Testing neoclassical convergence in regional incomes and earnings

The time-series properties of per capita income and per capita earnings in the regions of the United States are tested for consistency with the neoclassical growth model's prediction of convergence. We find evidence for per capita income convergence for U.S. regions during the 1929–1990 period after allowing for a trend break in 1946. These findings support the neoclassical model's prediction of convergence. The evidence for per capita earnings convergence is, however, less conclusive. Shocks to per capita earnings are found to be more persistent than shocks to per capita income. This implies that the regional distribution of transfer payments tends to smooth the effects of deviation on relative regional per capita earnings and reinforce trends in per capita income convergence.     

Efficient entrepreneurial culture: a cross-country analysis of developed countries

Entrepreneurship, together with national cultural values, may improve a country’s GDP levels. Under this hypothesis, the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationships between the levels of entrepreneurship, cultural values, and of GDP per capita in a sample of 27 developed countries, by identifying an efficient combination of culture and entrepreneurship variables, under the concept of efficient entrepreneurial culture, that maximises GDP per capita. Through the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology, nine countries have been identified as having an efficient entrepreneurial culture. The implications derived for policy-makers are substantial, since a better understanding of cultural effects on entrepreneurship can lead to improvements in the design of governmental programmes that foster cultural values related to high-quality entrepreneurship.     

剔除通胀因素后中国人均消费支出的实证分析

根据一般消费理论,收入和价格是决定消费两个主要因素。根据1980-2006年我国消费样本数据建立了我国消费模型,通过EVIEWS软件利用OLS方法进行参数估计,并对模型进行了检验。经过计量分析得知我国人均消费水平受GDP影响,且人均消费水平与人均CGDP呈明显线性关系。若我国人均GDP增长1%,则人均居民消费水平约增加0.71%。滞后的人均消费水平对我国当年的人均消费水平的影响是不显著的。     

Dreams of urbanization: Quantitative case studies on the local impacts of nuclear power facilities using the synthetic control method

This paper uses the synthetic control (SC) method to examine how the establishment of nuclear power facilities (NPFs) in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s has affected local per capita income levels in the municipalities in which they were localted (NPF municipalities). Eight quantitative case studies using the SC method clarify that the effects of NPF establishment on per capita taxable income levels are highly heterogeneous. The estimated effects are often economically meaningful and in some cases huge: the income level was 11% higher on average and 62% higher in one municipality in 2002 when compared with counterfactual units. On the other hand a few of the NPF municipalities have received only weak or negligible effects from NPF establishment. The post-estimation comparisons of employment between the NPF municipalities and the SC units suggest that the size of the direct labor demand shocks and subsequent indirect employment effects on nontradable service sectors have contributed to the increase in per capita income levels.     

Migration and the Tiebout-Tullock Hypothesis Revisited

This study investigates, using state-level data for the period 2000–2005, the Tiebout hypothesis (as extended by Tullock) of "voting with one's feet." This analysis differs from previous related studies not only in its adoption of more current migration and other data but also in other ways. First, unlike most earlier related studies, it includes a separate measure of the overall cost of living; second, it examines per pupil (rather than per capita) outlays on public primary and secondary education; and third, in addition to property taxes, it also focuses on per capita state income tax burdens. Inclusion of the last of these variables in the analysis is based on studies that have found the existence of a state income tax to have influenced migration patterns and other studies that have found higher state income tax levels to have resulted in reduced per capita income growth over time. Moreover, including both property tax burdens and income tax burdens broadens the scope of the hypothesis. Strong empirical support for the Tiebout-Tullock hypothesis (as interpreted here) is obtained for the study period.     

Computing the Extent of Circumvention of Proposition 13: A Response

Galles and Sexton (1998) showed that California state and local revenues exceeded their previous real per capita levels as did the sum of property taxes plus charges and miscellaneous revenues within a decade after Proposition 13 passed, and concluded that Proposition 13 was only temporarily successful at shrinking California state and local governments. Khoury and Pal (2000) challenge this conclusion. However, their conclusion that Proposition 13'mvention "n only marginal"from using per $1000 of income comparisons rather than real per capita comparisons and from using growth rate changes, which fail to adjust for U.S. fiscal trends, instead of changes in the levels of variables as their primary measure.     

