环境约束下长三角与珠三角城市群生产率研究——基于MML生产率指数的实证分析

本文运用Metafrontier-Malmquist-Luenberger生产率指数测度了环境约束下1998—2008年长三角和珠三角城市群的全要素生产率及其成分,并对影响城市全要素生产率、纯粹技术追赶和潜在技术相对变动的因素进行了实证研究。主要结论有：珠三角城市群1998—2008年的平均生产率增长高于长三角城市群,这主要是来自于技术进步的贡献;两个城市群的生产技术与潜在的生产技术边界差距在逐步扩大;长三角城市群的技术发展潜力在近些年呈现上升的势头,珠三角城市群的技术发展潜力则呈下降趋势。在城市层面上,技术水准较高的城市,纯粹技术追赶的水平也较高。最后,人均GRP、结构因素、FDI对共同边界下的城市生产率和群组边界下两个城市群各自的城市生产率变动有不同程度的影响。     

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, INEQUALITY AND WORK SHARING

The effects of technological change on wage inequality are usually studied under the assumption of exogenous supplies of skilled and unskilled workers. Moreover, in these studies there is no distinction between the stock (number of workers) and the flow (hours of work) dimension of labour services. In the present paper, we construct a model in which hours of work and technological change affect both the (relative) demand and supply of unskilled workers. The labour supply of unskilled workers (numbers of persons) is derived from a model of household labour supply in which households differ regarding the disutility suffered when both household members work. Combining together the (relative) supply and demand parts of the model we are able to establish technological change (either biased or neutral) as a plausible explanation of recent trends in wage inequality.     

Persistent income gaps in an occupational choice model with multi‐goods

In this study, we propose a theory to explain why income gaps persist. We model a simple overlapping‐generations economy with three consumption goods and two types of workers. We find that high‐skilled workers have comparative advantage in skill‐intensive jobs and low‐skilled workers in less skill‐intensive jobs. This pattern of comparative advantage determines occupational choices by workers. Combined with human capital accumulation, the occupational choices widen income gaps between families. At the same time, the relative price of skill‐intensive goods declines owing to productivity improvement. The decline holds back income gaps from exploding. The implications of skill‐biased technological change are also examined.     

Growth of factor productivity in Turkish manufacturing industries

This paper presents estimates of rates of total factor productivity (TFP) growth for two-digit manufacturing industries in Turkey over the period 1963 to 1976. Estimates are presented separately for the public and private enterprises in each industry. It is shown that periods of slower productivity growth coincided with periods of a more stringent traderegime. It is also shown that, despite the fact that the rate of growth of TFP was about the same in the public and private sectors, absolute levels of inputs in the public sector enterprises are much higher than in their private sector counterparts.     

Adjusting to a New Technology: Experience and Training

How does the economy react to the arrival of a new major technology? The existing literature on general-purpose technologies (GPTs) has studied the role that mechanisms like secondary innovations, diffusion, and learning by firms play in the adjustment process. By contrast, we focus on a new mechanism: the interplay between technological change and two types of human capital—technology-specific experience and education. We show that technological change that requires more education and training, like computerization, necessarily produces an initial slowdown. On the other hand, technological change that lowers the training requirements, like the move from the artisan shop to the factory, can produce either a bust or a boom. We identify three key properties that determine the outcome: (1) the productivity of inexperienced workers, (2) the speed with which experience raises productivity, and (3) the level of general skills required to operate the new technology.     

Energy price-induced and exogenous technological change: Assessing the economic and environmental outcomes

In this paper, we distinguish between factor/output substitution and shifts in the production technology frontier. Our model includes the by-products of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions where the function requires the simultaneous expansion of good outputs and reductions in emissions. We estimate a directional output distance function for 80 countries over the period 1971–2000 to measure the exogenous and oil price-induced technological change. On average, we find substantial oil price-induced technological progress at the world level when long-term oil prices are rising, although the growth rate is more volatile in developed countries than in developing countries. The results also show that developed countries experience higher exogenous technological progress in comparison with developing countries, and the gap between the two has increased during the period of our study.     

