Returns to Specialization and Economic Growth with Human Capital Accumulation
Prof. Alberto Bucci, University of Milan
This paper re-examines the long-run correlation between product market competition (PMC) and economic growth, and between population growth and economic growth within a semi–endogenous growth framework with horizontal product-innovation and purposeful human capital investment. Different approaches do already exist that explain on theoretical grounds why the sign of these two correlations can be either positive, or negative, or else equal to zero (lack of any relationship). The presence of a general ambiguity in the PMC/economic growth and the population growth/economic growth links is put forward by the huge body of empirical research conducted by economists and demographers, as well. Unlike the existing theoretical models, this article focuses on the notion of ‘returns to specialization’, and regards it as the key-variable in shaping the long-run relations between competition, population change and sustained per-capita income growth. A comparison between the results obtained using a Lucas (1988)-type law of motion of per-capita human capital and those obtained employing a more realistic Mincerian equation for education is carried out.
About the speaker
Alberto BUCCI is full professor of Economics at the University of Milan. In 2002 he obtained a Ph.D. in Economics at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) under the supervision of professor Raouf Boucekkine. In Milan he teaches Macroeconomics, Economics of the European Integration and Growth Theory, both at a graduate and under-graduate level. He has extensively published (in national and international journals and books) in the fields of the Economics of Growth (R&D, Human Capital, Population and Demographic Variables), Industrial Organization (Patents, Innovation and Imperfect Competition), the Economics of Innovation and Labor Economics. He is (or has recently been) member of a number of scientific committees of international conferences in growth theory, for example the Milan Workshop on Dynamics, Optimal Growth and Population Change: Theory and Applications (Milan, 18-19 September 2008), the annual meeting of the DEGIT Conference – Dynamics, Economic Growth and International Trade (Milan, 13-14 September 2012), the conference on Structural Change, Dynamics and Economic Growth (Pisa, 12-14 September 2013).
Date: 16 May 2013
Time: 12:30 - 13:30 CEST
