Elites and Useful Knowledge in Britain

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-115
Author(s):  
B. Zorina Khan

A longstanding claim attributes economic growth and technological change to social and scientific elites, who possess special knowledge that is unavailable to the general population. This chapter considers the significance of scientific training, costly human capital, and different types of knowledge during British industrialization by assessing the backgrounds, education, and inventive activity of major contributors to technological advances. The results show that scientists, engineers, or technicians were not well represented among the cadre of important British inventors, and many innovators remained unspecialized until very late in the nineteenth century. Informal institutions like apprenticeship and learning on the job efficiently helped creative individuals to increase their skills and productivity. Costly investments in specialized human capital and esoteric knowledge were less important than incentives for creativity, flexibility, and the ability to make incremental adjustments to produce innovations that are appropriate for prevailing conditions.

2011 ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
O. Vasilieva

Does resource abundance positively affect human capital accumulation? Or, alternatively, does it «crowd out» the human capital leading to the deterioration of economic growth? The paper gives an overview of the relevant literature and discusses both theoretical and empirical results obtained regarding the connection between human capital accumulation and resource abundance. It shows that despite some theoretical predictions about the harmful effect of resource abundance on human capital accumulation, unambiguous evidence of such impact that would be robust with respect to the change of resource abundance parameter has not been obtained yet.


Author(s):  
Nguyen Thi Thuc An ◽  
Dau Kieu Ngoc Anh

The 2018 Nobel Economics Prize was awarded to two American economists - William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer - who designed methods for better assessing environmental issues and technological advances on growth. This year’s Laureates, Nordhaus was the first person to create an intergrated model to assess interactions between society and nature and Romer laid the foundation for what is now called endogenous growth theory. According to the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, these two macroeconomists’ research have helped “significantly broaden the scope of economic analysis by constructing models that explain how the market economy interacts with nature and knowledge” which integrates climate change measures into long-term sustainable economic growth. Keywords Nobel in economics, William D. Nordhaus, Paul M. Romer, climate change, endogenous growth theory, economic growth References [1] Y Vân (2018), “Lý lịch 'khủng' của hai nhà khoa học vừa giành giải Nobel Kinh tế 2018”, Vietnambiz, đăng tải ngày 08/10/2018, https://vietnambiz.vn/ly-lich-khung-cua-hai-nha-khoa-hoc-vua-gianh-giai-nobel-kinh-te-2018-95776.html[2] Jonas O. Bergman, Rich Miller (2018), “Nordhaus, Romer Win Nobel for Thinking on Climate, Innovation”, đăng tải ngày 8/10/2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-08/nordhaus-romer-win-2018-nobel-prize-in-economic-sciences [3] Antonin Pottier (2018), “Giải Nobel” William Nordhaus có thật sự nghiêm túc?”, Nguyễn Đôn Phước dịch, đăng tải ngày 11/10/2018, http://www.phantichkinhte123.com/2018/10/giai-nobel-william-nordhaus-co-that-su.html[4] Thăng Điệp (2018), “Giải Nobel kinh tế 2018 về tay hai người Mỹ”, đăng tải ngày 8/10/2018, http://vneconomy.vn/giai-nobel-kinh-te-2018-ve-tay-hai-nguoi-my-20181008185809239.htm[5] Lars P. Syll (2018), “Cuối cùng - Paul Romer cũng có được giải thưởng Nobel”, Huỳnh Thiện Quốc Việt dịch, đăng tải ngày 14/10/2018, http://www.phantichkinhte123.com/2018/10/cuoi-cung-paul-romer-cung-co-uoc-giai.html[6] Phương Võ (2018), “Nobel Kinh tế 2018: Chạm tới bài toán khó của thời đại”, đăng tải ngày 9/10/2018, https://nld.com.vn/thoi-su-quoc-te/nobel-kinh-te-2018-cham-toi-bai-toan-kho-cua-thoi-dai-20181008221734228.htm[7] Đông Phong (2018), “Nobel Kinh tế cho giải pháp phát triển bền vững và phúc lợi người dân”, đăng tải ngày 8/10/2018, https://news.zing.vn/nobel-kinh-te-cho-giai-phap-phat-trien-ben-vung-va-phuc-loi-nguoi-dan-post882860.html[8] Thanh Trúc (2018), “Giải Nobel kinh tế 2018: Thay đổi tư duy về biến đổi khí hậu”, https://tusach.thuvienkhoahoc.com/wiki/Gi%E1%BA%A3i_Nobel_kinh_t%E1%BA%BF_2018:_Thay_%C4%91%E1%BB%95i_t%C6%B0_duy_v%E1%BB%81_bi%E1%BA%BFn_%C4%91%E1%BB%95i_kh%C3%AD_h%E1%BA%ADu[9] Cẩm Anh (2018), “Nobel kinh tế 2018: Lời giải cho tăng trưởng kinh tế bền vững”, đăng tải ngày 11/10/2018, http://enternews.vn/nobel-kinh-te-2018-loi-giai-cho-tang-truong-kinh-te-ben-vung-137600.html.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 1557-1562
Author(s):  
Visar Ademi

