基础设施投资、人力资本积累与农业经济增长

本文利用1985-2010年的年度数据,通过构建包含基础设施投资、人力资本积累和私人资本投入的生产函数对农业经济增长的影响因素进行实证研究。研究结果表明,人力资本积累和私人资本投入对农业经济增长起到积极的促进作用,而基础设施投资阻碍了农业经济的增长;基础设施投资、人力资本积累和私人资本投入对农业经济的影响在短期内并不显著;从长期来看,人力资本积累对农业经济的影响最大。本文提出今后的农业政策应该合理配比财政支农资金,促进农民收入增长,以实现农业长期、稳定和可持续的发展。     

政府研发投资与长期经济增长

本文在一个资本积累和创新相互作用的增长框架中引入政府研发投资,考察了政府研发投资对经济增长的影响。通过分析知道,政府研发投资通过影响休闲劳动选择、消费投资(包括物质资本积累和研发投资)选择,从而影响经济增长;政府研发投资规模越大,经济增长率越高。本文还就我国1980—2006年间政府研发投资对经济增长的影响进行了实证研究。通过协整检验,发现我国政府研发投资与经济增长之间存在长期均衡关系,政府研发投资可以促进经济增长。此外,本文发现政府研发投资对民间物质资本投资和民间人力资本投资也有直接的促进作用。     

外国直接投资、人力资本与经济增长:来自中国的数据

在利用中国的数据(1979-2003年)检验外国直接投资对中国经济增长的效应中,我们发现,单单用外国直接投资作为中国经济增长的解释变量,回归的结果非常糟糕;当我们相继控制了每年的实际投资、人力资本变量之后,回归的结果逐步好转起来。在外国直接投资对中国经济增长的效应中,国内投资以及人力资本起着相当重要的作用。利用VECM回归我们发现,外国直接投资的增长效应集中在短期,人力资本则有明显的长期效应。进一步地,我们对外国直接投资与各项人力资本指标进行VAR回归发现新增劳动力中大学毕业生对外国直接投资的影响比较显著,比较高级的人力资本才是吸引外国直接投资的重要原因。因此人力资本政策应该成为中国增长政策的核心。     

政府公共资本投资的长期经济增长效应

本文首先建立一个包含政府公共资本投资的两部门内生增长模型,并把公共资本投资分为政府物质资本投资和人力资本投资,从而对公共资本投资的长期经济增长效应进行理论分析。结论是,两种形式的公共资本投资对长期经济增长都可能具有正效应也可能具有负效应,取决于民间经济主体消费跨时替代弹性大小。其次,我们利用向量自回归分析框架,对我国1978—2004年间公共资本投资对长期经济增长的影响作实证分析。结论是,我国两种形式的公共资本投资与经济增长之间存在着长期均衡关系,其中政府公共物质资本投资对长期经济增长的正影响更为显著,而政府公共人力资本投资对长期经济增长的正影响较小,且在短期内不利于经济增长。这一结论对我国今后科学制定财政政策和选择公共投资领域都具有重要意义。     

收入不平等对经济增长影响的实证研究

采用联立方程分析方法,实证分析了收入不平等对经济增长影响的三种机制,探讨了收入不平等如何通过影响物质资本投资、人力资本投资和居民消费来作用于经济增长。结果表明,从长期看收入不平等的扩大会刺激物质资本投资,但不利于人力资本投资和居民消费增长,收入不平等对经济增长的长期影响为负。因此,从经济发展的角度政府不应容忍收入不平等的过分扩大。     

中国教育与经济增长的互补效应

在本文中,我们用变化产出函数来研究教育在20世纪90年代对中国经济增长的影响。通过研究我们发现,人力资本投资的增加对中国经济的增长起到了显著的作用,1990—2000年人力资本投资约占了国内生产总值的19%。此外本文通过进一步的研究发现教育与经济增长是起到了互补作用而不是阈限作用,而且教育投资增加与教育技术进步的互补效应可以为教育对经济增长的影响提供一个合理的解释。     

人力资本与经济增长研究——基于甘肃的实证分析

运用"岭回归"法估算了物质资本、人力资本和人力资本水平对甘肃省经济增长的贡献,并建立VEC模型和脉冲响应函数对甘肃人力资本、人力资本水平和物质资本与经济增长的关系进行了动态分析,结果表明,甘肃经济自身具有一定的稳定性,当系统受到冲击偏离长期均衡时,会自动恢复到均衡状态,但其自身的调整速度很慢,仅为1.7%;初期来看,人力资本对甘肃经济增长的影响作用要小于物质资本投资对甘肃经济增长的影响;长期来看,人力资本对甘肃经济增长的影响作用更为持久.     