Technological change and China's regional disparities — A calibrated equilibrium analysis

We in this paper assess the impacts of technological change on China's regional disparities using a general equilibrium model of multiple regions and multiple sectors. We use the most recent available Chinese interregional data to calibrate the model parameters for 1987 and 2000. We then assess the impacts of neutral, biased, and aggregate technological changes on China's regional disparity by conducting counterfactual experiments. The results generally suggest that China's overall technological change between 1987 and 2000 has increased China's regional disparities. The results also suggest that neutral technological change reduces China's regional disparities while biased technological change increases disparities and the influences of the latter outweigh those of the former and the net effects of technological changes on regional disparities are increasing.     

技术进步对中国就业影响的实证研究

选取1978—2008年中国30个省市的面板数据,运用DEA方法测算中国的全要素生产率及其分解项:技术变化与技术效率,并使用ARDL模型实证分析技术效率和技术变化对就业的影响。研究发现:技术效率无论是长期还是短期都对就业具有显著的抑制效应,但在短期中,技术变化当期对就业没有显著影响;而滞后期技术变化的改善也会对就业人数的增加产生抑制效应,同时,在长期中,技术变化对就业有着显著的促进效应,可以带动就业量的增加。     

Endogenous growth through investment-specific technological change

This paper examines a model in which growth takes place through investment-specific technological change, which in turn is determined endogenously through research spending. In particular, the role of the degree of substitutability between research spending and new capital construction is explored. It is shown that the effect of a change in the capital tax rate on the growth rate can depend on the degree of substitutability between research spending and new capital construction. Research subsidies tend to have a larger impact on the growth rate than would an investment tax credit of the same magnitude. Increases in the capital tax rate can increase the growth rate of the economy, even in the absence of externalities. In contrast to the existing literature, the welfare cost of capital taxation in this model can be negligible. There may be multiple tax rates on capital that achieve the same growth rate. It is demonstrated that in the presence of certain types of positive externalities, the optimal growth rate can be attained through the use of capital taxes—rather than subsidies.     

Creativity-enhancing technological change in the production of scientific knowledge

ABSTRACT

We view scientific publications as a measure of technical knowledge. Using the Solow method of functional decomposition and scientific publication data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, we find that 79% of the increase in scientific publications per unit of scientific personnel is explained by an increase in federal R&D capital per unit of scientific personnel. We describe the unexplained or residual 21% as a measure of creativity-enhancing technological change, a phenomenon that offers a way to reverse the perceived slowing of the productivity of science. The explained 79% offers a possible metric for federal laboratories’ mandated reporting of a ROI to federal R&D. Understanding the drivers of the residual 21% could enable public policy to mitigate the resource constraints caused by the breakdown of exponential growth of the resources devoted to science.     

Worker Personality: Another Skill Bias beyond Education in the Digital Age

We present empirical evidence suggesting that technological progress in the digital age will be biased not only with respect to skills acquired through education but additionally with respect to non‐cognitive skills (personality). We measure the direction of technological change by estimated future digitalization probabilities of occupations, and non‐cognitive skills by the Big Five personality traits from four German worker surveys. Even though we control for education and work experience, we find that workers who are more open to experience, emotionally more stable and less agreeable will tend to be less susceptible to digitalization. We also find that future technological progress may not continue to hollow out the middle class as much as it did in the recent past. These results suggest that education and labor market policies should put more emphasis on children's and workers’ personalities to strengthen their labor market resilience in the digital age.     

我国进口机械设备的技术结构及其资本体现式技术溢出效应

文章利用1985-2007年世界107个国家SITC三位码分类下60多类机械设备进口数据,以出口品生产世界份额的相对权重,测度我国进口机械设备的技术含量和技术结构,并从产品层面构建进口机械设备技术水平与全要素生产率关系模型,检验进口机械设备的资本体现式技术溢出效应。结果显示:(1)我国进口机械设备的技术结构不断升级,中高技术含量和中等技术含量的机械设备进口比重逐年提高,低技术含量机械设备进口比重持续下降。(2)发达国家源于资金和人力资本优势主要引进高技术含量的机械设备,而包括我国在内的发展中国家受资金、技术水平和人力资源的约束,则以进口中等技术含量的机械设备为主。(3)我国进口机械设备的资本体现式技术溢出效应显著,但主要作用于非中性技术进步。     

How many singularities are near and how will they disrupt human history?

