我国经济增长的多重均衡现象——基于动态门槛面板数据模型的研究

本文首次应用动态门槛面板数据模型，对我国经济增长的多重均衡现象进行了研究，研究表明我国经济增长具有明显的多重均衡现象。当人均收入低于1007元时，存在着经济增长障碍，经济处于低水平陷阱；一旦突破低收入门槛，在同一的收入状态里省区经济增长率趋向收敛。然而，由于较高收入状态的省区收入收敛速度快于较低收入状态的省区，因此，我国富裕省区与相对落后省区的人均收入差距还在不断扩大；我国目前还没有达到增长极限，不存在高水平陷阱现象。     

Growth, Attitudes towards Women, and Women's Welfare

The authors find that attitudes towards women are more progressive as per capita income rises and that the quality and quantity of women's human capital increases with per capita income. Prior to presenting these empirical results, the authors first demonstrate the importance of these relationships with a simple model that shows how a feedback loop between attitudes towards women, investment in women's human capital, and income affects the dynamic path of the economy. Depending on the nature of the relationship between per capita income and attitudes towards women, they identify the possibility of a gender-equity poverty trap. Finally, they extend the model to show the dynamic interplay between attitudes towards women, income, and fertility.     

Aggregate savings when individual income varies

This paper examines aggregate savings in a general equilibrium model where infinitely lived households face volatile (and possibly uncertain) income paths, hold a risk-free asset, and face a borrowing constraint. I first show that the equilibrium capital stock in an economy without uncertainty, but where individual income varies, can be larger than in an economy where each household's income is constant. When individual income is stochastic and uninsurable, the equilibrium capital stock is always larger than when income is constant. This additional capital accumulation has sometimes been interpreted as precautionary savings, but I argue that much of the additional savings are generated by permanent-income motives in combination with strict borrowing constraints.     

An econometric model of France during the 19th century

A model of the French economy in the 19th century is presented, first, to test the consistency of the national income series that are currently being developed and, second, to highlight the factors that account for the slowing down of the country's economic growth during the middle decades of that century. A few simulations of the model are also presented to give a clearer view of the structural change the economy experienced, and as an illustration of the general working of the model and its potential applications.     

How important are dual economy effects for aggregate productivity?

This paper brings together development accounting techniques and the dual economy model to address the role that factor markets have in creating variation in aggregate total factor productivity (TFP). Development accounting research has shown that much of the variation in income across countries can be attributed to differences in TFP. The dual economy model suggests that aggregate productivity is depressed by having too many factors allocated to low productivity work in agriculture. Data show large differences in marginal products of similar factors within many developing countries, offering prima facie evidence of this misallocation. Using a simple two-sector decomposition of the economy, this article estimates the role of these misallocations in accounting for the cross-country income distribution. A key contribution is the ability to bring sector-specific data on human and physical capital stocks to the analysis. Variation across countries in the degree of misallocation is shown to account for 30–40% of the variation in income per capita, and up to 80% of the variation in aggregate TFP.     

A middle income trap in a small open economy: Modeling the Argentinean case

This paper presents a model of the conditions that may lead a small open economy towards a middle income trap. This situation has shown to be pervasive in Latin America. As Argentina is a salient instance of this phenomenon, we develop a stylized model of its economy at the first decades of the XXth century. It consists of a general equilibrium model of an open emerging economy, which is a price-taking primary goods exporter. A growth process is triggered by an increase of commodity prices, due to an upward jump of the world demand of these goods. The economy goes through several phases of growth, starting from a subsistence stage. Once decreasing returns set in, the economy reaches a steady state. Only a sustained high demand of its export products allows the economy to thrive. Otherwise, the economy gets entrapped in a middle income level.     

Globalizing labor and the world economy: the role of human capital

We develop a dynamic model of the world economy that jointly endogenizes individual decisions about fertility, education and migration. We then use it to compare the short- and long-term effects of immigration restrictions on the world distribution of income. Our calibration strategy replicates the economic and demographic characteristics of the world, and allows us to proxy bilateral migration costs and visa costs for two classes of workers and for each pair of countries. In our benchmark simulations, the world average level of income per worker increases by 12% in the short term and by approximately 52% after one century. These results are highly robust to our identifying strategy and technological assumptions. Sizable differences are obtained when our baseline (pre-liberalization) trajectory involves a rapid income convergence between countries or when we adjust visa costs for a possible upward bias. Our quantitative analysis reveals that the effects of liberalizing migration on human capital accumulation and income are gradual and cumulative. Whatever is the size of the short-term gain, the long-run impact is 4 to 5 times greater (except under a rapid convergence in income).     

