The Trickle‐down Effect of the Mining Boom in Australia: Fact or Myth?

This paper examines the relationship between the output levels in the mining sector and various non‐mining sectors in an attempt to understand the role of the mining sector in Australia. The unobserved components time series model is used to estimate the effects of the output gap and the growth regime in the mining sector on the output level of each of several non‐mining sectors. Overall, the estimates obtained do not suggest an overwhelmingly positive effect running from the mining sector to other production and services sectors, implying that the trickle‐down effect of the mining boom may be a myth.     

Higher education and public sector employment: evidence from Finnish data on twins

Using data from Finland on twins, this paper examines the effect of labour quality, as measured by education, on the choice to work in the public sector. A distinction to previous studies is made by allowing controls of family background and genetics effects that could drive the positive relationship between higher education and public sector employment. The conditional (fixed effects) logit regression estimates indicate that highly qualified employees are more likely to seek public sector employment. The paper also utilizes the longitudinal structure of the data to examine whether the results vary over time. These results indicate that the association between public sector work and higher education is counter-cyclical. In other words, highly qualified workers are more likely to hold public service positions and to have greater access to public sector jobs during economic downturns.     

Measuring Efficiency in Higher Education: An Empirical Study Using a Bootstrapped Data Envelopment Analysis

This paper applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess technical efficiency in a big public university. Particular attention has been paid to two main activities, teaching and research, and on two large groups, the Science and Technology (ST) sector and the Humanity and Social Science (HSS) sector. The findings, based to data from 2005 to 2009, suggest that the ST sector is more efficient in terms of quality of research than the HSS sector, that instead achieves higher efficiency in teaching activities. The efficiency estimates strongly depend on the output specification, given that the use of several quality proxies, such as three research and two student questionnaire-based teaching alternative indices, reduce performance and its differentials for both research and teaching activities. A bootstrap technique is also used to provide confidence intervals for efficiency scores and to obtain bias-corrected estimates. The Malmquist index is calculated to measure changes in productivity.     

中国公共部门劳动生产效率实证研究

借鉴Karras(2007)的实证模型,本文利用中国1988-2007年30个省、市、自治区的面板数据,对公共部门的劳动生产效率进行实证分析,结果显示:(1)中国公共部门的劳动产出弹性为0.008;(2)中国公共部门的劳动边际产出高于非公共部门;(3)中国公共部门劳动人员的显性工资存在低估。虽然中国公共部门的劳动边际产出相对于非公共部门高,但其产出弹性仍处于较低水平。本文的政策含义是:加大劳动密集型公共品供给力度,有利于提高中国整个经济的产出水平;中国非公共部门需要改变劳动力粗放投入模式,地方政府应鼓励私人部门为员工提供多元化的职业培训与技能教育,以提高其边际产出。同时,优化公务员薪酬结构,将隐性收入逐步纳入正规货币工资范围之中。     

The economic effects of health care systems on national economies: an input-output analysis of Slovenia

This paper estimates the size of the economic impact generated by the Slovenian health care sector on the national economy in the 2009–2014 period. The study separately calculates output, income, employment, value-added and import multipliers for the Slovenian health care sector based on input-output analysis covering 49 sectors. Initially, values of simple output multipliers for all years are estimated. When the re-circulation of final demand through households is added to the direct and indirect economic effects, the values of total output multipliers considerably exceeds 2. The results suggest that an additional million EUR of final demand in the health care sector will, based on different scenarios, increase the total employment by 20 to 30 units. Moreover, the type II employment multipliers imply that under the best-case scenario one employee in the health care sector creates an additional 0.7 unit of employment in remaining structures of the observed economy. Stability evaluation of the derived multipliers suggests that the domestic health care sector may reduce volatilities in production, income and employment and consequently act as an important shock absorber in the economy.     

Private Sector Wealth: Quarterly Estimates for use in an Aggregate Model*

The paper presents some estimates of private-sector wealth in Australia for the 1958-75 period. Basically, we have attempted to consolidate the balance sheets of all sectors, except the government and the foreign sector. Different procedures have been used for the various components of private-sector wealth and estimates are presented for real assets of the household sector (dwellings, motor vehicles and consumer durables), for fixed assets and inventories of the business sector, and for government liabilities to the private sector. Broadly, the data indicate that over the 1958-75 period, private wealth grew faster than population but slower than output and business capital stock. Dwellings and motor vehicles were the fastest growing components of private wealth. Reflecting the rise in the share of foreign claims on businesses in Australia, the Australian claims on business assets increased at a slower rate than the increase in the business-capital stock.     

