This paper analyzes the impact of foreign aid on growth. It differs from the existing literature in at least two important ways. First, we differentiate between foreign aid as technical assistance and non-technical assistance, and demonstrate both theoretically and empirically that this distinction is important. Second, we test the hypothesis that the effectiveness of aid depends on its level of fragmentation. To preview our main results: non-technical assistance has no statistically significant impact on growth; but technical assistance has a positive and significant impact, except in countries where it is highly fragmented.

No abstract

This paper presents a synthesized theory of development and long run growth. The theory that is presented combines two engines of growth which have been emphasized in the literature: technological progress and human capital accumulation. In the model, the growth rate of per capita output depends in part on the interaction between these two types of economic forces.

This paper studies hours worked volatility and the cyclicality of human capital investments by embedding a Ben-Porath life-cycle model of human capital accumulation into an RBC setting. Agents differ across two dimensions: age and productivity in learning. Our results show that individuals invest more in human capital during economic downturns. However, human capital accumulation is more counter-cyclical for young and low-productivity individuals because they face a lower opportunity cost of education and a higher marginal product of human capital. These results are confirmed empirically using US data from the Current Population Survey and the American Time Use Survey. In addition, the paper contributes to the RBC literature by showing that the model's business cycle properties, in particular hours worked volatility, are sensitive to assumptions of heterogeneity. Introducing heterogeneity in productivity increases the volatility of aggregate hours worked and changes the life-cycle profile for hours volatility to better match the data.

The global energy sector is in a period of transition, during which time it is expected that renewable and low-carbon energy sources, such as wind and solar, will replace traditional fossil fuels, including oil, gas, and coal. The energy transition is happening not only to limit the environmental impact of fossil fuel production and consumption but also to ensure energy security, reliability, access, affordability, and sustainability. The importance of the energy transition has been amplified by recent events, notably the Russian-Ukraine conflict. Economic, financial, and trade sanctions against Russia, and in particular its oil and gas industry, have forced countries to find new suppliers in the short term, but also to investigate new and more sustainable sources to guarantee long-term energy security. Given the importance of energy, it is perhaps not unexpected that there is a considerable body of recent academic literature, particularly over the last 4–5 years, studying what industries, consumers, governments, and markets can do to help bring about a faster energy transition. In this paper, we provide a review of the literature that pertains to the economic aspects of the energy transition. While our initial search of the literature is targeted at uncovering all relevant articles on the subject, we focus most of our discussion on the most influential articles in prominent journals and articles published in this journal—Energies. This review is intended to help identify active topics and potential research gaps and provide future direction, so we hope it will prove useful to the readers and authors interested in this topic.