劳动力流动与收入收敛--一个改进的新古典增长模型及对中国的启示

文章将劳动力的流动性引进新古典增长模型,对于一个拥有一定资本密度的小型开放经济体而言,当它低于稳态时,劳动力的迁出会加快收入收敛的速度,但同时会对整体资本投资产生抑制作用;在收入水平相对较低时,这种抑制作用会超过其正面作用,从而劳动力流动会减缓收入收敛的速度;但从长期来看,随着劳动力流动性的提高,正面作用最终会占据主导地位,从而劳动力的无限自由流动会最终导致收入收敛于稳态.     

Explaining differences in the productivity of investment across countries in the context of ‘new growth theory’

The purpose of this paper is to explain differences in the productivity of investment across 84 rich and poor countries over the period 1980–2011, and to test the orthodox neoclassical assumption of diminishing returns to capital. The productivity of investment is measured as the ratio of the long-run growth of GDP to a country’s gross investment ratio. Twenty potential determinants are considered using a general-to-specific model selection algorithm. Education, government consumption, geography, export growth, openness, political rights and macroeconomic instability are the most important variables. The data also suggest constant returns to capital, so investment and the determinants of productivity of investment differences matter for long-run growth.     

Health and Income Variation – A Panel Data Study on the Developed and Less Developed Economies

In this paper, human capital in the form of ‘health status’ is introduced into a neoclassical economic growth model as one of the main factors differentiating rich and poor countries. Various panel data models are used to examine how health and other growth factors affect average income in different countries. Our main empirical finding indicates that a one-year increase in life expectancy (the health status measure) raises GDP per capita by 0.5–0.9%. Based on this result, a baseline health status can be established to help poor countries achieve a targeted economic growth rate.     

Fiscal shocks and their consequences

This paper investigates the response of hours worked and real wages to fiscal policy shocks in the post-World-War II US. We identify these shocks with exogenous changes in military purchases and argue that they lead to a persistent increase in government purchases and tax rates on capital and labor income, and a persistent rise in aggregate hours worked as well as declines in real wages. The shocks are also associated with short lived rises in aggregate investment and small movements in private consumption. We describe and implement a methodology for assessing whether standard neoclassical models can account for the consequences of a fiscal policy shock. Simple versions of the neoclassical model can account for the qualitative effects of a fiscal shock. Once we allow for habit formation and investment adjustment costs, the model can also account reasonably well for the quantitative effects of a fiscal shock.     

Can the augmented Solow model explain China’s remarkable economic growth? A cross-country panel data analysis

China’s economy grew at an average annual rate of 9% over the last three decades. Despite the vast empirical literature on testing the neoclassical model of economic growth using data on various groups of countries, very few cross-country regressions include China and none of them particularly focuses on the explanation of China’s remarkable economic growth. We attempt to fill this gap by utilising panel data on 146 countries over the period 1980–2004 to examine the extent to which the rapid growth of China and the huge gap in the growth rate between China and other countries can be explained by the augmented Solow model. Using system GMM estimation techniques, we find that, in spite of the restrictive assumptions involved, the Solow model augmented by both human capital and structural change provides a fairly good account of international variation in economic growth. In particular, China’s relative success in economic growth is due to high physical capital investment, conditional convergence gain, dramatic changes in the structure of employment and output, and low population growth.     

Intermediation costs and capital flows

In this paper, we modify the standard neoclassical model by incorporating financial intermediation in order to deliver returns consistent with the observation that capital primarily flows to middle income countries. We build a static contracting framework where costly intermediation together with an adverse selection problem have quantitatively important effects on capital flows. When intermediation costs are ignored, the model behaves like the neoclassical model in terms of capital returns. However, when intermediation costs are considered, returns to capital in middle income countries could exceed those in poor and rich countries—high costs of intermediation cause poor countries to concentrate their investments in projects with low returns, while the standard neoclassical effect lowers returns in capital-rich countries. When we embed the return function from the static analysis in a two-country dynamic model, there is capital outflow from a poor country that removes capital controls and becomes open. Even though the closed economy dominates in terms of capital employed in production, it is the open economy that dominates in terms of income, consumption and welfare.     

Social norms and economic growth in a model with labor and capital income tax evasion

Empirical evidence suggests that low-income countries are characterized by high levels of labor and capital income tax evasion while the opposite is true for high-income countries. This paper proposes a model to study the relationship between economic growth and both types of income tax evasion. We show that the existence of a social norm towards tax compliance generates a complementarity between capital and labor income tax evasion which explains the decline of both the share of evaders in the population and the amount of tax evasion when countries accumulate capital. The model predicts that the level of tax morale is positively correlated with both types of income tax evasion and the level of income per capita, consistent with recent empirical evidence. Finally, a higher tax rate increases the share of evaders in the population and aggregate tax evasion.     

