U.S. productivity in agriculture and R&D

This paper examines the impact of R&D on multifactor productivity in the U.S. agricultural sector over the 1910–1990 period. We use the Bennet–Bowley indicator to measure agricultural productivity based on a multiple output-multiple input technology. We demonstrate the relationship between the price dependent Bennet–Bowley indicator and the Luenberger productivity indicator which is constructed from directional distance functions without requiring price information. These performance measures are dual to the profit function which arguably makes them especially useful in the agricultural setting. We employ time-series techniques to investigate the effect of R&D on the pattern of productivity growth. We find that we cannot reject the presence of a cointegrating relationship between the two series and that productivity growth in the U.S. agriculture responds positively to R&D expenditure with a lag of between four and ten periods.

Sentiment and the U.S. business cycle

Psychological factors are commonly believed to play a role on cyclical economic fluctuations, but they are typically omitted from state-of-the-art macroeconomic models.This paper introduces “sentiment” in a medium-scale DSGE model of the U.S. economy and tests the empirical contribution of sentiment shocks to business cycle fluctuations.The assumption of rational expectations is relaxed. The paper exploits, instead, observed data on expectations in the estimation. The observed expectations are assumed to be formed from a near-rational learning model. Agents are endowed with a perceived law of motion that resembles the model solution under rational expectations, but they lack knowledge about the solution’s reduced-form coefficients. They attempt to learn those coefficients over time using available time series at each point in the sample and updating their beliefs through constant-gain learning. In each period, however, they may form expectations that fall above or below those implied by the learning model. These deviations capture excesses of optimism and pessimism, which can be quite persistent and which are defined as sentiment in the model. Different sentiment shocks are identified in the empirical analysis: waves of undue optimism and pessimism may refer to expected future consumption, future investment, or future inflationary pressures.The results show that exogenous variations in sentiment are responsible for a sizable (above forty percent) portion of historical U.S. business cycle fluctuations. Sentiment shocks related to investment decisions, which evoke Keynes’ animal spirits, play the largest role. When the model is estimated imposing the rational expectations hypothesis, instead, the role of structural investment-specific and neutral technology shocks significantly expands to capture the omitted contribution of sentiment.     

美日英城市规划立法模式比较

发达国家在城市规划管理制度的建设和实践中,形成了不同的规划立法制度模式。从规划立法中的中央与地方关系、立法主体的特征及其关系、监督制约机制等方面入手,分析和总结了美英日三国规划立法制度模式的特点及其制度实践中的经验教训,对于思考和探索适合我国当前城市规划的制度建设的路径和方法,提供了重要的借鉴和启示。     

U.S. University Research Parks

University research parks are important as a mechanism for the transfer of academic research findings, as a source of knowledge spillovers, and as a catalyst for national and regional economic growth. We develop a model to describe the growth, or productivity, of research parks, and we test this model using the newly constructed National Science Foundation database on university research parks. We find that parks closer to the university, operated by a private organization, and with a specific technology focus—information technology in particular—grow faster than the average of 8.4% per year.     

美国诱捕商业间谍三则

美国是世界上第一科技大国,自然会吸引不少外国企业为引进技术或人才而"光顾".由于国际间竞争日趋激烈,美国为维护其产业的国际竞争力,不断强化法律保护,使得企业的法律风险从过去的单纯民事责任逐渐扩大为刑事责任,其中又以知识产权的保护尤为突出.美国联邦调查局在全美设有50个分站,以警员伪装经纪人,对外声称能够通过中介取得美国公司机密技术,把"姜太公钓鱼,愿者上钩"的"戏剧"表演得淋漓尽致.因此,有意从美国引进技术或人才的中国企业,应对美国诱捕商业间谍案例有所认识.否则,稍有不慎,不但投资回收无门,更可能诉讼上身.     

U.S. Strategic Trade Policy and the Competitiveness of the U.S. Construction Industry in Developing Country Markets

SUMMARY

U.S. government trade policy increasingly reflects “strategic trade” beliefs that, because competition in markets is imperfect, governments can act strategically to affect trade flows and enhance national welfare. The U.S. National Export Strategy targets the infrastructure sector in twelve developing countries as a strategic opportunity for U.S. construction firms. This paper examines whether U.S. government export promotion initiatives effectively implement strategic trade policy by providing appropriate support to these firms in that target market. It concludes that, within limits, they do.     

Corporate Power and Expansive U.S. Military Policy

Military defense is generally treated in economics texts as a “public good” because the benefits are presumed to be shared by all citizens. However, defense spending by the United States cannot legitimately be classified as a public good, since the primary purpose of those expenditures has been to project power in support of private business interests. Throughout the course of the 20^th century, U.S. military spending has been largely devoted to protecting the overseas assets of multinational corporations that are based in the United States or allied nations. Companies extracting oil, mineral ores, timber, and other raw materials are the primary beneficiaries. The U.S. military provides its services by supporting compliant political leaders in developing countries and by punishing or deposing regimes that threaten the interests of U.S.‐based corporations. The companies involved in this process generally have invested only a small amount of their own capital. Instead, the value of their overseas assets largely derives from the appreciation of oil and other raw materials in situ. Companies bought resource‐rich lands cheaply, as early as the 1930s or 1940s, and then waited for decades to develop them. In order to make a profit on this long‐range strategy, they formed cartels to limit global supply and relied on the U.S. military to help them maintain secure title over a period of decades. Those operations have required suppressing democratic impulses in dozens of nations. The global “sprawl” of extractive companies has been the catalyst of U.S. foreign policy for the past century. The U.S. Department of Defense provides a giant subsidy to companies operating overseas, and the cost is borne by the taxpayers of the United States, not by the corporate beneficiaries. Defining military spending as a “public good” has been a mistake with global ramifications, leading to patriotic support for imperialist behavior.     

Demography and the U.S. current account deficit

We examine whether aging in the trading partners of the U.S. has affected their demand for foreign (i.e., U.S.) assets enough to materially affect the U.S. current account balance. There is reason to think that demography may be at work in international capital flows because the standard life-cycle model of consumption behavior predicts that a household's age will influence its saving behavior. Moreover, simple national accounting identities link a country's current account balance to its savings–investment imbalance. Thus, differences in national age-profiles should affect the current account. To test this theory's plausibility and significance, I simulate a multi-region overlapping generations model that is calibrated to match the demographic differences among the major industrialized countries over the past 50 years. In the model, it is found that these differences can explain some of the observed long-term capital movements in the G-7. In particular, the model does a good job of predicting the size and timing of U.S. current account deficits.     

International trade and the U.S. wage structure

Politicians are concerned about the effects of increased foreign trade on U.S. workers. Data from 1978 to 1987 are used to appraise the impact of foreign trade on U.S. manufacturing wages. The results indicate that wages are positively associated with a sector’s level of international comparative advantage. However, this follows from other characteristics aside from the net trade balance. These characteristics may include rent sharing or international technological convergence. Imports and exports also influence wages, where this impact varies with the industry’s unionization. Regardless, the results suggest that greater trade is not a major cause of the decline in U.S. real wages.     

美国玩具安全法律法规与标准体系

文章概述了美国玩具安全法律法规监管体系和玩具安全标准体系,并分析了两者之间的关系。