Polluting Non-Renewable Resources and Growth

In an endogenous growth model with human capital accumulation, we introduce non-renewable resources which cause flow pollution problems. In this set-up the negative external effect of pollution on productivity does not cause any distortions in the economy: The market economy will achieve the optimal extraction and growth rates. Consequently, emission taxes are unnecessary and, when introduced, will have no effect on the economy. The more important is the negative pollution externality, the larger will be the optimal long-run growth rate (which may be either positive or negative). In the case of a positive human capital externality, consumption in the market economy may approach zero in the long run, although positive consumption growth is socially optimal. Growth-enhancing policies do not necessarily cause a larger drain in the resource stock.     

Tests of the “convergence hypothesis”: Some further results

The article presents new tests of the convergence hypothesis. It first analyzes the unconditional pattern of growth of human and physical capital (conventionally measured by an inventory method) and shows that these tests do support the hypothesis that domestic inputs of poor countries appear to be catching up with those of rich countries. On the other hand, when one analyzes the pattern of growth of physical capital and Solow residual, then one is led to reject the convergence theory. Building on this discrepancy, I demonstrate that the poor countries have failed to catch up with rich ones because the progress that they have achieved in educating their workers (which is evidenced in the convergence of domestic inputs) is not sufficient to compensate for their poor endowment in the knowledge on which the education of workers stands.     

Externalities of investment and endogenous growth: theory and time series evidence

In the paper we present and estimate an endogenous growth model in which sustained per capita growth is the result of positive externalities of investment in physical capital. In contrast to the usual assumption that investment raises physical capital and, as a byproduct, a stock of knowledge one for one, we suppose a different framework. So, we treat physical and human capital as two distinct variables and underline the importance of the stock of knowledge per physical capital as to the growth performance of countries. Estimation of that model for France, Germany and Japan shows that it is compatible with empirical data. For Great Britain the model performs poor and for the USA it does not produce reasonable outcomes at all. One conclusion we draw from our studies is that an endogenous growth model with positive externalities of investment is of empirical relevance. However, the growth process is also determined by country specific factors such that cross-countries studies should be considered with some care.     

Growth Effects of EU Membership: The Case of East Germany

The East German experience after unification in 1990 probably comes close to what might be called a controlled experiment for assessing the growth effects of EU membership. This article uses an open-economy neoclassical growth model as a measure of reference against which the actual performance of the East German economy can be evaluated. With no obvious differences in institutions and technology, and with physical capital accumulation in East Germany exceeding the West German rate, differences in human capital remain as the major reason for differences between the theoretical and the actual East German growth rate. Simulation results suggest that East Germany's stock of human capital per worker reaches only about one third of the West Germany level. The main lesson from the East German experience for other EU accession countries is that catching up may come to a halt below the EU average, even under pretty favorable institutional and financial conditions.     

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.     

人力资本向下兼容性及其对跨国收入水平核算的意义

本文将人力资本的向下兼容性考虑到人力资本总量的度量当中,提出了一种比传统人力资本加总方法更加一般化的方法。利用本文得到的人力资本总量,我们还进行了跨国收入水平核算。与Klenow和Rodriguez Clare( 1 997)、Hall和Jones( 1 999)以及近几年研究的主要结论相反,本文的结论是人力资本和物质资本对于跨国收入差异的贡献与生产率的贡献相比是主要的。本文的贡献主要有两方面,一是提出了一种更加一般化的人力资本加总方法,二是使我们对造成跨国收入巨大差异原因的认识又回到了Mankiw ,RomerandWeil( 1 992 )的著名论断,从而回应了Klenow和Rodriguez Clare( 1 997)、Hall和Jones( 1 999)以及近几年研究对Mankiw ,RomerandWeil ( 1 992 )的批评,有力地支持了“新古典复兴”。     

Reexamining the interaction between innovation and capital accumulation

In endogenous growth models with innovation and capital accumulation Arnold [J. Macroeconomics 20 (1998) 189] and Blackburn et al. [J. Macroeconomics 22 (2000) 81] show that long-run growth of per capita income is independent of innovation activities; it is solely determined by preferences and the human capital accumulation technology. As a result, government policies do not affect long-run growth. This paper develops an endogenous growth model with innovation and (physical and human) capital accumulation to show that long-run growth depends on both innovation and capital accumulation technologies as well as on preferences and that government taxes and subsidies can have effects on the long-run growth rate.     

Endogenous Growth,Taxes and Government Spending: Theory and Evidence*

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical investigation of the simultaneous effects of taxes and government spending on long‐run economic growth in an endogenous growth framework. A two‐sector model is considered: one sector produces physical output and the other produces human capital. Government expenditure is divided into several categories, and several types of taxes are included. The property tax is especially interesting because it is a major source of revenue for local government. The theoretical model is estimated using annual panel data from North Carolina counties. This study finds that state‐level fiscal policies affect economic growth but county‐level fiscal policies do not.     