中国居民收入差距的变动趋势——基于双二元动态框架的实证

为揭示城乡转换和经济开放双重约束下中国居民收入差距变动的总体趋势和特征,文章构建了一个四部门的双二元动态分析框架,并检验了其现实适用性,实证结果较好地支持了这一分析框架的有效性,研究表明:巨大城乡差距的存在决定了我国居民收入分配总体上仍将呈现出“倒U”趋势,而对外经济开放则会显著影响到这一过程的实现形式;从根本上看,重新审视二元结构政策,消除收入分配的平均主义倾向,进一步加快城镇化进程、逐步有序地推动对外开放构成了优化我国收入分配结构、逐步缩小居民收入差距的基本约束。     

NEOCLASSICAL GROWTH AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONSUMPTION

Abstract.  The neoclassical growth model is used to compare an economy with growing per capita income with an economy with stationary per capita income, in terms of equity in distribution of consumption. The economies have the same initial conditions including the same initial wealth distribution. The outcome of the comparison depends on the nature of structural differences between the economies. Even with convergence in wealth distribution in the growing economy, the consumption distribution there may be less equitable and dynasties with least initial levels of wealth may be worse off than dynasties with same initial wealth levels in the stationary economy.     

Skill Composition,Fertility, and Economic Growth

While high fertility persists in the poorest countries and fertility declines with per capita income in developing countries, fertility and per capita income are now positively associated across most developed countries. This paper presents a model where a U‐shaped relationship between overall fertility and per capita income reflects within country differences in workforce skill composition and household choice of occupation, fertility, and childrearing. The fraction of skilled workers rises with economic growth. By allowing for both differences in the fertility of skilled and unskilled workers and purchased childrearing inputs, we explain a poverty trap with high fertility, fertility decline with economic development, and the possible reversal of fertility decline in a developed economy where most workers are skilled.     

What circumstances lead a government to promote brain drain?

This paper aims to complement the existing theoretical brain drain literature, focusing on the interaction between education, skilled emigration and government intervention in a small open economy. This article first characterises different emigration patterns that may arise in equilibrium, then seeks the conditions that lead a government to promote brain-drain. The model shows that the government may promote skilled emigration among workers with intermediate skills even though the resulting brain drain decreases per capita income. Emigrants remittances outweigh the income they would produce if they did not emigrate. Therefore, the government makes less severe the fall in per capita income that follows the brain drain by encouraging emigration among those skilled workers who are more productive abroad.     

Trade and the governance of ecosystem services

We work with a basic general equilibrium model of an economy with an industrial good and a rural good. Industrial good production results in pollution that affects the provision of ecosystem services and thereby the production of the rural good. The assignment of ecosystem rights to the industrial polluters or to the rural pollutees results in differential transaction costs that affect production possibilities between the two goods. Ecosystem rights are assigned to maximize social welfare. Over time, technological change and differences in income superiority affect the choice of the assignment of rights. Opening to trade affects the choice of the assignment of ecosystem rights depending on the nature of technological change, but the relative income superiority of goods no longer affects the assignment of ecosystem rights in a small economy. Thus, among other findings, we demonstrate that the phenomena known as the environmental Kuznets curve does not hold for the protection of ecosystem services in production, or production externalities generally, because trade separates consumption from production.     

How does foreign direct investment affect economic growth in China?

How does inward foreign direct investment (FDI) affect a transitional economy? This study attempts to analyze the role of FDI in China’s income growth and market‐oriented transition. We first identify possible channels through which FDI may have positive or negative effects on the Chinese economy. Using a growth model and cross‐section and panel data for the period 1984‐98, we provide an empirical assessment, which suggests that FDI seems to help China’s transition and promote income growth, and that this positive growth effect seems to rise over time and to be stronger in the coastal than the inland regions. JEL classification: F21, F23, O53.     

我国劳动收入比重偏低的成因分析——基于劳动力市场的视角

近年来我国劳动收入在初次分配中的比重呈下降趋势。劳动收入比重偏低会对收入分配公平、消费投资平衡和经济增长质量产生负面影响。文章基于劳动力市场的视角对我国劳动收入比重偏低的成因进行了理论研究,并采用我国2000-2011年省级面板数据,构建了一个劳动收入比重决定模型,实证检验了经济发展过程中,二元经济转型和劳动力市场分割对我国劳动收入比重变化的影响。研究结果表明,我国劳动收入比重偏低是二元经济转型的特定发展阶段和劳动力市场分割的制约力量协同作用的结果。在二元经济转型过程中,劳动收入比重的变化趋势呈U型规律。我国劳动收入比重偏低的原因在于,劳动力市场城乡分割和劳动力市场行政垄断行业分割延缓了二元经济转型进程,增加了劳动收入比重在下降阶段的停留时间。因此,稳定我国劳动收入比重的关键是削弱劳动力市场分割,加快二元经济转型。     

Is income security possible in a capitalist economy? : An agency-theoretic analysis of an unconditional income grant