Putting the Australian Economy on the Scales

Based on the increasing size of the service sector, some believe that growth in advanced countries has come without much change in the physical weight of output. To investigate the question, I generate rough estimates of the physical weight of Australian output from 1831 to 2018, using data on the weight of traded goods. These ballpark estimates imply that the weight of annual output increased from around 50,000 tonnes to around 800 million tonnes. Over the long term, a 10 per cent increase in real GDP was associated with a 12 per cent increase in the physical weight of output.     

Distinguishing Between the Effects of Primary and Post-primary Education on Economic Growth

The paper follows Benhabib and Spiegel (Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 34, 1994:143–73) in examining the effect of human capital accumulation on economic growth. The paper is innovative in two ways. First, it takes the R&D‐based models more seriously. This delivers more structural specifications in which human capital affects growth as an input of final output and as a catalyst of technological innovation and imitation. Second, owing to data availability it is possible to disaggregate human capital and assign different roles to primary and post‐primary education. Regression estimates obtained from these alternative specifications suggest that the relative contribution of human capital to technology adoption and final output production vary by country wealth. More importantly, regression estimates suggest that primary education contributes mainly to production of final output, whereas post‐primary education contributes mainly to innovation and imitation of technology.     

Are Indian States Converging in the Post-Reform Period?: An Empirical Inquiry

This paper studies the convergence phenomenon for 23 states of India for the period 1981 to 2001. The decades of the 1980s and the 1990s has been studied separately to comment on the convergence behaviour in the pre reform and post reform period. In addition to that of per capita SDP, convergence of per capita output emanating from the agriculture, industry and the services sector has been analysed to get a deeper insight. Both sigma (σ) convergence and beta (β) convergence have been examined. The study finds absence of sigma (σ) convergence and unconditional beta (β) convergence of per capita NSDP both in the 1980s and 1990s. However, conditional beta (β) convergence estimates reveal that the poorer states are catching up with their richer counterparts in the 1990s. The panel GMM estimates reveal that Indian states converged to their steady state output at a higher rate in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. At the sectoral level, Industry had a higher speed of convergence than agriculture in both decades. Further, divergence rather than convergence is observed for the services sector in both decades.

     

Family employees and absenteeism

Work effort varies greatly across employees, as evidenced by substantial differences in absence rates. Moreover, absenteeism causes sizeable output losses. Using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), this paper investigates absence behaviour of family employees, i.e. workers who are employed in enterprises owned by a relative. Our estimates indicate that being a family employee instead of a regular employee in the private sector significantly reduces both the probability and duration of absence to a substantial degree.     

Private and Government Employment in the OECD: Productivities and Wages

This paper estimates the productivity of private and government employment for a panel of 23 OECD economies over the 1961–1992 period, and investigates their relation to the government/private wage ratio. The paper finds that (i) the elasticities of output with respect to private and government employment are statistically significantly different from each other; (ii) the marginal products of private and government employment are not statistically significantly different, which suggests that government employment is neither over- nor under-provided, and that shifting employment from one sector to the other is not likely to produce substantial output gains; and (iii) in most of the countries examined, government workers are overpaid in the sense that the government/private wage ratio exceeds the corresponding ratio of marginal products.
(J.E.L. E24, E62).     

可标准化服务行业对服务业发展的影响——基于两部门模型的分析

从理论上探讨了标准化促进服务业发展的内在机制。构建了两部门模型,分析了可标准化服务部门对服务业发展的影响。利用2003—2012年中国服务业的省际数据,运用面板模型对可标准化服务部门的溢出效应进行了估算,利用DEA方法对服务业各行业的全要素生产率进行了测算和分解。结果表明:可标准化服务部门要素的边际产出高于不可标准化服务部门,发展可标准化服务部门有利于服务业增长;可标准化服务行业对不可标准化服务行业的溢出效应为负,原因在于可标准化服务行业的全要素生产率较低,因此在当前发展阶段需要进一步对可标准化服务行业内部进行优化整合。     

Accounting for South Korean GDP Growth: Index-Number and Econometric Estimates

The paper estimates the contribution of each one of the major determinants of South-Korean nominal GDP growth: technological change, movements in the terms of trade, increases in the endowments of labor and capital, and changes in domestic output prices. An index-number technique is used as well as an econometric approach. Both have a tight theoretical foundation, being based on the GDP function approach to modeling the production sector of an open economy.     