人力资本门槛、创新互动能力与低发展陷阱——对1990年以来中国地区经济差距的实证检验

1990年以来,中国各地区经济差距不断扩大现象引起理论界的广泛关注。内生增长理论认为,原因可能在于落后地区的低人力资本禀赋难以同本地创新形成良性互动,导致经济增长速度始终囿于低发展陷阱。中国地区数据的实证结果表明,中等层次人力资本是创新经济增长的主要驱动要素,同一人力资本门槛内部的相近地区经济增长率基本保持均衡。如果外生政策变量不诱导落后地区跨越人力资本门槛,这类地区的低发展均衡状态将很难被突破。因此,在增加物质资本投入的同时突出人力资本建设,对平衡中国各地区经济增长具有很强的政策意义。     

WHAT MAKES INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL FLOWS PROMOTE ECONOMIC GROWTH? AN INTERNATIONAL CROSS‐COUNTRY ANALYSIS

This paper re‐examines the relationship between international capital flows and economic growth within the context of various ‘conditional factors’ that possibly have the potential to influence such relationships. It achieves this by employing panel data for 80 countries that cover 1976–2007. International capital inflow is broken down into foreign direct investments (FDI) and foreign portfolio investments (FPI). We find interesting evidence that only FDI has a positive effect on growth and that FPI has an unfavorable, if not negative, effect on growth. The conditional variables of banking liberalization, high‐income level, twin crises, lower corruption, and human capital mitigate the positive impacts of FDI on growth. In contrast, the middle‐income level and good shareholder protection have a positive effect. As concerns FPI, the level of financial liberalization, being in a Latin American region, the wealth of countries, and market governance all influence the way that FPI affects growth, whereas the conditional variables of twin crises and human capital do not influence the effect of FPI on economic growth.     

Externalities,Productivity and Sustained Growth

This paper shows that the existence of endogenous growth, in the closed‐form solution, in a single sector economy with a convex technology in an overlapping generations (OLG) framework, which attempts to fill the current gap in endogenous growth theory. It finds there is an unbounded growth when trade, in the form of knowledge spillover, affects labor productivity through the formation of human capital with self‐education that is not an independent sector but builds the human capital here. This conclusion holds even though there is the “limited income” expressed as the “non‐increasing wage/investment ratio” for each generation. Moreover, it shows the convergence of growth rates for each country, which is unique and constant, while the growth rate per capita negatively relates with each country's population growth rate. Also, there is no “poverty trap” with the introduction of externalities that is different from existing literature.     

科技型中小企业R&D投资、人力资本投资与企业成长路径的关系

基于科技型中小企业成长的特点,将人力资本与技术资本涵盖于知识资本的范畴,在动态演化的理论框架中,构建了影响科技型中小企业演化路径的指标体系,并首次运用混合截面数据对科技型中小企业知识资本与企业演化路径的关系进行了实证研究。研究表明：在满足一定条件下,人力资本与企业成长路径变迁之间呈正相关关系,其中,研发人员比例具有显著的经济意义。同时,R&D投入对企业倾向于跳跃式突变成长有显著的正向影响,而非R&D投入与其存在负相关关系,但在控制了行业特征之后,传统制造业R&D投入效果较高科技行业更为显著。这一结果从另一侧面说明了行业特征对企业演化路径和策略选择的重要性。另外,我国科技型中小企业在成长路径选择中不存在区域比较优势。     

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE,HUMAN CAPITAL STRUCTURE,AND MULTIPLE GROWTH PATHS*

This paper presents a theoretical model to analyze the effects of technology change on growth rates of income and human capital in the uncertain environments of technology. The uncertainty comes from two sources: the possibility of a technology advance and the characteristics of new technologies. We set up an overlapping generations model in which young agents invest in both width and depth of human capital in order to adopt new technologies. The model develops explicitly the micro‐mechanism of the role of human capital in adopting new technologies as well as that of the process of human capital production in the uncertain environments. In our model, a higher level of width of human capital relative to the level of depth leads one country to a higher growth path. We also show that an economy can have different growth paths depending on the initial structure of human capital and the uncertainty about the nature of new technologies. In particular, new technologies with more uncertain characteristics may adversely affect human capital accumulation and income growth, leading the economy to a low growth trap.     

CAPITAL AGGREGATION IN THE PRESENCE OF OBSOLESCENCE-INDUCING TECHNICAL CHANGE

The major question addressed is the treatment of capital embodied technical progress. Should Obsolescence be deducted to calculate a net stock, or should quality adjustments be made in each vintage of new capital, or both, or neither? In order to estimate the contribution of new investment to growth it is necessary to use a capital stock where different vintages are weighted in proportion to their marginal products. The commonly used gross capital measures do not do this, because they do not allow for the higher marginal product of more modern capital. Such an allowance for capital embodied technical progress can be made either by quality adjusting new capital or by incorporating obsolescence into the valuation of the old capital (but not both). However, even if new capital incorporates an allowance for improved quality, it will still be necessary to revalue the old capital. Frequently, a reasonable approximation to the net capital stock results from a linear decline in quasi-rents and can be approximated by published estimates of the stock of capital net of straight line depreciation. Steady technical progress will not lead to the commonly used exponential service decline functions. To avoid overestimating the return to investment when technology changes it will be necessary to use information on capital embodied technical change to revalue old capital, rather than to change the price indices for new capital.     

