论高等教育与经济可持续发展

发展是人类永恒的主题,可持续性的发展更是关系到各国乃至人类生存的重要论题。我国在大力发展经济的同时,必须高度重视经济发展与环境、社会生活等方面的协调,坚持走可持续性的发展道路。作为影响可持续性发展的诸多重要因素之一,加快发展高等教育已日益成为我国社会经济发展的一个不容忽视的重要方面。处理好高等教育与经济发展的关系,是实现我国经济可持续性发展及在本世纪赶超发达国家的捷径。     

健康、教育和经济增长:理论及跨国证据

本文基于Soares(2005)的模型,导出婴儿死亡率和成年人预期寿命对人力资本积累以及最后对经济增长的影响效果,然后用跨国数据对模型的预测进行验证。本文模型的独特之处在于区分了成年人对小孩和对成年人自己的人力资本投资,揭示了成年人寿命增加对经济行为的影响的作用机制。在实证检验中,本文除了采用地理、气候等指标作为工具变量外,还独创性的利用因为实施大范围免疫计划的时间不同而产生的外生的免疫率的国别差异来解决健康的内生性问题。本文的结论对中国和发展中国家经济增长中健康的重要作用具有启发意义。     

Who Bears the Burden of Social Security Contributions in Germany? Evidence from 35 Years of Administrative Data

This paper provides evidence on the question of who bears the burden of social security contributions (SSC) in Germany over a long-term horizon. Following Alvaredo et al. (De Econ, 2017) we exploit kinks in the budget set generated by a drop in the marginal SSC rate at earnings caps for health and long-term care insurance. These concave kinks lead to discontinuities in the distributions of gross earnings, net earnings, or labor costs which—in the absence of labor supply responses—are informative about economic incidence. Administrative data for West Germany from 1975 to 2010 facilitate a comprehensive incidence analysis. Finding no evidence for labor supply responses and no significant discontinuities in gross earnings distributions, we conclude that neither employers nor employees shift a substantial part of their SSC burden. These results are consistent over the whole time period and hold for several robustness checks corroborating previous findings for Germany. A small trend towards a slight increase in the SSC burden for employees is not statistically significant.     

Forecasting Risk in Earnings

Conventional measures of risk in earnings based on historical standard deviation require long time‐series data and are inadequate when the distribution of earnings deviates from normality. We introduce a methodology based on current fundamentals and quantile regression to forecast risk reflected in the shape of the distribution of future earnings. We derive measures of dispersion, asymmetry, and tail risk in future earnings using quantile forecasts as inputs. Our analysis shows that a parsimonious model based on accruals, cash flows, special items, and a loss indicator can predict the shape of the distribution of earnings with reasonable power. We provide evidence that out‐of‐sample quantile‐based risk forecasts explain incrementally analysts' equity and credit risk ratings, future return volatility, corporate bond spreads, and analyst‐based measures of future earnings uncertainty. Our study provides insights into the relations between earnings components and risk in future earnings. It also introduces risk measures that will be useful for participants in both the equity and credit markets.     

The Contribution of Associate's Degree Holders to U.S. Earnings,Labor Quality,Productivity, and Overall Economic Growth

There is substantial evidence on the importance of education as a driver of earnings, productivity, and economic growth. However, knowledge of the specific role of associate's degrees in U.S. economic growth is limited. We analyze the sources of U.S. economic growth and identify the contribution of associate's degree holders to improvements in earnings, labor quality, productivity, and overall economic growth. We find evidence that substitution toward workers with associate's degrees has increased U.S. earnings, aggregate labor quality, and productivity, and that these effects are concentrated in the health care, trade, and government sectors. While the average educational attainment of people entering the labor force has plateaued, our results suggest that shifting workers from some college to associate degrees could improve earnings, the quality of the workforce, productivity, and growth, potentially without more time spent in school.     

Public debt and economic growth – economic systems matter

Most studies on the relationship between public debt and economic growth implicitly assume homogeneous debt effects across their samples. We –in accordance with recent literature– challenge this view and state that there likely is a great deal of cross-country heterogeneity in that relationship. However, other than scholars assuming that all countries are different, we expect that clusters of countries differ. We identify three country clusters with distinct economic systems: Liberal (Anglo Saxon), Continental (Core EU members) and Nordic (Scandinavian). We argue that different degrees of fiscal uncertainty at comparable levels of public debt between those economic systems constitute a major source of heterogeneity in the debt-growth relationship. Our empirical evidence supports this assumption. Continental countries face more growth reducing public debt effects than especially Liberal countries. There, public debt apparently exerts neutral or even positive growth effects, while for Nordic countries a non-linear relationship is discovered, with negative debt effects kicking in at public debt values of around 60% of GDP.     

