Fractional calculus in economic growth modelling: the Spanish and Portuguese cases

Abstract

This work presents a fractional order approach to model the growth of national economies, namely, their gross domestic products (GDPs). Land area, arable land, population, school attendance, gross capital formation, exports of goods and services, general government final consumption expenditure and money and quasi money are taken as variables to describe GDP. The particular cases of the national economies of Spain and Portugal are studied along the last five decades. Results show that fractional models have a better performance than the other alternatives considered in the literature.