Essays on capital accumulation, economic growth, income inequality, and unemployment

Iqtiaruddin Md Mamun
2017
The central theme of this thesis is capital accumulation. The thesis reports that increase in economic growth rate and reduction in income inequality boosts capital accumulation that in turn reduces unemployment. Three essays constitute the thesis. The first essay investigates whether saving has been driven by growth or gowth has been driven by saving using data of Asian Miracle Economies (AME) – India, Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan – over the period 1870-2011.The second essay
more » ... plores the effect of income inequality on capital accumulation using the data of 20 OECD countries - Canada, USA, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and UK - over the period 1870-2011. The effect of capital accumulation on unemployment in 21 OECD countries - Canada, USA, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and UK - has been explored in the third essay. Following the neoclassical revival some economists attribute the amazing productivity growth rate in Asian Miracle Economies (AME) to capital accumulation while assign the backseat to the technological progress – the so called Krugman-Young hypothesis in which saving and schooling are independent of growth. However such assumption is questionable as from the perspective of growth accounting using Cobb-Douglas production function, theories of saving and the scenario that in AMEs prior to WWII living standard was close to subsistence level thus leaving less opportunity of saving and only after WWII with the increase in living standard financial saving and education increase it may be shown that saving and education are not exogenous and independent of growth. The first essay addresses this endogeneity and applying a two-way identification strategy and unique data covering the period 1870-2011 for the AMEs finds that financial saving a [...]
doi:10.4225/03/58b638ffc69a9 fatcat:3ixbla6lrvhp3p2nxcftcid2ci