In today’s global competitive arena the term “knowledge economy” is no mere slogan. It points to the very real fact that economic activities are increasingly knowledge intensive and that in this globalized world, success will come to those that are able to generate and harness knowledge in order to stay ahead of the pack. Research shows that in economies that do not have sufficient infrastructure, natural resources or may be designed as high cost base locations, comparative advantage has shifted to knowledge-based activities that cannot be transferred around the world without a significant cost. High knowledge and skills based economies will most likely be able to attract and retain investments in industries with a strong future. It is no secret that good education lies at the heart of economic growth and development. At the same time, improving the quality and relevance of education is enormously difficult not least because there is no one single policy measure that will do so effectively.Macedonia is not exclusion to this fact. The Macedonia’s employers and employees face a huge talent management dilemma. Analyses by all relevant institutions (World Bank, NGOs) and interviews with multiple representatives from the private sector companies indicate that while the labor pool is growing (supply side), it does not provide the skills needed by employers (demand side) so, that they could be competitive and further grow in today’s market. Employers are nearly unified in their criticism of an education system that produces graduates with limited practical experience and no soft skills transferable to the workplace. This is largely due to a lack of experiential education, competency based curricula, pragmatic guidance, which fails to meet the needs of the business community. The burden falls most often on employers to provide practical training, usually on the job. While in-company training is good practice, the scale of the skill gap requires a cost and internal training capability that many enterprises cannot afford, creating a disincentive for businesses to hire new employees.The dilemma has impacted job seekers (official unemployment in Macedonia is around 28% as of December 2017) and contributes to lower overall economic growth. It is especially problematic for micro and small enterprises (MSEs), which make up a large proportion of employment in Macedonia. MSE size and limited capacity makes their employees skills, experience and multitasking capabilities that much more critical for growth. Additionally, MSEs often lack the resources necessary to effectively train and maximize the productivity of their staff. As a result, sustained employment growth within Macedonia must include the development of a pipeline of skilled employees for microenterprises, including bolstering the capacity of small businesses to organize and train their workers. On the other side, the formal education institution dislike they way the private sector manages their employees. According to many of them, this is due to the fact that companies believe that their performance in the market is not directly linked with the human capital performance. In addition, education holds to the belief that private sector companies are not engaged enough in creating the next pool of talents in Macedonia. When they are invited to participate in the classrooms as expert of guest speaker, hire or engage students they show little interest. To conclude, the education institution believes that private sector companies in Macedonia consider the investment in human capital as a cost and not an investment.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 890
Author(s):  
Jakub Bartak ◽  
Łukasz Jabłoński ◽  
Agnieszka Jastrzębska

In this paper, we study economic growth and its volatility from an episodic perspective. We first demonstrate the ability of the genetic algorithm to detect shifts in the volatility and levels of a given time series. Having shown that it works well, we then use it to detect structural breaks that segment the GDP per capita time series into episodes characterized by different means and volatility of growth rates. We further investigate whether a volatile economy is likely to grow more slowly and analyze the determinants of high/low growth with high/low volatility patterns. The main results indicate a negative relationship between volatility and growth. Moreover, the results suggest that international trade simultaneously promotes growth and increases volatility, human capital promotes growth and stability, and financial development reduces volatility and negatively correlates with growth.


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