NBER Publications by Steve Dowrick

This paper examines theory and evidence from recent studies into the contributions to economic growth of expenditure on education and on research and development. Investment in human capital has fundamentally different economic attributes to physical investment - exhibiting complementarity, positive feedback and non-rivalry - implying the potential to enhance economic growth over a long time period. In the case of education, there are debates over whether changes in educational attainment ultimately affect the long-run growth rate of the economy, or only the long-run level of output. The macroeconomic evidence on level effects is consistent with microeconomic estimates of private rates of return to schooling. It appears, however, that there are also significant long-term growth effects...

Two recently improved sets of cross-country panel data are combined in order to re-examine the effects of population growth and fertility on economic growth. Using a 107 country panel data set covering 1960-85, we find that high birth rates appear to reduce economic growth through investment effects and possibly through "capital dilution", although classic resource dilution is not evident in the data. Most significantly, however, birth rate declines have a strong medium-term positive impact on per capita income growth through labour supply or "dependency" effects.