A regional perspective on inequality and growth in Portugal using panel cointegration analysis

This paper examines the relationship between inequality and economic growth for thirty Portuguese NUTS3 regions within a multivariate panel framework over the period 1995–2007, using panel cointegration techniques to test for the existence of a relationship between inequality and real GDP per capita. The results point to the existence of a relationship between the variables, where the effect of inequality, measured as the Gini index of the earnings distribution, on per capita output is negative. This negative influence seems to be determined by the behaviour of the bottom of the earnings distribution, most likely by dampening investment in human capital, with the results pointing to the coexistence of a positive impact of inequality at the top of the distribution, supporting the incentives argument for the inequality-growth nexus. Additionally, the results confirm the predicted positive relationship between human capital and output, lending support to both the exogenous and endogenous growth models predictions on the importance of human capital for production both as an input in the production of final goods and in the production of technology. Another interesting result concerns structural funds: we found a negative relation of this variable with regional output. We believe that EU structural funds were a source of Dutch disease for Portugal, which resulted mainly in a lack of external competitiveness of the Portuguese economy due to the excessive specialization in non-tradable goods made possible by the European funds.     

An introduction to the history of infectious diseases,epidemics and the early phases of the long-run decline in mortality†

This article, written during the COVID-19 epidemic, provides a general introduction to the long-term history of infectious diseases, epidemics and the early phases of the spectacular long-term improvements in life expectancy since 1750, primarily with reference to English history. The story is a fundamentally optimistic one. In 2019 global life expectancy was approaching 73 years. In 1800 it was probably about 30. To understand the origins of this transition, we have to look at the historical sequence by which so many causes of premature death have been vanquished over time. In England that story begins much earlier than often supposed, in the years around 1600. The first two ‘victories’ were over famine and plague. However, economic changes with negative influences on mortality meant that, despite this, life expectancies were either falling or stable between the late sixteenth and mid eighteenth centuries. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw major declines in deaths from smallpox, malaria and typhus and the beginnings of the long-run increases in life expectancy. The period also saw urban areas become capable of demographic growth without a constant stream of migrants from the countryside: a necessary precondition for the global urbanization of the last two centuries and for modern economic growth. Since 1840 the highest national life expectancy globally has increased by three years in every decade.     

Longevity,Fertility, and the Real Exchange Rate

We build a simple overlapping generation model to investigate the effect of life expectancy on the real exchange rate where fertility is chosen endogenously. The model reveals that, although the overall effect of life expectancy on the real exchange rate is not certain, longer life expectancy tends to cause the real exchange rate to depreciate by reducing fertility. Fertility thus serves as a mediator in the effect of life expectancy on the real exchange rate. Evidence from 148 economies (1980–2018) shows a statistically significant and robust negative relationship between life expectancy and the real exchange rate. It is estimated that a 1 year increase in life expectancy is associated with a 1.5 percent depreciation in the real exchange rate. The evidence also confirms the mediated effect of fertility. The mediated effect that fertility exerts accounts for 30 percent to 50 percent of the total effect, depending on the real exchange rate index used.     

中国保险业发展、城市化与经济增长

本文采用我国1985年-2011年时间序列数据。检验和估计了我国保险业发展、城市化水平与经济增长的关系。结果表明：城市化水平、非寿险业发展与经济增长存在单向因果关系,而寿险业与经济增长之间因果关系不显著;城市化水平、非寿险业与经济增长存在正向关系,而寿险业对长期经济增长产生抑制效应;城市化水平对经济增长的贡献大于非寿险业对经济增长的贡献。为此,本文提出政府应加大对保险业发展的政策支持力度。均衡发展寿险业和非寿险业,重点支持县域和农村保险业的发展,拓宽保险业参与国民经济发展的途径;加快城市化建设的进程以促进保险业的发展;在城市化进程中重视非寿险业的发展。     

Does Life Expectancy Affect Private Educational Investment in China？

In this paper, we emphasize the interactive effect between life expectancy and human capital accumulation, and test the positive feedback of longevity to educational investment in China. This is very important for understanding the pressure from the aging population and the increase in private educational investment in China. We first show in an extended human capital investment model that life expectancy growth acts as a driving force for educational investment. We then build a difference‐in‐difference‐in‐differences empirical framework and use cross‐province data to examine the effect in China. We use the maternal mortality rate (MMR) to identify the difference in life expectancy between genders, and the illiteracy rate or average years of education by gender for educational investment. The empirical results comply with the theory, in that increases in life expectancy significantly lower illiteracy rates and improve the average schooling years in China. This content of the present paper is closely related to crucial issues like population aging, human capital accumulation and gender discrimination. Policy implications are discussed based on the empirical results.     

