On pitfalls in the construction of family-based models of population growth: a note

Recently, several attempts have been made to construct an economic theory of population based on a formal theory of the family of the type developed by Becker in 1981, but there are serious limitations in all such efforts. The typical family's problem may have no solution, even with a well-behaved concave utility function. Moreover, even when the family's maximum problem has a unique solution, the phase diagram for the stock of capital may contain no steady state other than the origin. Finally, even when there exists a nontrivial steady state for the stock of capital, the community nevertheless may be destined for extinction. The first of these pitfalls concerns the internal consistency of the models, while the second and third concern the compatibility of the models with some gross facts of life. The pitfalls can be avoided, within the Becker framework by suitably restricting the family's utility and production functions, but the restrictions required are severe. This paper shows that, alternatively, the pitfalls sometimes can be avoided by going slightly outside the Becker framework, specifically, by modifying the typical family's budget constraint to allow explicitly for the cost of raising children. In particular, it is shown that, by this means, the pitfalls can be avoided even when the famil's utility function is log-linear, the example adduced by Kemp et al. In 1984 to demonstrate the existence of pitfalls. More precisely, it is shown that the family's maximum problem has a unique solution; that nontrival steady state exists; that, even if the steady state is locally unstable, the optimal trajectory tends neither to zero nor to infinity but to a 2-period limit cycle; and that survival is possible with quite general production functions. Thus, the end product is a logically consistent and reasonable model of economic development, with both population growth and capital accumulation firmly rooted in life-cycle family planning.     

Revisiting the process of aggregate growth recovery after a capital destruction

We study the implications of a growth model including social capital and habit formation concerning the recovery of economies that suffer from an exogenous destruction in their capital stock. Habits exhibit very low persistence and depend only on last period’s consumption as suggested by empirical evidence. In addition to physical capital, agents invest in social capital which generates both market (production) and non-market (utility) returns. We study an infinite horizon model and compare its implications to a model with habit formation but without social capital. Our framework is more efficient in generating dynamic patterns that replicate the behavior of the main economic variables during the reconstruction period. High investment in social capital at the beginning of the transition is a key element of our results.     

Integrating public demands into model-based design for multifunctional agriculture: An application to intensive Dutch dairy landscapes

The contribution of agriculture to the welfare of society is determined by its economic, social and environmental performance. Although theoretical discussions can be found in the literature, few reports exist that integrate the social demand for multifunctional agriculture in the evaluation of the sustainability and the global welfare of society. This paper presents a methodology that combines economic valuation, integrated modelling, stakeholder analysis, and multi-criteria evaluation. It consists of three steps to determine: (1) social demands for multifunctional agriculture; (2) feasible technical alternatives available from the supply part of the market; (3) the net utility of alternatives for society measured as the change in social net benefit, i.e. the sum of changes compared to the current situation expressed in utility of market and non-market net benefits. Market net benefits are represented by their monetary value. Quality Function Deployment combined with Analytic Network Process (QFD/ANP) were used to estimate the non-market net benefits. The methodology is applied to the case study of a dairy-farming based agricultural landscape in the Northern Friesian Woodlands, The Netherlands. Social net benefit depended on land use, i.e. pasture management regimes on each of the agricultural fields and on presence or absence of hedgerows around the fields. Changes in market net utility were expressed in terms of changes for farmers, consumers and government. Changes in non-market net utility were expressed in terms of changes in landscape quality, nature value and environmental health for Dutch society as a whole, as estimated from European public surveys (Eurobarometer). The complete solution space defined by the market and non-market net benefits of landscapes with alternative patterns of land use was estimated to offer insight in the trade-off between market and non-market performance and enable selection of ‘icon’ landscapes to target or avoid. Improvement of the current landscape towards the social optimum would involve changes in pasture management resulting in higher gross margin for farmers, slightly relaxing current environmental restrictions, which could be reached at lower levels of subsidies in agri-environmental programs. In addition to such overall optimum the results demonstrate the trade-off between market and non-market benefits and the characteristics of current, utopian and dystopian landscapes. The approach provides an alternative to current economic valuation methods which focus on assessment of economic value as an input to analysis. Here, economic value emerges as the trade-off between market and non-market functions which is an output of the analysis.     