Culture and human capital in a two-sector endogenous growth model

Recent literature in the field of cultural economics highlights a possible inversion in the usual causality relation (from economic growth to culture) and points out that culture may represent an important driver of economic growth. By viewing culture in line with Throsby’s (2001) definition of cultural capital (i.e., an asset of tangible and intangible cultural expressions), in this article we analyze one possible channel through which culture may positively affect economic growth, namely the existence of a relationship of complementarity between cultural and human capital investments. Using a two-sector endogenous growth model, we find that in the long run a higher growth rate of real per-capita income can be attained the more cultural and human capital investments are complementary for each other in the process leading to agents’ skill acquisition. We also analyze the conditions under which an increase of the cultural capital share in total GDP can be conducive to a rise of real per-capita income.     

Measuring Aggregate Human Capital

Weconstruct a set of human capital indexes for the states of theUnited States for each census year starting in 1940. To do so,we propose a new methodology for the construction of index numbersin panel data sets. Our method is based on an optimal approachby which we choose the ``best' set of index numbers by minimizingthe expected estimation error subject to some research constraints.Some of the empirical findings are that the stock of human capitalin the United States grew twice as rapidly as the average yearsof schooling and that human capital inequality across stateswent up during the 1980s (while the dispersion of schooling actuallyfell). We conclude that using the average years of schoolingfor the empirical study of existing growth models may be misleading.     

The role of human capital and innovation in economic development: evidence from post-Malthusian Prussia

The effect of human capital on growth involves multiple channels. On the one hand, an increase in human capital directly affects economic growth by enhancing labor productivity in production. On the other hand, human capital is an important input into R&D and therefore increases labor productivity indirectly by accelerating technological change. In addition, different types of human capital such as basic and higher education or training-on-the-job might play different roles in both production and innovation activities. We merge individual data on valuable patents granted in Prussia in the late nineteenth-century with county-level data on literacy, craftsmanship, secondary schooling, and income tax revenues to explore the complex relationship between various types of human capital, innovation, and income. We find that the Second Industrial Revolution can be seen as a transition period when it comes to the role of human capital. As in the preceding First Industrial Revolution, “useful knowledge” embodied in master craftsmen was related to innovation, especially of independent inventors. As in the subsequent twentieth century, the quality of basic education was associated with both workers’ productivity and firms’ R&D processes. In a final step, we show that literacy had also a negative effect on fertility which increased with innovation. In general, our findings support the notion that the accumulation of basic human capital was crucial for the transition to modern economic growth.     

Should Education be Publicly Provided?

This study suggests that a subsidy in the form of public provision has the potential to be the most efficient educational policy because it stimulates investment in human capital, which would otherwise be inefficiently low because of distortionary income taxation and possible external benefits. Moreover, it can potentially do this without grossly distorting the mix of investments in human capital. Other policies do not have the potential to achieve both these ends without introducing additional, perhaps overwhelming, problems. Thus public provision of education appears to provide incentives for human capital accumulation which are more efficient than any other feasible policy.     

社会资本、人力资本与经济增长

笔者采用截面数据回归分析法及时间序列数据协整分析法对中国社会资本的不同维度——信任和民间组织与人力资本、经济增长的关系进行实证研究。结果表明,我国社会资本通过影响人力资本而影响经济增长,人力资本是我国社会资本作用于经济增长的机制之一。     

Endogenous Persistent Occupations and Inequality

The paper argues that human capital is the leading force determining inequality persistence. We show that, in a context of a perfect capital market where agents inherit human capital and wealth, it is the inherited human capital level that determines agents' occupational choice and investment. The critical assumption is that the entrepreneurial activity is of increasing returns to scale. This creates a higher profile of revenue for entrepreneurs. Although every agent can choose to become an entrepreneur, and although there is no barrier of entry in entrepreneurship, only those who receive a relatively higher human capital will do so. Agents whose inherited human capital is lower than the human capital threshold, endogenously determined, are better off becoming workers. Even in the context of a perfect capital market, which allows less endowed agents to borrow and invest in education, it turns out that the agents who inherit a low level of human capital bear a greater utility cost in their education investment. So they are better off investing less in education, lending their savings, and working as workers. As a result, agents' occupational choice depends on the intergenerational transmission of human capital. In the long run, the population is polarized into the rich entrepreneurs and the poor workers, magnifying inequality persistence in human capital level and revenue.