Conference Paper

Demographic shocks and global factor flows: discussion

Abstract: A paper-giver's job is straightforward. It is to describe some interesting phenomenon or mechanism or effect, make large claims about its importance for our understanding of the world, and then marshal evidence to show these claims are true. ; Jeffrey Williamson has done his job wonderfully well. He knows much more about economic history than I do, so I can only defer to his deep knowledge. But I find it surprising that the mechanism described in this paper accounts for such a large fraction of the phenomena examined. Let me oversimplify the paper by baldly stating its hypothesis. Then I will make a couple of remarks about the findings.

Keywords: Economic conditions; Demography;

Status: Published in Seismic shifts: the economic impact of demographic change

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Part of Series: Conference Series ; [Proceedings]

Publication Date: 2001

Volume: 46