LOUPIAS Claire

This paper emphasizes the role of land and technological progress in economic and population growth. The model is calibrated using historical data on England concerning both economic growth rate and the factor shares (land, capital, and labor) in total income, as well as mortality tables. It is able to reproduce the dynamics of population since 1760. Moreover, it is possible to disentangle the relative effect of technical changes and mortality fall on the evolution of population. We conduct a counterfactual analysis eliminating successively the increase in life expectancy and the technological bias. With no increase in life expectancy, population would have been respectively 10% and 30% lower in 1910 and in the long run. The figures would have been respectively 40% and 60% lower, with no bias in the technical progress. Finally, population would have been 45% smaller in 1910 and 70% smaller in the long run, neutralizing both the effect of life expectancy and technological bias. So the major part of population increase is due to the technological bias evolution between land and capital.

This paper emphasizes the role of land and technological progress in economic and population growth. The model is calibrated using historical data on England concerning both economic growth rate and the factor shares (land, capital, and labor) in total income, as well as mortality tables. It is able to reproduce the dynamics of population since 1760. Moreover, it is possible to disentangle the relative effect of technical changes and mortality fall on the evolution of population. We conduct a counterfactual analysis eliminating successively the increase in life expectancy and the technological bias. With no increase in life expectancy, population would have been respectively 10% and 30% lower in 1910 and in the long run. The figures would have been respectively 40% and 60% lower, with no bias in the technical progress. Finally, population would have been 45% smaller in 1910 and 70% smaller in the long run, neutralizing both the effect of life expectancy and technological bias. So the major part of population increase is due to the technological bias evolution between land and capital.

This thesis aims to highlight the determinants of medical innovation and its effects on economic growth. It is based on the construction of a database of expenditures and consumption of health goods and services between 1980 and 2010, as well as on three theoretical models. The results, for cohorts born between 1923 and 2010, show that medical innovations are essentially determined by demographic variations. Moreover, even if these medical innovations have historically allowed the emergence of important economies of scale, they do not currently play a driving role in macroeconomic growth. Indeed, under the current conditions of stable survival curves, the mechanics of medical innovation do not appear to be a driving force for short-term macroeconomic growth. The multiplier effects of medical innovation on economic growth would therefore be negative or nil in the short term.

The demographics of developed economies show a rapid aging of their populations, and this process has begun in emerging countries. Demographic aging is due to three phenomena: the postponement of the age of first childbirth, the decline in fertility and the increase in life expectancy. This phenomenon has important economic consequences, notably through the rise in the dependency ratio, defined as the number of retirees in relation to the working age population. This thesis focuses on the consequences of demographic aging on the price of capital and on the financing of pensions in the face of the financial crisis. In the first chapter, we study the effect of the dynamics of the demographic structure on the price of capital in a nested-generation model with capital adjustment costs. The findings indicate that the price of assets increases and then decreases as the demographic structure changes. The second chapter focuses on the performance of a large portfolio during financial market stress. Using copula theory, we develop a methodology to analyze the exposure of a portfolio to different extreme market risks. The third chapter deals with the analysis of the sensitivity of the financial situation of pension funds to market risks, using the methodology developed in the previous chapter. We find that the assets and liabilities of a pension fund's balance sheet are vulnerable to volatile movements in financial markets.

This paper suggests a new explanation for changes in economic and population growth with a long run perspective, emphasizing the role of land in the development process. Starting from a pre-industrialization state called the "Malthusian regime", land and labor are the main production factors. The size of population is limited by the quantity of land available for households and by incomes. Technical progress driven by a "Boserupian effect" may push the economy towards a take-off regime. In this regime, capital accumulation begins and a "learning-by-doing" effect in production takes over from the "Boserupian effect". If this effect is strong enough, the economy can reach an "ultimate growth regime". In the different phases, land plays a crucial role.

Using business survey data, we estimate an ordered probit model to explain the occurrence of producer price increases and decreases in the French manufacturing industry. Our results show that changes in intermediate input prices are the main driver of producer price changes. Changes in firms' labor costs, their production level, or the producer price index of their industry contribute less to the occurrence of price changes. Moreover, when they face a change in their costs, firms adjust their prices upward more often and more rapidly than they do it downward, especially when the shock is perceived as permanent.

This thesis is devoted to the modeling of the role of fixed assets, public debt and public capital in the framework of nested generation models à la diamond (1965). In the first part, after recalling the results of the literature on the role of "land" when it is used only as a factor of production, we study two particular issues when the services of the fixed asset are valued by both the firm and the households. We show that the existence of a fixed factor in the economy is an element in explaining the link between saving and investment in a small open economy. In a second step, we investigate which mode of land ownership maximizes the growth rate in a two-sector model in the manner of Rebelo (1991). We find the "traditional" result that the growth rate is maximized when land ownership is public. In the second part, we focus on the links between public capital and public debt. In a first model, we highlight the influence of the way public capital is financed on whether or not the economy is at the golden rule. In a second step, we study in the framework of an endogenous growth model the mode of financing and the proportion of public capital that maximizes the growth rate of the economy. The results depend on the elasticity of output with respect to private capital.