This paper reviews a large number of approaches that have been used for considering technologically driven profound societal change. We agree with Vinge's suggestion for naming events that are “capable of rupturing the fabric of human history” (or leading to profound societal changes) as a “singularity”. This is a useful terminology especially since a mathematically rigorous singularity seems impossible for technological and related societal change. The overview of previous work is done within the context of a broader look at the role of technological change within human history. The review shows that a wide variety of methods have been used and almost all point to singularities in the present century particularly in the middle of the century. The diversity of the methods is reassuring about the potential robustness of these predictions. However, the subjectivity of labeling events as singularities (even well studied past events) is a concern about all of the methods and thus one must carefully pause when relying in any way on these predictions. The general lack of empirical research in this area is also a concern.Quantitative considerations (by proponents and opponents) about past singularities or future singularities often confound two types of metrics. The first type is essentially related to diffusion of technologies (or bundles of technologies) where the logistic curve is empirically well established as the proper time dependence. The second type of metric is for technological capability where hyper-exponentials are empirically well established for their time dependence. In this paper, we consider two past singularities (arguably with important enough social change to qualify) in which the basic metric is alternatively of one type or another. The globalization occurring under Portuguese leadership of maritime empire building and naval technological progress is characterized by a metric describing diffusion. The revolution in time keeping, on the other hand, is characterized by a technological capability metric. For these two cases (and thus robust to the choice of metric type), we find that:

• • 

  People undergoing profound technologically-driven societal change do not sense a singularity.

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  The societal impacts depend in complicated ways on human needs, institutional variables and other more uncertain factors and thus are particularly hard to project;

• • 

  The societal impact is apparently not determined by the rate of progress on either type of metric or by projections to mathematical points with either kind of metric. This finding supports the existing concept that social change due to technology is a more holistic phenomenon than can be characterized by any technical metric.

In the final section, we use these empirical findings as the basis for exploring the possibilities for and nature of future singularities. In this we speculate that the potential for a future strong singularity based upon computational capability does not appear particularly probable but that one may already be occurring and is not fully noticed by those (us) going through it. Other possible 21st century singularities (life extension and fossil fuel elimination are two examples considered) may also be already underway rather than waiting for the predicted mid-century changes.     

Job Polarization and Task‐Biased Technological Change: Evidence from Sweden, 1975–2005

In this paper, we show that between 1975 and 2005, Sweden exhibited a pattern of job polarization with expansions of the highest‐ and lowest‐paid jobs compared to middle‐wage jobs. The most popular explanation for such a pattern is the hypothesis of task‐biased technological change, where technological progress reduces the demand for routine middle‐wage jobs but increases the demand for non‐routine jobs located at the tails of the job–wage distribution. However, our estimates do not support this explanation for the 1970s and 1980s. Stronger evidence for task‐biased technological change, albeit not conclusive, is found for the 1990s and 2000s. In particular, there is both a statistically and economically significant growth of non‐routine jobs and a decline of routine jobs. However, results for wages are mixed; while task‐biased technological change cannot explain changes in between‐occupation wage differentials, it does have considerable explanatory power for changes in within‐occupation wage differentials.     

Analysis on total factor productivity of Chinese provincial economy

This paper applies the nonparametric DEA-Malmquist index approach to estimate total factor productivity growth, efficiency change and the rate of technological progress from 1979 to 2003. This is done to conduct analysis on the total factor productivity of China’s provincial economy. Analysis on the evolution of distribution dynamics of relative labor productivity, relative total factor productivity, relative efficiency and relative technological progress is done by using kernel density estimation for the period from 1979 to 2003 in 29 provinces of China. Our analysis indicates that disparities of provincial economic growth are large and have been increasing owing to the relatively large and increasing disparities of total factor productivity growth especially the rate of technological progress. __________ Translated from The Journal of World Economy (世界经6D4E;), 2005, (5) (in Chinese)     

Technological change,efficiency gains and capital accumulation in labour productivity growth and convergence: an application to the Spanish regions