Deriving values for the ecological support function of wildlife: An indirect valuation approach

We describe a method that combines economic willingness-to-pay estimates for higher trophic-level species with basic information available about ecosystem relationships to derive estimates of partial willingness-to-pay for lower level species that might be of direct policy interest. This method is intended as a quasi-benefit transfer method for use in benefit–cost analysis. Our method makes it possible to establish partial willingness-to-pay estimates for the large number of species of immediate or potential policy interest using only data available in non-market valuation and biology and ecology literature. We provide a partial estimation of indirect values for the predator–prey relationships that support golden eagles in the Snake River Bird of Prey area as an example of how to operationalize our approach.     

增值税改革、资本和资本有机构成:基于马克思主义政治经济学的视角*

本文在全面介绍马克思主义政治经济学中关于资本及资本有机构成分析框架及论断的基础上,利用我国2005—2015年地级市的面板数据,采用双重差分模型全面考察了增值税转型和“营改增”两次改革对地区资本及资本有机构成的影响。本文研究发现：增值税转型后固定资本投入增加,可变资本投入相对减少,资本有机构成进一步提高;而“营改增”后,固定资本和可变资本投入均有增长,但资本有机构成相对下降。本文检验了马克思主义政治经济学对资本及资本有机构成论断在我国的现实意义,对进一步加强应用马克思主义政治经济学指导我国财税制度改革进行了有益尝试。     

An application of duality theory: A portfolio composition of the West-German private non-bank sector, 1968–1975

The objective of this paper is to apply the duality approach in the theory of consumer behavior for deriving demand systems to analyse the allocation of assets and liabilities of the private non-bank sector. A commodity approach is chosen where service flows of assets, physical capital and liabilities enter the direct utility function and the corresponding interest rates and price of capital enter the indirect utility function. The approach results in a system of demand and supply functions for optimal stocks consistent with utility maximization. For econometric implementation an overall model in an asset aggregate, capital and a liability aggregate is fitted first. Next, two submodels are constructed for an optimal allocation of the asset aggregate and the liability aggregate to its various components that made up the aggregate. Empirical results for time series data of the German private non-bank sector are presented.     

Measuring embodied technical change in the US local telephone industry

This study attempts to measure the rate of embodied technical change by using a short-run variable cost function that contains arguments for labour and capital quality. In this short-run variable cost model, the expansion of the amount of physical capital increases variable costs due to more maintenance outlays, and then it leads to improvements in capital quality. When a measure of competition is included as a proxy for organizational efficiency, improvements in labour and capital quality explain more than two-thirds of productivity growth. The degree of returns to scale and the shadow cost of capital input in the embodiment cost model are presented as well. The study is based on pooled time-series and cross-section data of eight US local exchange carriers.     

信息成本与企业家的融资决策

在项目的融资过程中,企业家可能面临两种选择:非市场融资与市场融资。尽管信息不对称是非市场融资的主要约束,但是市场融资可以改善彼此的信息结构。文章分析了企业家(内部人)与投资者(外部人)在不同信息结构下的不完全金融合同。分析后发现,投资者可以榨取的信息租与企业家的信息披露成本构成两种融资方式的主要融资成本;而项目所需的外部资本以及资本市场要求的回报率构成了企业家融资决策的决定性元素。事实上,若项目所需的外部资本越高,信息披露成本越低,市场融资要求的回报率越低和信息租越高,则企业家越有可能选择市场融资;反之,企业家可能选择非市场融资。此外,合谋与私人收益的存在也可能影响到企业家的融资决策。     

Economic development, growth of human capital, and the dynamics of the wage structure

In this paper I elucidate the sources of growth of human capital in the course of economic development. On the supply side (Section 1) I include the growth of family income, urbanization, the demographic transition, and the rising cost of time.The supply side alone cannot explain the continuous growth of human capital as it implies a self limiting decline in rates of return below those in alternative investments. Such declines are offset by growing demands for human capital in the labor market. Growth of demand for labor skills is a function of capital accumulation and of technological changes. Evidence on this hypothesis is summarized in Section 2 and on supply responses to growing demand for human capital in Section 3. Changes in the skill and wage structures in the labor market are an important part of the evidence.The reciprocal relation between economic growth and the growth of human capital is likely to be an important key to sustained economic growth. A caveat applies to indirect effects of economic growth on family instability, which may lead to a deterioration of childhood human capital in some sectors of society.     