Earnings and Schooling of Cooperative Managers

Abstract This paper estimates econometrically the economic return on schooling among Portuguese cooperative managers, based on a survey carried out in 1999. The main findings indicate that the rate of return is in line with previous published research. The results also indicate that in this sector, the return on education does not depend on the dimensions of the cooperative in which the individual works.     

Higher education costs and scale and scope economies

Higher education multi-product cost functions are estimated for the public and private sectors disaggregated by research, comprehensive, baccalaureate, and associate level institutions. The output mix incorporates professional school teaching output, in addition to undergraduate and graduate teaching and research outputs. Scale and scope economies are examined by sector and institutional level, also accounting for regional differences. Ray economies are found throughout the private sector, but confined to lower level public institutions. Research economies are widespread throughout all sector levels. Economies of scope prevail among private institutions across levels, but only among comprehensive and baccalaureate public colleges.     

A Tale of Two Sectors: Why is Misallocation Higher in Services than in Manufacturing?

Recent empirical studies document that the level of resource misallocation in the service sector is significantly higher than in the manufacturing sector. We quantify the importance of this difference and study its sources. Conservative estimates for Portugal in 2008 show that closing this gap, by reducing misallocation in the service sector to manufacturing levels, would boost aggregate gross output by around 12 percent and aggregate value added by around 31 percent. Differences in the effect and size of productivity shocks explain most of the gap in misallocation between manufacturing and services, while the remainder is explained by differences in firm productivity and age distributions. We interpret these results as stemming mainly from higher output-price rigidity, higher labor adjustment costs and higher informality in the service sector.     

A multivariate time series analysis of the United States aggregate production function

This study examines the effects of hours of work per unit of private sector capital, the relative price of energy, government capital per unit of private sector capital, and inflation on private sector output per unit of capital in the U.S. over the period 1952–90. A small vector autoregressive model that comprises the variables typically employed in single-equation estimates of the aggregate production function is used. Variance decompositions and cumulative impulse response functions indicate that hours of work per unit of private sector capital, the relative price of energy, and the inflation rate have significant effects on private sector output per unit of capital over the 1952–90 period. However, there is no evidence of a significant effect for government capital per unit of private capital. An historical decomposition that begins in 1973 with the emergence of a “productivity slump” and continues through 1990 indicates that shocks to hours of work per unit of capital, the relative price of oil, and inflation appear important in explaining output per unit of capital but shocks to government capital are not important.     

Measuring Vertical Specialization: The Case of China

The explosive growth of Chinese trade may be due to international production fragmentation, but few have assessed these phenomena together, in part, because it is difficult to measure the vertical specialization (VS) of China's trade. Unique features of China's processing trade cause both identification of imported inputs and their allocation across sectors to vary by trade regime. This paper estimates the VS of Chinese merchandise exports, addressing these two challenges. A new method to identify Chinese imported inputs is developed, and used to calculate VS by sector and destination. VS estimates based on the official Chinese input–output table are contrasted with those based on a split table, capturing processing and normal exports separately. Last, the paper tests whether Chinese “export sophistication” can be explained by VS.     

Has China crossed the river? The evolution of wage structure in urban China during reform and retrenchment

In this paper, we examine the determinants of urban wages in China from 1988 to 2002. We find increased returns to education but a decrease in the returns to experience. The 2002 data imply that the widening pure gender gap and the growth in the premium to Communist Party membership may have come to an end. The reform of the state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector and the shift in industrial structure out of heavy industry is shown to impact wages of workers within those sectors. We use recall panel data for 1998 to 2002 to provide fixed effects estimates of the impact of sector ownership, Communist Party membership and unemployment on wages. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 644–663.     

Substitution Between Private and Public Consumption in Australia*

Large increases in the private sector's savings ratio during a period of rapid growth in the relative size of the public sector has led to the suggestion that substitution between private and public consumption may be an important fcature of the Australian economy (Clements 1979). In this paper, empirical estimates are presented which indicate that no such substitution exists The estimates are derived from a theoretical model of consumption which is based on inter-temporal optimization in a stochastic environment. The estimates also suggest that private sector consumption behaviour is consistent with the joint hypothesis of rational expectations and Ricardian equivalence