The main objective of this article is to analyse labour productivity growth and convergence in the Spanish regions between 1965 and 1995, decomposing total factor productivity gains into technological progress and efficiency change by means of Malmquist productivity indices. On the basis of this decomposition, labour productivity growth is broken down into components attributable to technological change (shifts in the frontier), efficiency gains (movements toward the frontier) and capital accumulation (movements along the frontier). The approach followed in this study is based on work initiated by Färe et al., where a link between the economic growth and convergence literature and the production frontier approach was established. Furthermore, in the spirit of Quah's approach, the evolution of the whole distribution is considered. Thus, the analysis of the dynamics of the entire distribution of labour productivity and the factors behind it – technological progress, efficiency gains and capital accumulation – combine both approaches, yielding new insights into the process of productivity growth and convergence experienced by the Spanish regions over the last 30 years.     

Elasticity of substitution and the stagnation of Italian productivity

The aim of this paper is to investigate the roots of the stagnation in the Italian total factor productivity (TFP). The analysis focuses on the specific pattern of technical progress in determining the dynamics of the TFP. This analysis cannot be done with Cobb-Douglas technology, but requires the employment of a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function that allows distinguishing between the direction and the bias of technical progress. We employ a CES specification embodying both labor- and capital-augmenting technical change, with a σ less than 1. We obtain three main results. (1) There seems to have been a structural break around the mid-1990s in the direction and bias of technological change; (2) The first half of the sample features a labor-augmenting technical change and a capital bias; and (3) In the second part of the sample, both these characteristics seem to disappear, and the evolution of factor endowments assumes a key role. This fact may be seen as one of the potential causes of the stagnation in Italian productivity.     

A theory of classification and evolution of technologies within a Generalised Darwinism

This paper here proposes a theory of classification and evolution of technology based on taxonomic characteristic of interaction between technologies that is an under-studied field of research in economics of technical change and management of technology. The proposed classification of technologies, in a broad analogy with evolutionary ecology of parasites, within a theoretical framework of Generalised Darwinism, is: (1) parasitic technologies, (2) commensal technologies, (3) mutualistic technologies, (4) symbiotic technologies. This theory here suggests the property of mutual benefaction from interaction between different technologies and the theorem of not independence of any technology to explain and predict characteristics and evolutionary pathways of technologies over time. Overall, then, this study may be useful for bringing a new perspective in economics of innovation to categorise and analyse the interaction between technologies that can be a ground work for development of more sophisticated concepts to explain and predict the evolution of technology and generalise aspects of technological change in human society.     

有偏技术进步对碳强度的影响及传导机制研究

本文通过构建包含资本、劳动和碳要素的超越对数函数模型，对中国30个省（市）技术进步偏向进行判别，通过构建多重中介效应模型，探究其影响碳排放强度的传导机制，并分析不同资源丰裕度下传导机制的异质性。主要结论：①碳要素偏向型技术进步和碳排放强度呈显著正相关，技术进步偏向碳节约型有助于推动碳减排。②碳要素偏向型技术进步可通过能源利用效率和经济发展水平中介效应间接影响碳排放强度。③资源型省（市）主要通过提高经济发展水平路径，而非资源型省（市）主要通过提高能源利用效率路径促进碳要素偏向型技术进步的减排效应。④碳要素偏向型技术进步的减排效应存在显著双门槛效应，能源利用效率越大、经济发展水平越高，碳要素偏向型技术进步对碳排放强度的影响越大。因此，需加大技术进步偏向碳要素节约的诱导力度，注意不同资源丰裕度下碳减排的不同路径，加强能源利用效率提高，推动经济绿色发展，助力“双碳”目标实现。     

The sources of total factor productivity growth: Evidence from Canadian data

A dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed and used to identify sources of total factor productivity growth in Canada and to quantify their importance. The model also provides procedures for constructing measures of technological progress. We find that periods of low productivity growth correspond to periods of high growth in investment-specific technology (IST) or high rates of technology embodiment. For example, the growth rate of IST was relatively high between 1974 and 1996. The higher growth rate of IST during this period should have increased the rate of productivity growth by an estimated 0.29 percentage points, ceteris paribus. Yet, productivity growth slowed. Why?