MEASURING HOUSEHOLD ACTIVITIES: SOME INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS

This paper focusses on macroeconomic approaches to the measurement of non-market household work or production in industrialised countries. It details the variety of parameters involved, the choice of which depends on the specific aim pursued by authors. A review of different aims pursued, parameters chosen, concepts used, alternative methods applied, and available statistical data is presented and results of evaluations are then compared. The money value of household activities is given in percentage of GNP and comparisons are made within the framework of similar approaches. Under this condition, results are remarkably consistent. At the same time, the paper shows how sensitive results are to the method used; it also puts emphasis on the lack of adequate statistical data which may be held responsible for a gap between the theoretical model of evaluation and its practical implementation. In the present state of knowledge, no definite assertion can be made on the time trend of household work and its money value as percentage of GNP or national income. The paper stresses the importance availability of data on the volume and nature of non-market household output would have for future research on the economic contribution of households in industrialised as well as in developing countries. Such data permitting an output approach to measurement would lead to better understanding of the interrelation between market and household sectors and would therefore improve economic analysis and forecasting. Adequate statistical data could possibly be collected through a process similar to that used for time use data in national surveys.     

Linking forestry, sustainability and aesthetics

In forest planning, little research has been devoted towards examining how visual-impact assessment can improve the public acceptance of forest activities and augment forest sustainability. The objective of the present work is to review the methods of aesthetic assessment of forest landscapes, which will help the implementation of visual-impact assessment in sustainable forestry. From the numerous techniques of landscape evaluation that have been devised in recent years, the expert approach techniques have dominated in environmental management practices and the perception-based approach in research. The non-market economic valuation techniques are essentially trade-off methods and not aesthetic assessments by themselves. Revealed preference methods, such as hedonic-price, use actual market choices of individuals to get their preferences towards non-market attributes, and stated preference methods, such as contingent valuation method, rely on surveys to get directly the individual's willingness to pay for the non-market attributes. Psychophysical preference modelling is a popular quantitative holistic technique of landscape evaluation and if used in combination with indirect aesthetic evaluation methods might create new standards and protocols for techniques of objectively estimating public perception of aesthetic quality and thus to enhance social sustainability in forest space.     

高新技术产业投资、沉淀成本与补偿制度创新

高新技术产业投资对我国国民经济发展具有重要的作用和潜在的扩张力,但由于没有充分利用高新技术产业投资,严重影响国民经济的整体发展.为此,本文从沉淀成本角度出发,使用一个动态的投资模型,探讨高新技术产业投资所面临的障碍以及提供刺激高新技术产业投资的基本原则,在于完善投资成本补偿机制:一方面,需要大力完善市场制度;另一方面,更需要大力完善非市场制度,同时,政府折旧和税收政策等也是不可替代的.     

CAN A PERPETUAL INVENTORY CAPITAL STOCK BE USED FOR PRODUCTION FUNCTION PARAMETER ESTIMATION?

Due to lack of data on capital disappearance, we simply do not know the covariance of the capital stock with factor inputs and prices well enough to estimate production function parameters. Since replacement rates are rational economic decisions, the errors in a perpetual inventory capital stock vary systematically with the business cycle and such economic variables as rates of technical progress and interest rates. This introduces systematic errors into calculated parameters of production functions and rates of technical progress.     

