This dissertation studies the relationship between economic growth and natural resources. Chapter one investigates the role of technological progress in limiting the amount of energy that an economy uses. In particular, I develop a model of directed technical change where research and development expenditures can be used to improve energy efficiency. I show that this model explains past data better than the standard approach, which assumes that technology is exogenous. I then show that the new model is more pessimistic than the standard model when considering the ability of carbon taxes to lessen energy use. Chapter two investigates the impact of climate change on fertility and human capital accumulation. Existing work suggests that agriculture is more sensitive to changes in climate, when compared with other sectors. My coauthors and I combine this insight with standard growth theory focusing on the role of structural transformation, human capital accumulation, and endogenous fertility. The model predicts that human adaptation to climate change will increase fertility and decrease human capital accumulation for countries near the equator, with the opposite occurring in countries at high latitudes. Chapter three adapts the growth model from chapter one to study the relationship between technological progress, unemployment, and inequality. By incorporating both natural resources and directed technical change, the model can generate a long-run steady state with both labor-saving and labor-using technical change. I use the model to examine the impact of a `technological breakthrough' that makes it easier to generate new labor-saving technologies. Breakthroughs lead to faster economic growth in the long-run, but higher unemployment and a lower labor share of income, generating an equity-efficiency trade-off. Breakthroughs also slow growth in the near term, creating a trade-off between short- and long-run economic outcomes.
Casey, Gregory,
"Essays in Economic Growth"
(2018).
Economics Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/bbmg-aw29