This paper is an assessment of the economic effects of the replacement of means-tested or employment-status-related state redistributive programs by a basic income grant paid unconditionally to all adults without regard to their employment status or pretransfer incomes. A microeconomic model is developed to identify the effects of such a grant on the institutional mechanisms governing the supply of work by those employed and the implied effects on the level of wages, profitability an investment. Two questions are posed. First, taking account of the implied effects on wages, labor discipline and taxes, is it possible to introduce a basic income grant without reducing the level of economy with maintainance of the level of profitability and so, what is the largest grant consistent with maintainance of the level of profitability and investment? The answer to the first question is affirmative. The answer to the second is that for an economy such as the United States, the profitability and investment maintaining grant is small but hardly insignificant; its implementation would effect a major redistribution of income from the employed and the unemployed to the non-employed.     

Heterogeneity in Ability and Inheritance,Disparities, and Development

This paper investigates the impact of income inequality on economic growth. A two-period overlapping generations model is developed where agents are heterogeneous in innate abilities and inheritance. In the first period, they receive their inheritance and their abilities are revealed. There are only two types of abilities: high and low. Individuals decide on their education level, and divide their inheritance between spending on education and saving. In the second period, individuals supply their labor and allocate the labor income and the return to their saving between consumption and bequests to their offsprings. Initial capital stock is owned entirely by the capitalists. In this context, a more equal distribution of income enhances economic growth if the economy is lower than a threshold capital-labor ratio, while income inequality has an insignificant effect above this threshold. The predictions of the model are tested empirically using the Hansen (1999) threshold estimation. The results, using a panel of 70 countries for the period 1971-1999, suggest that there is a statistically significant threshold income per capita, below which the coefficient on the relationship between inequality and economic growth is significantly negative and above which the estimate is not significant.     

Fiscal policy,government debt,and economic growth in the Kaleckian model of growth and distribution

This article presents the Kaleckian model of growth and distribution that sets a budget deficit ratio as an indicator of fiscal policy and examines the short- and long-run effects of an increase in budget deficits and a rise in income tax rates on the economy. The key short-run outcomes are as follows. First, expanded budget deficits have a positive effect on the rate of capacity utilization. Second, the tax rate for wage income does not affect the rate of capacity utilization, whereas the tax rate for capital income has a favorable impact on it. This result implies that raising the tax rate for capital income can be an important policy instrument for stimulating the economy. Third, we find that the economy exhibits a wage-led aggregate demand in the short run. The main long-run results are as follows. First, the effect of expanded budget deficits on the growth rate is ambiguous, since a higher debt burden negatively influences the rate of capacity utilization and hence economic growth, despite the increase in demand caused by government borrowing. A higher budget deficit ratio thus raises the growth rate only if a certain condition is satisfied. Second, the tax rate for capital income has a positive impact on the growth rate. Third, the economy shows a wage-led growth in the long run.     

Impacts of third-party payment in an open economy

Although the third-party payment system is a matter of heated debate among academics and policymakers, and empirical studies of it are commonplace, this paper is believed to be the first to theoretically model its macroeconomic impact on a small open economy. The outcomes indicate that increases in the use of third-party payments will have a positive effect on national income in such an economy, but an ambiguous effect on domestic interest rates if the Marshall-Lerner condition holds. However, if the Marshall-Lerner condition does not hold, then increases in third-party payments could lead to higher domestic interest rates in an economy of this type. Additionally, third-party payments will ambiguous effects on such an economy's foreign-exchange rate.     

The impact of trade on employment,welfare, and income distribution in unionized general oligopolistic equilibrium

This paper sets up a multi-sector general oligopolistic equilibrium trade model in which all firms face wage claims of firm-level unions. By accounting for productivity differences across industries, the model features income inequality along multiple lines, including inequality between firm owners and workers as well as within these two groups of agents, and involuntary unemployment. We use this setting to study the impact of trade liberalization on key macroeconomic performance measures. In particular, we show that a movement from autarky to free trade with a fully symmetric partner country lowers union wage claims and therefore stimulates employment and raises welfare. Whether firms can extract a larger share of rents in the open economy depends on the competitive environment in the product market. Furthermore, the distribution of profit income across firm owners remains unaffected, while the distribution of wage income becomes more equal when a country opens up to trade with a fully symmetric trading partner. We also analyze how country size differences and technological dissimilarity of trading partners affect the results from our analysis.     

Technological Progress,Income Distribution,and The Explanation of Some Stylized Facts of Economic Growth

This paper examines the effects of technological progress in the framework of a specific-factor variant of the “dependent economy” model. We analyse, first, the effects of technological progress on income distribution, and secondly, its effects on commodity prices, and the structure of production. Our model predicts that, services must be more expensive in the country with higher per capita GDP, and that labor productivity in manufactures is positives associated with the per capita income, etc. The model can also explain several other stylized facts of economic growth. [O33, F11]