增补预防性储蓄的托宾-索洛模型

非预期的预防性储蓄通过资产替代产生稳态名义货币增长率(或稳态通货膨胀率)对稳态人均资本(或稳态人均产出)的非线性门槛效应。门槛的临界值是非预期预防性储蓄与实际货币增加量比率的递减函数。非线性机制取决于非预期预防性储蓄与实际货币增加量比率和人均实际货币余额-人均资本比率与通货膨胀率、人均资本边际产出的相关性。     

城市综合承载力的内涵及测算思路

在对城市综合承载力的概念和内涵进行界定的基础上,提出了城市综合承载力测算的基本思路:测算不同时间尺度上相应城市的单项资源和发展条件的供给能力;确定不同时间尺度上相应城市的人均单项资源和发展条件的需求标准;根据相应的供给能力和人均需求标准,计算各单项资源和发展条件的现实与潜在的可承载人口数量;综合确定相应城市的现实与潜在的综合承载力。     

INTRAHOUSEHOLD INEQUALITY AT DIFFERENT WELFARE LEVELS: ENERGY INTAKE AND ENERGY EXPENDITURE DATA FROM THE PHILIPPINES*

ABSTRACTS This paper investigates the relationship between intrahousehold inequality and levels of household welfare. Under certain conditions it is demonstrated — with both the unitary model of the household and with some collective models — that the relationship between household welfare and inequality within the household can have an inverted u-shape. Using two sets of calorie adequacy data from a sample of 455 households in the Philippines, a spline analysis is used to test the hypothesis that inequality within the household first increases and then decreases as per capita household total expenditure increases. The two sets of calorie adequacy data are based on repeated 24- hour recalls of dietary intake, and on calorie requirements that are unadjusted and then adjusted for individual activity patterns. Results indicate that once activity patterns are accounted for, calorie intake shortfalls are borne fairly equally within the household at all per capita household total expenditure levels.     

On the simultaneity problem in the aid and growth debate

This paper shows that foreign aid has a significant positive average effect on real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth if, and only if, the quantitatively large negative reverse causal effect of per capita GDP growth on foreign aid is adjusted for in the growth regression. Instrumental variables estimates show that a 1 percentage point increase in GDP per capita growth decreased foreign aid by over 4%. Adjusting for this quantitatively large, negative reverse causal effect of economic growth on foreign aid shows that a 1% increase in foreign aid increased real per capita GDP growth by around 0.1 percentage points. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Alternative Tale of Two Tax Jurisdictions

ABSTRACT Cebula (1999) suggests that the success of California's Proposition 13 and Massachusetts'Proposition 2-1/2 is better judged by their effects on the growth rates of real per capita revenues and expenditures rather than on the levels of those variables, which Galles and Sexton (1998) used to evaluate those measures. However, the data shows that virtually all of their effects, relative to the United States as a whole, arose during their implementation periods, and that there is no clear evidence of the "longer term success in terms of reducing the growth rate of real per capita revenues and expenditures" that Cebula cites.     

中国二氧化碳排放的区域差异分解及影响因素——基于1995～2009年省际面板数据的研究

分别以碳排放强度和人均碳排放作为碳排放指标,对1995～2009年中国碳排放的区域差异进行结构分解,并实证研究不同碳排放水平的影响因素。结果发现,中国碳排放存在明显的区域差异,碳排放强度的区域差异大于人均碳排放的区域差异。三区域划分标准下,碳排放总体差异主要源于区域内差异;八区域划分标准下,碳排放总体差异主要源于区域间差异。能源强度、能源结构、人均GDP、产业结构是造成碳排放水平差异的重要因素。     

Is the causal nexus of energy utilization and economic growth asymmetric in the US?

This paper re-examines the causal nexus of energy utilization and GDP per capita in the US. The novelty of the paper is to allow for asymmetry in causality by using a new test introduced by Hatemi-J (forthcoming). A bootstrap procedure is used with leveraged corrections that perform more accurately when the statistical assumptions for validity of asymptotic distributions are not fulfilled. This is especially the case for sample sizes as in the current paper. The estimation results reveal strongly that a negative energy consumption shock will cause a negative shock in the output per capita. That is, if the energy utilization per capita decreases then the output per capita will also decrease. Surprisingly, such a causal impact for positive shocks is not found. These empirical results might indicate that there is an optimal quantity of energy in the US that needs to be consumed as otherwise the economic growth will suffer. However, the consumption of energy beyond that optimal quantity will not necessarily result in an enhanced rate of economic growth.     

The Penn-Balassa-Samuelson effect through the lens of the dependent economy model

The positive correlation between per capita income and cross-country price levels is called the “Penn-Balassa-Samuelson effect.” The most influential explanation of this effect centers around sectoral output productivities as the determinant of the relative price of nontraded goods. The interaction between the change in relative prices and the change in per capita income, the dynamic PBS effect, is less well known. This paper extends the Turnovsky and Sen (1995) model of a small open economy by adding external economies into the production function. The model's dynamics accord well with several features of the empirical data on the dynamic PBS effect.     

