Migration, human capital accumulation and economic development

We study how the possibility of migration changes the composition of human capital in sending countries, and how this affects development. In our model, growth is driven by productivity growth, which occurs via imitation or innovation. Both activities use the same types of skilled labour as input, albeit with different intensities. Heterogenous agents accumulate skills in response to economic incentives. Migration distorts these incentives, and the accumulation of human capital. This slows down, or even hinders, economic development. The effect is stronger, the farther away the country is from the technological frontier. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Fabricating Economic Development

Much of the literature, regardless of academic discipline, presents the publication of Economic Development in 1958 as analogous to a"big bang" event in the creation of modern Ireland. However, such a "big bang" perspective misrepresents the sophistication of economic debates prior to Whitaker's report as well as distorting the interpretation of subsequent developments. This paper reappraises Irish economic thinking before and after the publication of Economic Development. It is argued that an economically "liberal" approach to Keynesianism, such as that favoured by T. K. Whitaker and George O'Brien, lost out in the 1960s to a more interventionist approach: only later did a more liberal approach to macroeconomic policy triumph. The rival approaches to academic economics were in turn linked to wider debates on the influence of religious authorities on Irish higher education. Academic economists were particularly concerned with preserving their intellectual independence and how a shift to planning would keep decisions on resource allocation out of the reach of conservative political and religious leaders.

Masterclass presentation: Fostering economic development thrrough entrepreneurship

Presentation by Prof Richard Harrison given at Trickle Out Master Class, held at the British Institute of East Africa in Nairobi, Kenya

Fabricating Economic Development

This paper is concerned with the institutions of Irish economics; it is structured around two arguments each of which links to the thesis presented in Garvin’s Preventing the future (2004). Overall it will be demonstrated that Irish economics was shaped by intellectual trends experienced within economic thought globally as well as the social considerations that were peculiar to Ireland. The evidence presented indicates that firstly while Economic Development mattered to the Irish economy it did not matter for the reasons that most writers have suggested it did. It is argued for instance that much of the literature, regardless of academic discipline, presents the publication of Economic Development in 1958 as analogous to a “big bang” event in the creation of modern Ireland. However, such a “big bang” perspective misrepresents the sophistication of economic debates prior to Whitaker’s report as well as distorting the interpretation of subsequent developments. The paper secondly, by drawing on the contents of contemporary academic journals, reappraises Irish economic thinking before and after the publication of Economic Development. It is argued that an economically “liberal” approach to Keynesianism, such as that favoured by TK Whitaker and George O’Brien, lost out in the 1960s to a more interventionist approach: only later did a more liberal approach to macroeconomic policy triumph. The rival approaches to academic economics were in turn linked to wider debates on the influence of religious authorities on Irish higher education. Academic economists were particularly concerned with preserving their intellectual independence and how a shift to planning would keep decisions on resource allocation out of the reach of conservative political and religious leaders.