Essays in economic growth
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This thesis contains three chapters, each investigating a question related to economic growth. The first chapter, co-authored with Mohamad Adhami and Emma Rockall, studies the consequences of product market power for economic growth through the lens of a general equilibrium model firm-driven endogenous technological change. In this framework, differentiated firms engage in monopolistic competition, charge heterogeneous markups, and make forward-looking investments in R&D to improve their process efficiency. Markups distort the scale at which these firms operate and, therefore, affect their incentives to invest in R&D. With dispersion in markups, both the aggregate and cross-firm allocations of such investments are distorted. Using firm-level administrative data from France to discipline our model, we find that correcting the product market distortions induced by markups increases the long-run growth rate of productivity by 1.2 percentage points per year. Nearly 75% of this faster productivity growth can be achieved by simply reallocating R&D resources across firms, revealing that the dispersion in markups, rather than their average level, is more detrimental to economic growth. The second chapter studies the (mis)allocation of research talent in the U.S., and its consequences for economic growth. In 1976, 4% of inventors in the U.S. were women, and by 2020, that fraction had only moved up to 12%. Under the natural assumption that there are no intrinsic differences in inventive potential across genders, the scarcity of women in research reveals that the U.S. is missing out on some of its brightest minds. This raises two questions: (1) What are the barriers faced by those ``lost'' Jennifer Doudnas? and (2) How costly is this (mis)allocation of talent for aggregate productivity and welfare? I tackle these questions through the lens of a semi-endogenous growth model in which individuals with heterogeneous talent choose between a career in research or production. However, gendered barriers can deter or prevent women from pursuing their comparative advantage. Interpreting micro-level data on the universe of U.S. inventors through this framework, I find that women and men inventors are just too similarly productive and educated for distortions operating through selection or human capital to play a prominent role. The evidence instead suggests that the underlying barriers are more likely related to a lack of opportunities and relevant role models for women in research. Taking advantage of the structure of this theory, I find that lifting all barriers to female innovation would be equivalent to permanently raising everyone's consumption by 2.7%. The third chapter, co-authored with Pete Klenow and Chad Jones, studies the evolution of racial disparities in economic well-being over time in the United States. We construct a measure of consumption-equivalent welfare for Black and White Americans. Our statistic incorporates life expectancy, consumption, leisure, and inequality. Welfare for Black Americans was 43% of that for White Americans in 1984 and rose to 59% by 2019. Going back further in time (albeit with more limited data), the gap was even larger, with Black welfare equal to just 29% of White welfare in 1940. On the one hand, there has been remarkable progress for Black Americans: the level of their consumption-equivalent welfare increased by a factor of 26 between 1940 and 2019, when aggregate consumption per person rose a more modest 5-fold. On the other hand, despite this remarkable progress, the welfare gap in 2019 remains disconcertingly large. The gap appears even larger when we make rough attempts to incorporate omitted factors such as morbidity, incarceration, and unemployment.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2024; ©2024 |
| Publication date | 2024; 2024 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Brouillette, Jean Felix |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Jones, Charles I. (Charles Irving) |
| Degree supervisor | Klenow, Peter J |
| Thesis advisor | Jones, Charles I. (Charles Irving) |
| Thesis advisor | Klenow, Peter J |
| Thesis advisor | Tonetti, Christopher |
| Degree committee member | Tonetti, Christopher |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Economics |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Jean-Felix Brouillette. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Economics. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2024. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/rq574qj3855 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2024 by Jean Felix Brouillette
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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