人力资本门槛、创新互动能力与低发展陷阱——对1990年以来中国地区经济差距的实证检验

1990年以来,中国各地区经济差距不断扩大现象引起理论界的广泛关注。内生增长理论认为,原因可能在于落后地区的低人力资本禀赋难以同本地创新形成良性互动,导致经济增长速度始终囿于低发展陷阱。中国地区数据的实证结果表明,中等层次人力资本是创新经济增长的主要驱动要素,同一人力资本门槛内部的相近地区经济增长率基本保持均衡。如果外生政策变量不诱导落后地区跨越人力资本门槛,这类地区的低发展均衡状态将很难被突破。因此,在增加物质资本投入的同时突出人力资本建设,对平衡中国各地区经济增长具有很强的政策意义。     

Population and Economic Growth Under Different Growth Engines

Using a growth model with physical capital accumulation, human capital investment and horizontal R&D activity, this paper proposes an alternative channel through which an increase in the population growth rate may yield a non‐uniform (i.e., a positive, negative, or neutral) impact on the long‐run growth rate of per‐capita GDP, as available empirical evidence seems mostly to suggest. The proposed mechanism relies on the nature of the process of economic growth (whether it is fully or semi‐endogenous), and the peculiar engine(s) driving economic growth (human capital investment, R&D activity, or both). The model also explains why in the long term the association between population growth and productivity growth may ultimately be negative when R&D is an engine of economic growth.     

The driving forces behind China’s growth1

The main objective of this article is to disentangle the determinants of the Chinese economic growth that occurred from 1965 to 2000. We have explored, first, the time series properties of the growth rates of gross domestic product and labour productivity with an extended battery of unit‐root tests. Then, in a multivariate setting, we use the VAR model methodology to provide evidence that physical and human capital accumulation, R&D expenditure, openness and competitiveness are the main drivers of output, labour productivity and total factor productivity growth in the long run. Additionally, we also show that although China has not yet converged to its long‐run equilibrium, it is in the process of catching up. These results are more consistent with some versions of the endogenous growth models than with Solow‐type models of growth, since they support active strategies of economic policy to stimulate economic growth and catching up with more advanced economies.     

Economic and productivity growth decomposition: An application to post-reform China

This paper examines and applies the theoretical foundation of the decomposition of economic and productivity growth to the thirty provinces in China's post-reform economy. The four attributes of economic growth are input growth, adjusted scale effect, technical progress, and efficiency growth. A stochastic frontier model with a translog production and incorporated with human capital is used to estimate the growth attributes in China. The empirical results show that input growth is the major contributor to economic growth and human capital is inadequate even though it has a positive and significant effect on growth. Technical progress is the main contributor to productivity growth and the scale effect has become important in recent years. The impact of technical inefficiency is statistical insignificant in the sample period. The relevant policy implication for a sustainable post-reform China economy is the need to promote human capital accumulation and improvement in technical efficiency.     

Are the FDI inflow spillover effects on Malaysia's economic growth input driven?

This paper inspects the influence of human capital, labour force, and absorptive capacity, physical capital as a control variable, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and gross domestic product (GDP) on Malaysia's productivity growth. A time series quarterly data from the period of 1999 to 2008 was used. The effects of FDI inflows on human capital, labour force, absorptive capacity and physical capital were investigated. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression was applied to estimate the data in the first step and in the second step productivity indicators were calculated. The results show that the FDI inflows and inputs used are negatively contributed to total factor productivity (TFP). Meanwhile, FDI plays a significant role in achieving economic growth through input driven as indicated by the contribution of the TFP. In this regard, a significant positive relationship between human capital, labour force and absorptive capacity which determines the spillover effect on Malaysian economic growth (GDP) was found and the physical capital has shown negative relationship.     

ChinHow R&D Investments Influence TFP Growth: Evidence from China’s Large and Medium- Sized Industrial Enterprises

This paper investigates the potential channels through which R&D may influence TFP growth using industry-level panel data of China’s large and medium-sized industrial enterprises over the period of 2000–2007. Comparing with existing literature, we provide a closer look of the relationship between R&D and TFP growth by decomposing TFP growth into efficiency change and technical change components using Malmquist productivity index and distinguishing between upstream R&D spillovers and downstream R&D spillovers. We find TFP grow slightly during 2000–2007, and R&D investment indeed serves as an engine of productivity growth just as endogenous growth theories argued, which is largely because R&D accelerates technical progress even it also results in enlarging technical inefficiency. However, we find a robust negative effect of downstream R&D spillovers on TFP growth, the effects of upstream is positive but not statistically significant. In addition, we do not find the positive effects of human capital on TFP as endogenous growth theories indicated, but find human capital severs as “assimilation device” for R&D spillovers both in promoting TFP growth and increasing technical efficiency even the effects on technical progress is adverse.     

