Patience and prosperity

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Strulik, Holger
• 署名单位: Leibniz University Hannover
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2011.10.008
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 336-352
• 关键词: economic growth; savings; time preference; Poverty trap; Moral consequences of economic growth

摘要

This paper introduces wealth-dependent time preference into a simple model of endogenous growth. The model generates adjustment dynamics in line with the historical facts on savings and economic growth in Europe from the High Middle Ages to today. Along a virtuous cycle of development more wealth leads to more patience, which leads to more savings and further increasing wealth. Savings rates and income growth rates are thus jointly increasing during the process of development until they converge towards constants along a balanced growth path. During the transition to modern growth an economy in which the association of wealth and patience is stronger overtakes an otherwise identical economy and generates temporarily diverging growth rates. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.