EFFECTS OF LABOR REALLOCATION ON PRODUCTIVITY AND INEQUALITY—INSIGHTS FROM STUDIES ON TRANSITION

From a theoretical perspective, the link between the speed and scope of rapid labor reallocation and productivity growth or income inequality is ambiguous. Do reallocations with more flows tend to produce higher productivity growth? Does such a link appear at the expense of higher income inequality? We explore the rich evidence from earlier studies on worker flows in the period of massive and rapid labor reallocation, that is, the economic transition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy in CEE. We have collected over 450 estimates of job flows from the literature and used these inputs to estimate the short-run and long-run relationship between labor market flows, labor productivity, and income inequality. We apply the tools typical for a meta-analysis to verify the empirical regularities between labor flows and productivity growth as well as income inequality. Our findings suggest only weak and short-term links with productivity, driven predominantly by business cycles. However, data reveal a strong pattern for income inequality in the short run—more churning during reallocation is associated with a level effect toward increased Gini indices.     

FLEXIBLE RETIREMENT

Flexible retirement – that is, the opportunity to choose one's own personal retirement age – is a hedge against pension risk and provides insurance to workers facing health or productivity shocks. Flexible retirement and flexible pension schemes are in practice closely linked because of imperfect capital markets and institutional restrictions. I discuss three necessary conditions to provide insurance through flexible retirement. First, it should be possible to adjust the pension starting date at limited cost. This condition is gradually being fulfilled, as many countries are moving toward more actuarially neutral pension schemes. Second, individuals should be willing to adjust their labor supply in case of a wealth shock. This condition seems largely fulfilled, although the available empirical evidence suggests that the ‘standard retirement age’ is at least as important as the income effect. Third, the labor market should be able to deal with flexible individual retirement decisions. This condition is gaining importance, but has not yet received much attention in the literature. Institutions often hamper employment past the ‘standard retirement age’. Moreover, the hiring rates of older workers are low and their unemployment duration is high. Institutional reforms facilitating flexible retirement opportunities are desirable from an insurance perspective.     

制度、制度创新与经济增长

首先,对制度、制度的功能与制度创新作了解释。然后,应用经济计量模型,以改革开放来中国经济发展的历史数据为例,在传统的资本因素和劳动力因素的基础上,增加了制度因素和产业结构因素来考察中国的经济增长,得出结论:制度是影响经济发展的重要因素。     

影响中国城市增长的因素:地级及以上城市的实证检验

论文以国内外相关城市增长理论为基础,构建了分析中国城市增长的系统模型,并利用206个城市1990年与2005年的社会经济统计数据进行了实证研究.研究结果表明:(1)中国城市的经济增长主要是由劳动生产率提高而非人口规模增长推动的;(2)政府财政支出和城市人力资本积累是目前中国城市经济增长的主要驱动力;(3)人力资本积累并没有在工资增长上得到体现;(4)城市公共设施和环境的改善引致了城市人口增长,但对城市经济发展却没有明显的作用.在以上研究结果基础上,论文提出了保持城市可持续发展的一些政策建议.     

European integration,productivity growth and real convergence: Evidence from the new member states

We estimate the determinants of labor productivity growth in 8 new European Union (EU) member states that joined the Union in 2004. Our focus is on the impact of globalization and EU integration efforts on labor productivity growth. Previous studies test the impact of trade using either exports or trade openness. We also test the impact of imports separately on labor productivity growth. Using panel data for 1995–2006 period, we find that globalization has mixed effects. FDI and exports improve productivity, but imports hurt it. Regarding domestic variables, we find that human capital is the most important source of labor productivity growth in the new member states. There is also considerable adjustment of labor productivity towards EU15 levels, indicating significant “catching up” and hence real convergence. Policy implications of the findings are also discussed.     

寿命延长与延迟退休：国际比较与我国实证

基于国际比较的视角,探讨人口寿命延长与延迟退休之间的机制关系,分析国际上人口寿命延长与延迟退休的实践。通过对我国人口寿命延长趋势的研究,在一定的精算假设下,测算延迟退休对我国养老金支付压力的影响,并分析经济、制度等因素变动对测算结果的敏感性。结论表明,我国人口寿命延长趋势显著,延迟退休能够有效缓解老金支付压力,但在不同的性别之间有所差异。经济、制度等因素与延迟退休之间具有一定的替代效应,尽管延迟退休是未来我国应对人口寿命延长的必然选择,但目前建立二者的调整机制条件尚未成熟。     

Comparisons of agricultural productivity growth in China and India

We measure and compare agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth and its components (efficiency and technical change) in China and India and test the TFP series for the existence of structural breaks relating the evolution of TFP to policy milestones. Our results show that agricultural TFP growth accelerates in China after 1979 and in India after 1974, although China’s agricultural sector clearly outperforms India’s. The main explanation of these differentials is that agricultural growth in China benefited from more fundamental institutional and policy reforms in agriculture than India. There is some evidence that the transformation of industry in China was also important for agricultural TFP growth. Manufacture growth absorbed labor and reduced employment in agriculture, creating incentives for capital investment and technical change that kept output per worker in agriculture growing at high rates. Fewer changes in agricultural policies and in the dynamics of manufacturing in India resulted in slower growth in agricultural productivity, despite policy changes that accelerated economic growth in recent years.     