人力资本投资对经济增长的影响--以河南与全国对比为例

有关一国或地区经济增长中人力资本投资的作用，学术界早已有所认识，当前的问題是如何把人力资本投资对经济增长的影响用定量的形式表现出来，其中变量参数的选择已成为理论界研究的重点。本文以人力资本存量为主要参数，通过构建模型，与全国进行对比分析，发现河南人力资本投资对经济增长的贡献远低于物质资本投资对经济增长的贡献，人力资本投资与物质资本投资缺乏规模经济性，人力资本投资促进经济增长的潜力较大。为使河南经济社会走上可持续发展道路，必须确立科学的发展观，加快以实物资本投资为主向人力资本投资与物质资本投资相协调方向转变，只有这样，才能高质量地实现河南在中原崛起。     

略论我国自然灾害对宏观经济增长的影响——基于内生经济增长理论视角

自然灾害具有偶发性,就我国全国范围看,自然灾害又是必然发生事件。把自然灾害损失内生化以度量其对宏观经济增长的影响。实证分析表明,自然灾害直接损失对当年经济增长起到负面影响,灾后2～3年的时间里对经济有拉动作用;而在灾后4～5年内表现出对经济的负面作用。总的来说,相对于投资和劳动投入自然灾害直接经济损失对GDP增长的影响比较小,长期影响表现出负弹性。自然灾害损失主要通过损失社会财富和拉动内需影响宏观经济增长,灾害当期主要是社会财富损失的负面影响,灾后2～3年则体现内需拉动的正面影响;从长期看,社会财富损失的负面影响要高于内需拉动的正面影响。     

人力资本对我国经济增长的影响——东西部地区比较研究

人力资本能够使其他生产要素产生递增效益,被视为推动国家与地区经济增长的源泉和动力。本文介绍了人力资本的相关理论,分析了人力资本投资对我国东西部地区经济增长的影响情况,最后提出了针对各地区人力资本投资的建议。     

Book production and the onset of modern economic growth

We provide a new data set on per capita book production as a proxy for advanced literacy skills, and assess this relative to other measures. While literacy proxies very basic skills, book production per capita is an indicator for more advanced capabilities. Growth theory suggests that human capital formation plays a significant role in creating the ‘wealth of nations.’ This study tests whether human capital formation has an impact on early-modern growth disparities. In contrast to some previous studies which denied the role of human capital as a crucial determinant of long-term growth, we confirm its importance.      

Optimal disaster-preventive expenditure in a dynamic and stochastic model

The purpose of this study is to present an analytical framework for publicly optimal disaster-preventive expenditure. We examine the optimal policy combination of tax rate, disaster-preventive expenditure, and productive government expenditure in a neoclassical growth model, in which natural disasters occur stochastically and partially destroy existing capital. Based on this model, we can decompose the welfare effect of raising preventive expenditure into three effects: the damage reduction, crowding out, and precautionary effects. By identifying these marginal benefits and costs, we obtain the policy conditions that maximize household welfare. Furthermore, we show that optimal prevention is increasing in disaster probability, and by using a numerical example, we show that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between the expected growth rate and disaster probability.     

The interactive effects of human capital and quality of life on economic growth

To bridge the gap in the quality of life (QOL) and economic growth literature and understand the reinforcing effects of QOL and human capital on economic development, we examine the interactive effects of these two factors on wage growth from 2000 to 2007 at the county level across the United States. First, a Rosen–Roback model is employed to estimate implicit values of amenities including climate, clean air and other natural attributes, which are used to generate QOL indices. Second, QOL, human capital represented by the share of college graduates, and their interaction serve as key variables in the wage growth model. An instrumental variable approach and location fixed effects are used to address endogeneity of human capital and control for location-specific unobservable characteristics. Results suggest that human capital and QOL significantly contribute to economic growth and the growth effects are even larger in nonmetropolitan counties. Importantly, we find that the effect of human capital on growth is larger in high-QOL counties and QOL enhances the effect of human capital on growth. Our results provide empirical support for community development strategies through providing utility-enhancing amenities that improve QOL and retain human capital.     