Capital accumulation during the transition from plan to market1

This paper focuses on the process of capital accumulation and the forces that drive it in the countries undergoing the transition from plan to market. The methodological framework for analyzing the determinants of aggregate business investment draws on the neoclassical accelerator model, extending it to reflect some of the specificities of the transition environment. The model is estimated on data for the economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The results highlight the role of some key drivers of capital accumulation in an economy in transition, in particular, the relatively significant accelerator response to output, the importance of adjustment effects and financing constraints and the relatively minor role of the cost of capital.     

Laffer strikes again: Dynamic scoring of capital taxes

We set up a neoclassical growth model extended by a corporate sector, an investment and finance decision of firms, and a set of taxes on capital income. We provide analytical dynamic scoring of taxes on corporate income, dividends, capital gains, other private capital income, and depreciation allowances and identify the intricate ways through which capital taxation affects tax revenue in general equilibrium. We then calibrate the model for the US and explore quantitatively the revenue effects from capital taxation. We take adjustment dynamics after a tax change explicitly into account and compare with steady-state effects. We find, among other results, a self-financing degree of corporate tax cuts of about 70–90% and a very flat Laffer curve for all capital taxes as well as for tax depreciation allowances. Results are strongest for the tax on capital gains. The model predicts for the US that total tax revenue increases by about 0.3–1.2% after abolishment of the tax.     

International capital flows and convergence in the neoclassical growth model

To analyze how capital mobility affects economic growth and convergence, this paper will use the analytical solution to the neoclassical growth model with a constant saving rate, beginning with the closed-economy Solow growth model. An introduction to international capital flows will follow. In an open economy, free capital mobility assures an instantaneous convergence in interest rates that, under a perfect competence situation, implies the instantaneous convergence in income levels among homogeneous countries. Taking into account this question and to reconcile these results with empirical evidence, that is, with the gradual convergence observed, the assumption is introduced that in spite of free capital mobility, there are international credit restrictions. In this case, we will show how the rate of convergence depends on the international capital inflows received. The authors would like to thank Maria Isabel Abradelo for her help in translating this paper.     

Uninsured idiosyncratic investment risk and aggregate saving

This paper augments the neoclassical growth model to study the macroeconomic effects of uninsured idiosyncratic investment, or capital-income, risk. Under standard assumptions for preferences and technologies, individual policy rules are linear in individual wealth, ensuring that the equilibrium dynamics for aggregate quantities and prices are independent of the wealth distribution. The analysis thus remains highly tractable despite the incompleteness of markets. As compared to complete markets, the steady state is characterized by both a lower interest rate and a lower capital stock when the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is higher than the fraction of private equity in total wealth. For empirically plausible parameterizations, this condition is easily satisfied, and the reduction in aggregate saving and income is quantitatively significant. These findings contrast with Bewley models, where idiosyncratic labor-income risk leads to higher aggregate saving and income.     

China’s catch-up to the US economy: decomposing TFP through investment-specific technology and human capital

We implement a neoclassical growth model that incorporates investment-specific technology (IST) modifying capital investment in the law of motion of capital and bifurcates productivity into human capital and total factor productivity (TFP) in the production function. We focus on the role of changes in the quality-adjusted price of investment goods on China’s growth by comparing the effects of IST and human capital on the decomposition of US and Chinese productivity. The results show that both human capital and IST play an important role in the decomposition of US TFP. For China, human capital accounts for an increasingly higher portion of Chinese TFP for the period 1952–2009; however, IST contributes to the explanation of TFP only after the 1979 reforms. The analysis is extended by considering the impact of IST in the consumer’s investment decision and by projecting both countries’ GDP while modelling unbalanced Chinese growth using catch-up. Our model predicts that the Chinese economy will surpass the US economy in 2024.     

The new investment theory and aggregate dynamics

This paper develops a dynamic general-equilibrium model of capital adjustments under monopolistic competition. Investments are partially irreversible. The model includes microfoundations for consumption decisions and capital-adjustment strategies. The effects of the model parameters on the optimal capital-adjustment strategy are determined analytically. A major result is that the aggregate net investment is proportional to the difference between the desired and previous aggregate capital. The speed of adjustment decreases with the cost of reversibility, is invariant to the shares of labor and capital, and increases with the level of macroeconomic uncertainty. However, the latter effect is not quantitatively important.     