社会资本的经济增长效应

全面而准确地探究社会资本对长期经济增长的影响机制,对提升社会资本在区域经济发展中的地位具有重大的现实意义,但传统的内生增长模型忽略了时间配置对社会资本积累与居民效用的影响.文章将社会资本积累过程内生化,构建了纳入社会资本的水平创新增长模型,综合考虑社会资本和闲暇时间对经济增长的非单调性影响,通过数值模拟发现:社会资本对经济增长具有边际效应递减的促进作用;而闲暇时间与经济增长之间呈现倒U形关系,即适当地增加闲暇时间有利于社会资本积累.文章还基于结构型社会资本的网络嵌入性特征,构建了地级市层面的社会资本测度指标,以验证社会资本具备生产要素的属性.实证结果表明:社会资本对经济增长具有显著的正向影响,其促进作用随着区域内城市经济发展水平的提高而提升;中西部地区社会资本的产出效率高于东部地区,从而间接反映了东部地区社会资本过度集聚的现状;投资水平与技术进步是社会资本影响经济增长的两条重要途径.上述结论为明晰社会资本的经济属性、激发社会资本的经济效益、推动城市集群协调发展以及缩小地区差异提供了有益的借鉴.     

The duality implications of a concave aggregator function

Suppose a production or utility function F is continuous, increasing and quasiconcave on the non-negative orthant. Let C be the associated cost function, G the associated indirect function, and D the associated distance or deflation function. The implications of the concavity of F on the other three dual representations are exhibited.     

The incremental time costs of children: An analysis of children's impact on adult time use in Australia

Abstract

Raising children takes both time and money. Scholars have sought convincing ways to capture the costs of children, but even when these estimates include indirect costs, such as mothers' foregone earnings, they fall short of the true time costs involved. This paper uses data from the 1997 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey to study how the allocation of time differs across households with varying numbers and ages of children and how households with children differ from those without children. It also examines the intra household division of time resources, showing how childcare, related unpaid work, and the total market and non-market workloads compare for a couple in the same household. It includes secondary activity in an analysis of total parental time commitments to give a more accurate picture of the time cost of children than is possible on the basis of analyzing “primary” activities alone.     

Aspects of optimal unemployment insurance : Search, leisure, savings and capital market imperfections

Unemployment insurance is analysed in the optimal taxation framework. Benefits discourage search and thus raise unemployment. A perfect capital market model is developed and solved explicitly for a constant absolute risk aversion utility function. For ‘realistic’ parameter values low replacement rates (less than 50%) are optimal. If there is no lending or borrowing the optimal rates rise to about 75%. Alternative models also admit leisure as a good and the input to search; this reduces optimal replacement when the capital market is perfect. When it is nonexistent the optimal benefits depend on the value of leisure - rising as it falls. Alternatives to constant benefits conditional on continued unemployment are considered.     

THE MEASUREMENT OF REAL INCOME

This paper is about the theory of the measurement of real income. By "theory of measurement" I mean the characterization of statistical terms as variables in a model, just as real consumption is characterized as an indicator of utility and the consumer price index is characterized as the cost of attaining a given level of utility in the economic theory of index numbers developed by Konus, Frisch and others half a century ago. I identify five logically distinct and internally-consistent concepts of real income: maximum sustainable consumption, consumption plus the output of new capital goods, consumption plus the increase in the capital stock where capital can be measured in two quite separate ways, and the sum of actual consumption and consumption forgone in the investment process. The last of these concepts is the most appropriate as a guide to producing long time series of real income for measuring a country's rate of economic growth.     

闲暇视角下的经济增长

该文以闲暇促进效用(幸福感)的提升为线索、以闲暇对经济效率的积极作用为基础,建立内生增长模型。模型分析显示,长期经济增长率可以由闲暇的跨期替代弹性和边际效率增长率决定,如果闲暇能强化对经济效率的影响,经济体就可能保持稳定持续增长。因此,我国在制定和指导国民休息、休闲和休假等政策时,一是要努力促使国民的闲暇活动具有积极健康的内涵,发挥出闲暇对生产的积极互补效应,二是要保证这些政策具有连续有效性、政策效果被不断强化。