Can natural disasters have positive consequences? Investigating the role of embodied technical change

It has been suggested that disasters might have positive economic consequences, through the accelerated replacement of capital. This possibility is referred to as the productivity effect. This effect is investigated using a model with embodied technical change. In this framework, disasters can influence the production level but cannot influence the growth rate, in the same way than the saving ratio in a Solow-like model. Depending on reconstruction quality, indeed, accounting for embodied technical change can either decrease or increase disaster costs, but is never able to turn disasters into positive events. Moreover, a better but slower reconstruction amplifies the short-term consequences of disasters, but pays off over the long-term. Regardless, the productivity effect cannot prevent the existence of a bifurcation when disaster damages exceed the reconstruction capacity, potentially leading to poverty traps.     

Social status, human capital formation and super-neutrality in a two-sector monetary economy

In this paper, we study how social status affects the impact of monetary policy on the long-run growth rate in a two-sector monetary economy with human capital accumulation, and find that the super-neutrality of money, with regard to the growth rate of the economy depends on the formation of human capital. In an economy with Lucas-type human capital formation, money is super-neutral; however, for an economy in which both physical and human capital are used as inputs for human capital accumulation, the money growth rate will have a positive effect on the long-run economic growth rate. The existence, uniqueness and saddle-path stability of balanced-growth equilibrium are also examined.     

人力资本不平等与全要素生产率增长关系

本文基于1990-2007年间我国29个省份数据,运用较为前沿的面板协整技术,实证检验了人力资本不平等与全要素生产率增长之间的长期稳定关系。研究表明:(1)近些年来,中国的教育扩张有效地促进了人力资本积累和人力资本不平等程度的改善;(2)人力资本不平等对全要素生产率增长具有显著的负向影响。因此,在强调人力资本积累、加大教育投入的同时,应关注教育资源分配的公平性,减少人力资本不平等,以促进全要素生产率的进一步增长。     

Working time reduction and employment in a finite world*

We study the consequences of a working time reduction (WTR) in a growth model with efficiency wages and an essential natural resource (natural capital), and in which technical progress cannot reduce the resource content of final production to zero. We show that if natural capital is scarce enough, a WTR increases the long-term levels of the hourly wage and employment. A numerical analysis of the transitory impacts of a WTR confirms that when natural capital is scarcer, a WTR increases employment more and the hourly wage less, with a less negative initial impact on output.     

Measures of Human Capital and Nonlinearities in Economic Growth

In this paper we study the relationship between human capital accumulation and economic growth using various measures of human capital frequently employed by researchers. We use semiparametric estimation techniques to uncover any nonlinearities that may exist. Using mean years of schooling measures of human capital we find a nonlinear effect on economic growth. There seem to be important differences in the growth effect of educational attainment by gender and level of education. Enrollment rates do not yield a nonlinear effect.     

Institutions,human capital,and growth: The institutional mechanism

This paper contributes to the debate on the relationship between human capital, institutions, and economic growth. The paper first develops a micro-foundation model linking institutions to human capital. The advantage of our modeling strategy is that the human capital accumulation function is derived from an endogenous process. The theoretical model shows that improvements in the quality of institutions foster human capital accumulation, decrease income inequality and change the historical development path. The paper uses cross-country panel data from 1965 to 2005 to test some of the model's propositions and finds that deep structures or structural institutions – which are very persistent and rooted on the historical development path of an economy – affect long-term economic performance, while political institutions are uncorrelated with productivity and long-term economic growth. The empirical estimates also show that growth of physical and human capital – instead of levels – determines long-run economic growth.     

对外开放与TFP增长：基于中国省际面板数据的经验研究

本文运用DEA的方法，先测算出1986--2003年各省域经济的技术效率、技术进步和TFP增长，然后实证研究人力资本、国际进出口及FDI对三者的影响。结果表明，人力资本和出口对技术效率的提高有正向作用，进口负向影响技术效率，FDI的影响不显著。出口对技术进步和TFP增长有轻微的负向影响，进口对二者具有小幅度的正向促进作用；而人力资本、FDI对技术进步和TFP增长的正向影响要大于进口。综合来看，对外开放能够促进TFP的增长，但是其影响只有人力资本正向效果的十分之一。