Growth vs. level effect of population change on economic development: An inspection into human-capital-related mechanisms

This paper studies the different mechanisms and the dynamics through which demography is channeled to the economy. We analyze the role of demographic changes in the economic development process by studying the transitional and the long-run impact of both the rate of population growth and the initial population size on the levels of per capita human capital and income. We do that in an enlarged Lucas–Uzawa model with intergenerational altruism. In contrast to the existing theoretical literature, the long-run level effects of demographic changes, i.e. their impact on the levels of the variables along the balanced growth path, are deeply characterized in addition to the more standard long-run growth effects. We prove that the level effect of the population rate of growth is non-negative (positive in the empirically most relevant case) for the average level of human capital, but a priori ambiguous for the level of per capita income due to the interaction of three transmission mechanisms of demographic shocks, a standard one (dilution) and two non-standard (altruism and human capital accumulation). Overall, the sign of the level effects of population growth depends on preference and technology parameters, but numerically we show that the joint negative effect of dilution and altruism is always stronger than the induced positive human capital effect. The growth effect of population growth depends basically on the attitude to intergenerational altruism and intertemporal substitution. Moreover, we also prove that the long-run level effects of population size on per capita human capital and income may be negative, nil, or positive, depending on the relationship between preferences and technology, while its growth effect is zero. Finally, we show that the model is able to replicate complicated time relationships between economic and demographic changes. In particular, it entails a negative effect of population growth on per capita income, which dominates in the initial periods, and a positive effect which restores a positive correlation between population growth and economic performance in the long term.     

Consumption-based CAPM with belief heterogeneity

This paper finds that the risk–return relationship of the consumption-based CAPM is robust to the heterogeneity in agents׳ beliefs. First, the effect of disagreement cancels out in the limit as risk tolerance approaches zero. Second, although low risk aversion and large disagreement can significantly distort the security market line (SML) and the effect is amplified in a dynamic model, per capita volatility of consumption growth is implausibly high compared to empirical estimates from microeconomic data. Third, increasing risk aversion and lowering disagreement levels can help to reduce per capita volatility, however the impact of disagreement on the SML also become negligible.     

Global convergence of inflation rates

This research analyzes the convergence of the world’s inflation rates, spanning 98 countries during the 1970–2016 period. Compared to previous studies, this study’s contribution is its analysis of the convergence sequence of different countries from a nonlinear perspective and its examination of the factors influencing the convergence order. We find that most countries’ inflation rates tend to converge with one another, with the exceptions of Japan, Poland, Chile, Sweden, and Burundi. The results also show that the inflation levels of high-income countries converge faster to the mean value than those of low-income countries. We show that countries that have volatile inflation rates are more likely to converge earlier than other countries. The robust results of the econometric analysis show that countries with improving per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) levels and growing globalization levels are more prone to earlier convergence than countries with lower level per capita GDP values or lower globalization levels. The results demonstrate that most of the countries in the world conform to the law of one price, and the money illusion hypothesis is invalid in the long run.     

IMPACT OF RELATIVE POPULATION CHANGE ON REGIONAL INCOME CONVERGENCE: EVIDENCE FROM TURKEY

The aim of this paper is to show the impact of relative population change on regional income convergence. Using the panel data of 64 Turkish provinces from 1987 to 2000, the results from modified convergence analyses show that both income and per capita income between provinces in Turkey indicate converging patterns. The convergence rates for the provincial per capita income, however, turned out to be about 30 percent larger than that of income. In order to examine this difference, the impact of relative population change on the growth process is incorporated using a decomposition analysis. The findings suggest that 17 percent of the 100 percentage point growth of per capita income resulted from the change in population share in favour of the provinces with high per capita incomes. The existence and pace of regional income convergence, therefore, may well be related to the degree of relative population change.     

人均收入差距导向的投资战略

除了税收手段直接调整人均收入差距之外,政府可利用投资配置来影响生产过程,进而调整人均收入差距。在总量封闭经济的框架下,本文以人均收入差距最小化为目标,通过引入多地区多产业Cobb-Douglas生产函数、劳动一资本比率、资本时变率,改造最优经济增长模型。实验表明,通过权衡不同地区、不同产业的重要程度,调整投资在不同地区、不同产业之间的配置比率,政府可缩小人均收入差距。     

中国人均GDP时间序列建模与相关分析

人均GDP是衡量一个国家和地区经济发展水平和综合经济实力的重要指标。本文在相关背景下收集了1978-2008年中国人均GDP时间序列数据,应用了SPSS软件进行数据分析并建立时间序列模型,利用模型预测了2009,2010年人均GDP数值,对制定相应的宏观调控政策有十分重要的意义。