Human capital and the re‐employment of retrenchment labor in urban China

The inefficiency of state‐owned enterprises, followed by the economic reform in urban China, resulted in large‐scale retrenchment during the late1990s. The laid‐off workers were middle‐aged, not well educated and had accumulated a lot of firm‐specific human capital that was unlikely to be of value in the product market. In this study, we investigate how differently human capital affects laid‐off workers’ occupation choices: self‐employment, re‐employment and remaining unemployed. Using 2002 Chinese Household Income Project and 2009 Urban Household Survey datasets, we find that although general human capital measured by education is positively related to the probability of finding a job, it is negatively associated with the probability of self‐employment. Displaced workers with more sector‐specific work experience are more likely to be self‐employed than to be employed by others. Government‐sponsored training significantly increases the likelihood of finding a job. Health is positively associated with re‐employment.     

我国人力资本投资对经济增长的贡献

本文在对人力资本与经济增长的文献综述的基础上,利用我国统计年鉴中有关经济、教育数据计算我国人力资本存量与物质资本存量,并利用有效劳动模型和人力资本外部性模型,估计我国人力资本对经济增长的贡献,发现在我国经济增长过程中,物质资本存量的作用更为关键,而且人力资本投资对经济增长的外部性作用明显。     

人力资本与经济增长:对中国的实证分析

本文利用北卡罗来那大学Chapel Hill分校和中国预防医学会营养与食品卫生研究所的调查数据，估计出1990年～2000年我国的工资方程和人力资本增长率。结合该时期经济增长，资本存量和劳动投入数据，我估算出中国20世纪90年代的全要素生产率，以及各因素对经济增长的贡献。此外，本文还详细讨论了统计年鉴中产出、资本和劳动数据存在的问题，在对以往的研究进行详细比较的基础上选择了适当的纠正方法。     

人力资本对经济增长推动作用研究

人力资本作为一种潜在的资本能量,在与物资资本相结合的生产过程中,价值创造功能会逐渐的显现出来。但在各国实际的经济发展过程中,人力资本发挥作用的物质载体有很大差异,因此这种能量的发挥也会受到具体条件的限制。本文从理论与实证的角度梳理了部分学者关于人力资本对经济增长推动作用的研究。理论上,人力资本通过非知识效应、收入效应、替代效应以及外部效应等相关作用机制对经济增长会起到推动作用,这得到了大家的一致认同;实证分析研究中,由于学者采用的人力资本存量计量方法的不同,结论也不尽相同;而学者在对我国经济增长的实证研究中显示,人力资本对我国经济增长的推动作用不足。     

Output Growth Decomposition in the Presence of Input Quality Effects: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

How do physical capital accumulation and total factor productivity (TFP) individually add to economic growth? We approach this question from the perspective of the quality of physical capital and labor, namely the age of physical capital and human capital. We build a unique dataset by explicitly calculating the age of physical capital for each country and each year of our time frame and estimate a stochastic frontier production function incorporating input quality in five regions of countries (Africa, East Asia, Latin America, South Asia and West). Physical capital accumulation generally proves much more important than either the improved quality of factors or TFP growth in explaining output growth. The age of capital decreases growth in all regions except in Africa, while human capital increases growth in all regions except in East Asia.     

The mobility of highly skilled human capital in Taiwan

Most economists agree that a country's economic growth depends on human capital, physical capital, technology, and several other minor inputs. Human capital is the basic wealth of every country. Highly skilled workers are the most important component of human capital. Human capital can have a positive spillover effect on society. When talented young people leave their native country to work elsewhere, this brain drain inhibits the country's economic growth. Several factors contribute to brain drain. These can be classified roughly into three categories: economic, academic and personal. Economic factors play the most important role. From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, Taiwan suffered a brain drain when many people who had earned advanced degrees in western countries chose to leave Taiwan to work elsewhere. In this study's statistical analysis, I show that Taiwan's economy is based in past on an effective labour force and explain why Taiwan's economy has grown over the past 30 years. With the improved economy in the 1990s, young people are increasingly choosing to return to or remain in Taiwan to work and live. As Taiwan's economy improves, its highly skilled labour market becomes more competitive.     

基于随机前沿生产函数的我国主要省市人力资本与R＆D投资效率实证检验

人力资本和R&D投资一方面促进了经济增长,另一方面又增强了科研主体对外部技术的吸收能力,推动了知识与技术的扩散。本文基于随机前沿生产函数,利用1998—2007年中国29个省市共290个观测数据,通过引入人力资本和R&D投资两个参数,分析人力资本和R&D投资对生产力的直接影响和通过提高技术吸收能力对技术效率的间接影响。结果表明:人力资本在诠释地区间效率差异中扮演着极其重要的角色,它不仅直接影响生产力的提高,而且还通过提高技术吸收能力从而间接影响技术效率;R&D投资对技术效率有重要影响,而对生产力的直接影响并不强。     

Equipment investment, output and productivity in China

At the beginning of the 1990s, J. Bradford De Long and Lawrence H. Summers highlighted in a series of influential articles that there were good reasons and quantitative evidence to support the point of view that machinery and equipment investment might be strongly associated with economic growth. China along with its enormous investment effort over recent decades constitutes an interesting case study with which to analyse the role played by equipment investment in its recent economic performance and its interaction with other sources of growth, i.e. openness, R&D, human capital and infrastructure. Our results provide evidence that equipment investment and exports are two of the most important determinants of both labour productivity and output in the long run even after controlling for other sources of growth in China. Furthermore, when human capital and infrastructure are included, the authors find that they have a positive effect on economic activity in the long run.     