Patterns of technology,industry concentration,and productivity growth without scale effects

This paper investigates the relationship between geographic patterns of industry and economic growth in a two-country model of trade with no scale effect, where productivity growth is generated by firm investment in process innovation. We find that dispersed equilibria with industry located in both countries produce higher growth rates than concentrated equilibria with all industry located in one country. The highest growth rate arises for equal industry shares and no productivity gap, implying that industry concentration has a negative effect on overall growth. Convergence towards a dispersed equilibrium is contingent on transport costs and knowledge dispersion.     

Privatization, Competition, and Budget Constraints: Disciplining Enterprises in Russia

We investigate whether privatization, competitive forces, and the hardening of budget constraints played efficiency-enhancing roles in Russia in the immediate post-privatization period. We find evidence of a positive impact of privatization on labor productivity: a 10% point increase in private share ownership raises real sales per employee by 3–5%. The evidence on product market competition is weaker, depending on model specification. Soft budget constraints are usually found to reduce restructuring but the effect is small and insignificant. We find that in terms of their impacts on productivity, privatization and subsidy reduction are substitutes; privatization and competition (measured as the geographic scope of markets) are complements; and that competition and subsidy reduction are independent. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Chilean model

In 1981, Chile replaced its government-run pay-as-you-go pension system with a national system of individual Pension Savings Accounts managed by the private sector. The new system has contributed to the increase in the country's savings rate, the productivity of capital and the rate of economic growth. More important, Chilean workers now have property rights over their own pension contributions and enjoy much higher pensions than under the old system.     

Has agricultural labor restructuring improved agricultural labor productivity in China? A decomposition approach

This paper presents a framework for analyzing the changes in agricultural labor productivity with regards to the structural, land intensity, and land productivity effects. This approach allows for the residual-free decomposition of data from different levels of aggregation. The logarithmic mean Divisia index was applied for the analysis and a data envelopment analysis model was constructed to identify potential gains in agricultural labor productivity due to the optimization of input use and output production. The proposed approach was applied to the case of China over the period of 1997–2017. Province-level data were used to identify the major driving factors behind agricultural labor productivity change. Land productivity change appeared to be the major source of agricultural labor productivity gains in China. The structural change was rather negligible, suggesting that the reallocation of the agricultural labor force did not add to the agricultural labor productivity growth in China. A frontier analysis indicated that agricultural labor productivity could increase by some 45% on average in case full technical efficiency is achieved.     

Labor productivity and vocational training: evidence from Europe

In this paper we show that vocational training is an important determinant of productivity growth. We construct a multy-country, multi-sectoral dataset, and quantify empirically to what extent vocational training has contributed to increase the growth rate of labor productivity in Europe between 1999 and 2005. We find that one extra hour of training per employee accelerates the rate of productivity growth by around 0.55 % points.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGE AND GROWTH IN CHINA UNDER ECONOMIC REFORMS: PATTERNS,CAUSES AND IMPLICATIONS

This paper investigates the patterns, causes, and implications of China's structural change and its contribution to China's regional growth. Among many other findings, our regression results show that conditional convergence exists across different regions in China. Regional structural change has a convergence effect and regional openness facilitates regional structural change. Structural shocks and structural transformation had the opposite effect on China's interregional convergence during the 1990s, though the combined effect of overall structural change is a convergence effect. We also find that Chinese regions rely more heavily on structural change for labor productivity growth as the economy evolves. In summary, the results of our empirical analysis support the hypothesis underlying the theoretical model of this paper.     

MEASUREMENT AND DETERMINANTS OF MULTI-FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY: A SURVEY OF LITERATURE

This paper surveys and synthesizes fast-growing literature on the measurement and determinants of multi-factor productivity (MFP). We identify three strands of the literature to measure MFP: the first is growth accounting, which decomposes observed economic growth into the contribution of factor inputs and technological change, called the Solow Residual; the second is index number methods, accompanied by frontier techniques; the third is growth regressions and econometric methods used to estimate productivity across countries and regions. We keep our focus on assessing the major strengths and weaknesses of commonly used methods for MFP measurement and categorize existing literature on the determinants of MFP growth into macroeconomic and institutional factors. We attempt to provide a reassessment and thematic survey of literature on the drivers of aggregate productivity, enabling policymakers to formulate effective economic policy.     

