Fertility, trade liberalisation and growth : some new evidence

Discussions are often made on the influence of fertility rates on economic growth ones. In order to test certain assumptions empirically, we decided to estimate a few functions where the per capita income of the countries under study is regressed jointly on fertility rates, on export and import rates vs the GDP and on certain variables representative of the quality of government decisions and of court activities. Our findings seem to justify some caution with respect to openness to international trade , while the evidence in favour of education and the fair behaviour of the institutions is instead unanimously positive.