IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jitecd/v24y2015i6p767-808.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trade, scale or social capital? Technological progress in poor and rich countries

Author

Listed:
  • João Tovar Jalles
  • Jose Tavares

Abstract

Endogenous growth theory suggests scale and trade as the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The literature on social capital suggests that the levels of trust and participation in societies may affect cooperation and innovation. While there is evidence of the role of trade and inconclusive evidence on the role of social capital, previous studies have generally omitted two factors, out of the three mentioned, used small sample sizes and emphasized economic growth rather than technological progress. Our study addresses these shortcomings. We find robust evidence of the role of trade in fostering technological progress which is invariant to TFP proxies and independent of the debate on measuring TFP. Moreover, there is no clear role for scale, and a country rate of TFP growth seems to increase the most the more the country trades with dynamic economies that are different from. We uncover a positive effect of social capital, which is more significant in richer countries, suggesting that other characteristics, such as institutional quality, may be complementary to social capital. The paper's results are robust to different specification and estimation methods.

Suggested Citation

  • João Tovar Jalles & Jose Tavares, 2015. "Trade, scale or social capital? Technological progress in poor and rich countries," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(6), pages 767-808, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jitecd:v:24:y:2015:i:6:p:767-808
    DOI: 10.1080/09638199.2014.969757
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09638199.2014.969757
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09638199.2014.969757?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mr. Francis Fukuyama, 2000. "Social Capital and Civil Society," IMF Working Papers 2000/074, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1997. "I Just Ran Two Million Regressions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 178-183, May.
    3. Quentin Grafton & Stephen Knowles & P. Dorian Owen, 2001. "Social Divergence and Economic Performance," Working Papers 0103E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. İ. Semih Akçomak & Hanna Müller-Zick, 2018. "Trust and inventive activity in Europe: causal, spatial and nonlinear forces," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 60(3), pages 529-568, May.
    2. Urszula Markowska-Przybyła, 2020. "Does Social Capital Matter for Total Factor Productivity? Exploratory Evidence from Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-25, November.
    3. Hübler, Michael & Pothen, Frank, 2017. "Trade-induced productivity gains reduce incentives to impose strategic tariffs," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 420-431.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fiorillo, Damiano, 2005. "Capitale Sociale Civile: una nota sui concetti e sulla evidenza empirica macro [Civil Social Capital: a note on the concepts and on the macro empirical evidence]," MPRA Paper 3822, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Jeffrey Frankel, 2014. "Mauritius: African Success Story," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume IV: Sustainable Growth, pages 295-342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Balima, Hippolyte Weneyam, 2020. "Coups d’état and the cost of debt," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 509-528.
    4. Saaed, A.A.J., 2007. "Inflation and Economic Growth in Kuwait: 1985-2005. Evidence from Co-Integration and Error Correction Model," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 7(1).
    5. Bénédicte Gendron, 2004. "Why emotional capital matters in education and in labour? toward an Optimal exploitation of human capital and knowledge management," Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques r04113, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1).
    6. B. Bhaskara Rao & Arusha Cooray, 2012. "How useful is growth literature for policies in the developing countries?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(6), pages 671-681, February.
    7. Magdalena Osińska & Tadeusz Kufel & Marcin Błażejowski & Paweł Kufel, 2020. "Modeling mechanism of economic growth using threshold autoregression models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 1381-1430, March.
    8. Vikram Nehru, 2013. "Manufacturing in India and Indonesia: performance and policies," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 35-60, April.
    9. R Burger & S du Plessis, 2011. "Examining the Robustness of Competing Explanations of Slow Growth in African Countries," Studies in Economics and Econometrics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(3), pages 21-47, December.
    10. Pal Sudeshna, 2011. "Media Freedom and Socio-Political Instability," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-23, March.
    11. Diana Gutiérrez Posada & Fernando Rubiera Morollón & Ana Viñuela, 2018. "Ageing Places in an Ageing Country: The Local Dynamics of the Elderly Population in Spain," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 109(3), pages 332-349, July.
    12. Cohen, Joseph N, 2010. "Neoliberalism’s relationship with economic growth in the developing world: Was it the power of the market or the resolution of financial crisis?," MPRA Paper 24527, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Cho, Seo-Young & Vadlamannati, Krishna Chaitanya, 2012. "Compliance with the Anti-trafficking Protocol," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 249-265.
    14. Tamilina, Larysa & Tamilina, Natalya, 2017. "Explaining the Impact of Formal Institutions on Social Trust: A Psychological Approach," MPRA Paper 84560, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Niclas Berggren & Mikael Elinder, 2012. "Is tolerance good or bad for growth?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 283-308, January.
    16. Kelly M. Kadera & Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, 2005. "Heeding Ray's Advice: An Exegesis on Control Variables in Systemic Democratic Peace Research," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 22(4), pages 311-326, September.
    17. Daniel Nettle & James B Grace & Marc Choisy & Howard V Cornell & Jean-François Guégan & Michael E Hochberg, 2007. "Cultural Diversity, Economic Development and Societal Instability," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 2(9), pages 1-5, September.
    18. Andersson, Björn, 1999. "On the Causality Between Saving and Growth: Long- and Short-Run Dynamics and Country Heterogeneity," Working Paper Series 1999:18, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    19. Ward Romp & Jakob De Haan, 2007. "Public Capital and Economic Growth: A Critical Survey," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 8(S1), pages 6-52, April.
    20. Martin Gassebner & Jerg Gutmann & Stefan Voigt, 2016. "When to expect a coup d’état? An extreme bounds analysis of coup determinants," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 169(3), pages 293-313, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jitecd:v:24:y:2015:i:6:p:767-808. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJTE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.