On Long-term Forecasting of Social Security: A Robustness Analysis

In this paper we present a macro-economic demographic growth modelhaving a special focus on social security. It is designed to study the variability of responses of the system in presence of risks and uncertainties. Here we analyze the robustness of the model towards uncertainties in parameterspecifications, introduced by ARCH-M models with the incorporation ofintervention processes. The parameters varied are labor force participationrates (one of the key sources of uncertainty in the social security policydebate), and the parameters of the production function (the key source ofuncertainty in any long-run economic analysis). The sensitivity analysisfocuses on two variables: assets of the private pension system and thebalance of the public `Pay As You Go' pension system. Special attentionis given to convergence properties of the macro-economic model.     

Remittances and economic growth in Africa, Asia, and Latin American-Caribbean countries: a panel unit root and panel cointegration analysis

This study estimates the macroeconomic impact of remittances and some control variables such as openness of the economy, capital/labor ratio, and economic freedom on the economic growth of African, Asian, and Latin American-Caribbean countries using newly developed panel unit-root tests, cointegration tests, and Panel Fully Modified OLS (PFMOLS). We use annual panel data from 1985–2007for 64 countries consisting of 29 from Africa, 14 from Asia, and 21 from Latin America and the Caribbean region, respectively. We find that remittances, openness of the economy, and capital labor ratio have positive and significant effect on economic growth for all regions as a group and in each of the three in study. While the economic freedom index also has a positive and significant effect on growth in Africa and Latin America, however, its effect on the economic growth of Asia is mixed.     

金融发展、FDI与经济增长

本文基于拉姆齐—卡斯—库普曼斯模型,利用中国29个省、市、自治区1978～2004年的面板数据,研究金融发展、外商直接投资(FDI)对经济增长的影响。研究显示FDI在一定水平下,对东道国资本积累和产出增长的影响是非线性的,随着外资数量的逐渐增加,其对资本积累和产出增长的促进效应逐渐下降,FDI进入初期的正影响最终转为负影响,研究还显示FDI在数量一定的情况下,金融发展对本国资本积累和产出增长有正影响。金融发展通过有利于吸引外商直接投资、为外资企业提供金融服务,将潜在的溢出效应转化为现实生产力,显著地促进了经济增长。     

地区间生产率差异与收敛——基于中国各产业的分析

本文主要分析了中国各产业的省际间劳动生产率差异与收敛问题.实证结果表明,改革开放以来,中国各产业地区间劳动生产率存在明显的差异.从20世纪90年代开始,产业间生产率差异随时间呈现出扩大趋势.各产业不存在地区间劳动生产率的绝对收敛,却存在条件收敛,而且收敛的速度较快.实证也发现,各产业地区间的劳动生产率差异是地区间人均收入差异的直接原因,各产业地区间生产率差异和经济增长的快慢统计上并没有必然的联系.     

要素重置、经济增长与区域非平衡发展

研究目标：要素错配对经济增长和区域非均衡发展的影响。研究方法：运用提出的测算框架将经济增长分解为部门全要素生产率、要素禀赋和资源配置效率,并通过构建反事实框架重点探讨要素错配如何影响区域经济的非平衡发展。研究发现：2000~2013年要素再配置仅能解释中国经济增长的9.2%,中国经济增长主要依赖于要素积累和部门全要素生产率;部门全要素生产率、要素错配和要素禀赋分别可以解释区域非平衡发展的56.5%、30.7%和12.8%;要素完全有效配置将使得人均真实收入年均增加31.4%,但提升空间趋于缩小。研究创新：拓展传统经济增长分解方法并构建反事实框架研究要素错配的经济效应。研究价值：有助于深入理解要素配置在经济增长和区域非平衡发展中的重要性。     

Institutional investors,corporate governance and the performance of the corporate sector

Proportions of equity held by institutional investors—pension funds, insurance companies and mutual funds—are rising across all OECD countries. Meanwhile institutions are becoming more influential in corporate governance, even in bank-dominated countries, inter alia due to international investment, pension reform and EMU. We provide two forms of evidence on the effects of institutional corporate governance on corporate performance. First we offer a literature survey on micro evidence, the outcome of which is mixed, but on balance suggesting a positive effect on equity returns. We contend that these micro studies face a difficulty that they cannot capture effects of governance initiatives whose effects go wider than “target firms”. Accordingly, we present results for the reduced form empirical relationship between institutional share holding and corporate sector performance at an economy-wide level. These are consistent with significant effects which differ between “Anglo-Saxon” and “relationship banking” countries. For example, institutions appear to accompany lower investment and higher dividends in the former.