experimental Evidence

Experiments have shown that some people behave more altruistically in collective decisions than they do in individual ones, which could be interpreted as an ‘expressive voting’ effect. However, there is substantial variation in the behaviour of experimental participants. We conduct experiments to explore the reasons for this variation, and find that certain characteristics are sometimes associated with a propensity for expressive voting. However, the strength of these effects depends on the ordering of individual and collective choices. The ‘warm glow’ of expressive voting can influence subsequent individual decisions, and the ‘cold shower’ of individual selfishness can influence subsequent collective decisions.