Growth in regions

We use a newly assembled sample of 1,528 regions from 83 countries to compare the speed of per capita income convergence within and across countries. Regional growth is shaped by similar factors as national growth, such as geography and human capital. Regional convergence rate is about 2 % per year, comparable to that between countries. Regional convergence is faster in richer countries, and countries with better capital markets. A calibration of a neoclassical growth model suggests that significant barriers to factor mobility within countries are needed to account for the evidence.     

The nexus among foreign investment,domestic capital and economic growth: Empirical evidence from the MENA region

The objective of this paper is to estimate an econometric model for analyzing the interrelationship among foreign direct investment, domestic capital and economic growth in 13 MENA countries by using a ‘growth model’ framework and simultaneous-equation models estimated by the generalized method of moments (GMM) during the period 1990–2010. Our empirical results show that there is bi-directional causal relationship between foreign investment and economic growth, as well as domestic capital and economic growth, and there is uni-directional causal relationship from foreign direct investment to domestic capital for the region as a whole.     

Tuition fees: User prices and private incentives

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of introducing tuition fees for public education services into a tax system with income and consumption taxes. The setup is a neoclassical growth model where agents differ in capital holdings. We show that the introduction of tuition fees (a) improves individual incentives to work and/or save and (b) can be both efficient and equitable. The focus is on the role of tuition fees as an extra price and how this affects private incentives.     

Neoclassical Growth, Manufacturing Agglomeration, and Terms of Trade

This study reverses the prediction of geography and growth models that trade integration may cause income divergence. Moreover, a new dynamic welfare gain of trade openness is identified. These results are obtained from embedding a new economic geography model into a neoclassical growth model. Starting from symmetric countries, a country that accumulates more capital than the other increases its home market size, improves its terms of trade, and lowers its relative consumption price index, because trade costs drive a wedge in between relative producer and consumption price indices. Both effects in turn tend to increase its marginal revenue product of capital relative to the other country (divergence forces), while factor substitution diminishes its marginal revenue product of capital (convergence force). Reducing trade costs decreases the wedge and weakens the divergence forces, while the convergence force is unaffected. Hence, divergence is more likely with higher rather than lower trade costs.     

The Relationship Between Growth,Total Investment and Inward FDI: Evidence from Time Series Data

This paper explores the causal relationship between growth, total investment and inward FDI in 47 countries. Using error‐correction model, the significance, direction and sign of long‐run and short‐run causal effects between GDP, capital stock and FDI stock are investigated. The miscellaneous results echo the divergent theoretical viewpoints and the mixed empirical results of previous works. However, the evidence found in this study suggests that there are differences in growth mechanism between developed and developing countries, between various developing regions, and between oil‐exporting and non‐oil‐exporting countries. The main policy implication is that capital investment is essential for growth while FDI’s effect is uncertain in developing countries. FDI as well as total investment enhances growth only under some conditions.     

Investment subsidies and redistributive capital income taxation in a neoclassical growth model

How do investment subsidies bear on pure redistribution when coupled with capital income taxes? In a heterogeneous agent, neoclassical growth framework it is found that on impact, with no optimizing behavior, investment subsidies are good for growth but bad for redistribution. The opposite holds for capital income taxes. But when the government acts as a Stackelberg leader vis-à-vis the private sector (the follower), the optimal feedback policy is by construction time-consistent and implies that in a long-run optimum the tax scheme does not distort accumulation. This holds regardless of social preferences. For the feedback Stackelberg equilibrium I find that (pure) redistribution can go either way and capital income taxes are nonzero in the long-run, time-consistent optimum, depending on the social weight of those who receive redistributive transfers, the distribution of pretax factor incomes, and the intertemporal elasticity of substitution. It is argued that investment subsidies may be an important indirect tool for redistribution, and may allow for the separation of “efficiency” and “equity” concerns.     

Social capital, innovation and growth: Evidence from Europe

This paper investigates the interplay between social capital, innovation and per capita income growth in the European Union. We model and identify innovation as an important mechanism that transforms social capital into higher income levels. In an empirical investigation of 102 European regions in the period 1990-2002, we show that higher innovation performance is conducive to per capita income growth and that social capital affects this growth indirectly by fostering innovation. Our estimates suggest that there is no direct role for social capital to foster per capita income growth in our sample of European Union countries.