Transition of China��s growth pattern

China has achieved hyper economic growth in the past three decades. The achievement, though spectacular, is nothing incomprehensible to modern economic theories. A number of characteristic factors, short-term or long-term, have been favorable to fast growth. The market-oriented reforms that started thirty years ago have installed the preconditions for the economy to benefit from these factors. As China rises to the rank of middle-income countries, some conditions that used to support fast economic growth are now undergoing profound changes. These changes have important implications on capital formation and productivity growth, the two major drivers of growth. With the era of hyper economic growth coming to its end, the growth pattern of the Chinese economy is in transition. That calls for a transformation of government’s role in the economy to answer the challenges of this transition.     

China’s catch-up to the US economy: decomposing TFP through investment-specific technology and human capital

We implement a neoclassical growth model that incorporates investment-specific technology (IST) modifying capital investment in the law of motion of capital and bifurcates productivity into human capital and total factor productivity (TFP) in the production function. We focus on the role of changes in the quality-adjusted price of investment goods on China’s growth by comparing the effects of IST and human capital on the decomposition of US and Chinese productivity. The results show that both human capital and IST play an important role in the decomposition of US TFP. For China, human capital accounts for an increasingly higher portion of Chinese TFP for the period 1952–2009; however, IST contributes to the explanation of TFP only after the 1979 reforms. The analysis is extended by considering the impact of IST in the consumer’s investment decision and by projecting both countries’ GDP while modelling unbalanced Chinese growth using catch-up. Our model predicts that the Chinese economy will surpass the US economy in 2024.     

我国人力资本“双高型”四省域经济增长分析

本文通过对双高型区域广东、山东、江苏和浙江四个省区1996～2007区间的经济增长模型进行分析发现:(1)全要素生产率、物质资本存量、无差别劳动、一般人力资本和专业人力资本均与经济增长呈显著正相关关系。其中,物质资本存量对双高型区域经济增长的解释度依然最高,达到93.5%,表明其经济增长仍主要依靠物质资本投入拉动。(2)人力资本投资导致经济增长是必然的,同时经济增长又促进人力资本投资水平的进一步提高。(3)四个省区经济增长所表现出的共同特征是固定资产推动型的经济增长方式,显然尚未充分发挥人力资本对经济增长的贡献。迫切要求各省区,特别是人力资本丰富的双高型区域,充分发挥人力资本的优势,实现物质资本推动型经济向人力资本推动型经济转型。     

R&D, Human Capital and International Technology Spillovers: A Cross-country Analysis

This paper is based on recent developments in the theory of innovation-driven growth that emphasize both the importance of R&D efforts — domestic as well as foreign — for explaining national productivity, and the complementarity between R&D and human capital investments. Estimates of specifications, in growth terms and in level terms, on a cross-section of OECD countries from the early 1960s to the early 1990s lend strong support to this thesis. The data show a significant influence of both domestic and foreign R&D. Moreover, there is clearly a net positive impact of human capital. The level and growth rate of human capital are shown to affect productivity growth and there is evidence of interaction with the catch-up process.
JEL classification: O 33; O 47     

Increasing Returns,Financial Capital Mobility and Real Exchange Rate Dynamics*

The late 1990s saw a US IT investment boom, large capital flows into the USA and an appreciation of the US$. At the time, this appeared to be driven by expectations of continued IT‐related knowledge spillover externalities and associated productivity and profit growth. Using a two‐region dynamic general equilibrium model with externalities, we find a once‐off productivity shock leads to capital inflow and a real appreciation only in the short term. In the long term, capital flows stabilise and the real exchange rate depreciates. For a single shock to trigger long‐term growth in capital flows requires unrealistically large externalities.     

我国经济发展方式非均衡特征及优化的政策选择——基于人力资本投资低水平“陷阱”视角的分析

本文以人力资本视角分析我国经济发展方式转变及促进经济可持续性的政策选择。研究表明,人力资本投资在发达国家经济增长方式转型中具有主导性的作用,而改革开放以来我国人力资本投资对经济发展的作用已经落入低水平陷阱,经济发展依赖于物质资本及低端劳动力的数量投入,人力资本与物质资本呈现非均衡特征,而且出现就业压力严峻与人力资本短缺并存的现象,物质资本与人力资本不匹配、人力资本投资结构与人才需求结构错位,以及收入分配与人力资本投资不足等问题日益凸显,经济发展可持续性受到挑战。对此,我国应明确人力资本投资对经济发展方式转变的重要作用和地位,通过增加教育投入、放宽教育准入制度及收入分配改革等渠道,实现人力资本投资的快速增长,促进经济发展方式的优化。