Growth or stagnation? Farming in England, 1200–1800

Estimates of English income in Broadberry et al.’s British economic growth, 1270–1870 are founded upon a fourfold growth of farm output, and output per farm worker, over this interval. This article shows, using four separate tests, that farm output growth must have been much more limited. The tests are, first, whether in 1300 there was enough work at harvest to employ all the labour force; second, whether the value of output per worker in agriculture was greater than the annual earnings of workers; third, whether the implied relative outputs per acre of arable versus pasture were reasonable; and fourth, whether a much shorter medieval work year was possible. An alternative index of farm output consistent with the labour supply, wages, and farm rents is derived. This shows much less growth during the period 1270–1800. Overall economic growth in England during these years must consequently have been far less than Broadberry et al. estimate.     

The Incidence of Social Security Contributions in the United Kingdom: Evidence from Discontinuities at Contribution Ceilings

This paper investigates the incidence of National Insurance contributions (NICs) in the UK, exploiting the ceiling that applied to employee and employer contributions between 1975 and 1985 and to employee contributions only between 1986 and 2007. Using data from the New Earnings Survey Panel Dataset, a mandatory survey of British employers’ payroll records, we show there was no dip in the earnings density at the ceiling in either period, suggesting that the earnings of those near the ceiling were unresponsive to the change in tax rates. The absence of such a dip allows us to test which of labour cost, gross earnings or net earnings are smooth around the threshold. As shown by Alvaredo et al. (De Econ, 2017. doi: 10.1007/s10645-017-9294-7), this is informative about the incidence of the change in tax rates at the threshold on those located nearby. We cannot reject the hypothesis that it is gross earnings that are smooth around the threshold, which may reflect a substantive role for statutory incidence in determining economic incidence. However, a lack of statistical power means that, while in some cases we can reject the hypotheses that the full economic incidence of NICs are borne by one side of the market, our results taken alone are also consistent with a wide range of less extreme incidence shares.     

Accelerating growth in Poland through privatization

Abstract

This study examines relationships among information communications technology (ICT), carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and economic growth. The panel annual data are constructed from 1991 to 2009 for nine members from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The study examines the long-run equilibrium relationship using cointegration techniques and the short-run relationships using cointegrating regression estimation methods. Test results indicate a long-run equilibrium relationship exists among these variables. Among these relationships, ICT shows significant to highly significant positive effects on both economic growth and CO₂ emissions. Significant to highly significant inverse bidirectional relationships between economic growth and CO₂ emissions are found in the region. Based on these empirical findings, further policy implications for economic growth, ICT and CO₂ emissions are discussed.     

Gender earnings gap among the youth in Malawi

While young women's engagement in economic activities is an essential component of development, gender gaps are still commonly observed worldwide and especially in developing countries like Malawi. This study introduces recent data to provide new evidence for a sub‐Saharan country that has yet been closely examined. Using the International Labour Organization's School‐to‐Work Transition Survey (ILO SWTS) individual‐level data, I examine the gender earnings gap among the youth in Malawi by conducting Mincer earnings regressions with Heckman selection correction and applying Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition methods. I find that young women in Malawi earn significantly less than young men and that women are significantly less likely to engage in income‐generating work activities. Also, substantial unadjusted gender earnings difference in Malawi is overwhelmingly due to differences in returns. Moreover, detailed decomposition results show that gender differences in work‐related individual characteristics and firm characteristics also contribute to the gender earnings gap. The results suggest that any effort to reduce the gender earnings gap should involve improved access to education as well as better workplaces for women.     

