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THE INAUGURAL NOEL BUTLIN LECTURE: WORLD FACTOR MIGRATIONS AND DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITIONS
Author(s) -
Williamson Jeffrey G.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
australian economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.493
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1467-8446
pISSN - 0004-8992
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8446.2004.00113.x
Subject(s) - miracle , capital (architecture) , east asia , mass migration , demographic economics , distribution (mathematics) , geography , economic geography , development economics , political science , economy , economics , china , immigration , mathematical analysis , mathematics , archaeology , law
This lecture explores the connection between demographic transitions, mass migrations and international capital flows. It reviews how demographic transitions influence the size of age cohorts, and then how these changes in age distribution influence excess demands in receiving regions and excess supplies in sending regions. The lecture offers four examples – two from the first global century and two from the second global century – where shocks generated by demographic transitions have had an enormous impact on factor flows: European mass migrations to the New World before 1914; African mass migrations to the OECD over the past two decades; British capital export to the New World before 1914; and capital flows across East Asian borders after 1950 and before the melt down of the 1990s. The lecture concludes with an assessment of the demographic contribution to the East Asian miracle (and slowdown) over the past half century.