The aggregate exports-GDP relation under the prism of infrequent trend breaks and multi-horizon causality

This paper re-examines the relationship between exports and economic growth in OECD countries. We apply the multi-horizon causality method developed by Dufour et al. (J Econ 132(2):337–362, 2006) for the first time, taking into account the possibility of infrequent structural trend breaks. Econometric techniques that avoid the circular problem when testing for segmented trends and unit roots have been employed along with a hybrid estimator of break location. The empirical evidence indicates that there is a unidirectional causal relationship from exports to economic growth for Finland, Germany, and the United States in the short run horizon, and directly in the cases of Austria and Ireland. We verify a direct causal relation from economic growth to real exports in France, Luxembourg and Portugal in various continuous horizons. Bidirectional causal relations between exports and economic growth were detected in Greece and Norway.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship between Cash Flow and Dividend Changes in Nigeria

The purpose of this study is to re‐evaluate the incremental information content of cash flows in explaining dividend changes, given earnings. I carry out an 882 firm‐year study by analysing the dividend changes‐cash flow relationship on a sample of 63 quoted firms in Nigeria over a wider testing period from 1984 to 1997. Despite the fact that I used a wider testing period than previous studies and more refined cash flow measures than previous studies, I also introduced dummy variables to capture economic policy changes in the economy. The association of cash flows with dividend changes is tested using the modified Lintner‐Brittain model as adopted in Charitou and Vafeas (1998) on pooled cross sectional/time series data from the full sample of observations from 1984‐97. The models are estimated using the ordinary least squares (OLS) method and I do find a significant relationship between dividend changes and cash flow unlike previous studies. The empirical results reveal that the relationship between cash flows and dividend changes depend substantially on the level of growth, the capital structure choice, size of each firm and economic policy changes.     

Gender and Ethnicity--Married Immigrants in Britain

In this paper we investigate the economic activity of marriedor cohabiting female immigrants in Britain. We distinguish betweentwo immigrant groups: foreign-born females who belong to anethnic-minority group and their husbands, and foreign-born whitefemales and their husbands. We compare these to native-bornwhite women and their husbands. Our analysis deviates from theusual mean analysis and investigates employment, hours workedand earnings for males and females, as well as their combinedfamily earnings, along the distribution of husbands' economicpotential. We analyse the extent to which economic disadvantagemay be reinforced at the household level and investigate theextent to which it can be explained by differences in observablecharacteristics. We find that white female immigrants and theirhusbands have an overall advantage in earnings over white nativeborn, both individually and at the household level. Minorityimmigrants do less well, in particular at the lower end of thehusbands' economic potential distribution. This is mainly dueto the low employment of both genders, which leads to a disadvantagein earnings, intensified at the household level. Only part ofthis differential can be explained by observable characteristics. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: c.dustmann{at}ucl.ac.uk; francesca.fabbri{at}lrz.uni-muenchen.de     

Income Smoothing and the Usefulness of Earnings for Monitoring in Debt Contracting

We investigate whether income smoothing affects the usefulness of earnings for contracting through the monitoring role of earnings-based debt covenants. First, we examine initial contract design and predict that income smoothing will increase (decrease) the use of earnings-based covenants if income smoothing improves (reduces) the usefulness of earnings to monitor borrowers. We find that private debt contracts to borrowers with greater income smoothing are more likely to include earnings-based covenants. A structural model that explores the cause of this relationship provides evidence that smoothing improves the ability of earnings to reflect credit risk. Second, we examine technical default following contract inception. We find that income smoothing is associated with a lower likelihood of spurious technical default (when the borrower's economic performance has not declined but the loan nevertheless enters technical default). In contrast, we find no association between income smoothing and performance technical default (when the borrower's economic performance has declined). Collectively, this evidence is consistent with income smoothing improving the effectiveness of earnings-based information in monitoring borrowers.     

The Determinants of Life Expectancy: An Analysis of the OECD Health Data

This study considers an aggregate life expectancy production function for a sample of developed countries. We find that pharmaceutical consumption has a positive effect on life expectancy at middle and advanced ages but is sensitive to the age distribution of a given country. Thus, ignoring age distribution in a regression of life expectancy on pharmaceutical consumption creates an omitted-variable bias in the pharmaceutical coefficient. We find that doubling annual pharmaceutical expenditures adds about one year of life expectancy for males at age 40 and slightly less than a year of life expectancy for females at age 65. We also present results for lifestyle inputs into the production of life expectancy. For example, decreasing tobacco consumption by about two cigarettes per day or increasing fruit and vegetable consumption by 30% (one-third pound per day) increases life expectancy approximately one year for 40-year-old females.