Demographic change,human capital,and economic growth in Korea

We construct a measure of human capital using micro datasets on labor composition of age, gender, education, and wage rate and analyze its role in economic growth for the Korean economy. Over the past three decades, human capital has grown steadily at about 1% per year, contrasting to a continuously declining trend of total work-hours. This growth has been driven by the rise of better-educated baby-boom cohorts. A growth accounting exercise shows that human capital contributes significantly to economic growth; it accounted for 0.5% points of annual GDP growth over the period. Human capital is projected to remain a major growth factor over the next two decades as the increase in educational attainment continues. Increased employment rate of elderly or female workers reduces the aggregate human capital growth while increasing the available labor. Polices to improve human capital of female or elderly workers help to increase aggregate human capital growth.     

Staple food price instability and structural change: Indonesian experience

This paper argues that structural change, shifting labor from agriculture to manufacturing is critically dependent on staple food price stability. Historical experience shows that East Asia achieved such stability and thus experienced rapid growth in manufacturing and rapid structural change. Parts of Southeast Asia have also experienced food price stability and structural change. A case study of Indonesia’s experience supports these ideas.     

Land rental market, off-farm employment and agricultural production in Southeast China: A plot-level case study

This paper performs a plot-level analysis of the impact of land rental market participation and off-farm employment on land investment, input use, and rice yields for 215 plots cultivated by 52 households in three villages in Northeast Jiangxi Province. Our findings show that households that rent extra land are relatively more productive, but contradict results of earlier studies which found that tenure status of plots affects the level of land investments. We further find that off-farm employment does not significantly affect rice yields. This result contradicts those of earlier studies which found that the negative lost-labor effect of off-farm employment dominates the positive income effect. Another novel finding is that people working locally off-farm tend to switch from green manure planting towards the use of organic manure on their rice plots. We conclude that policies that will further stimulate the development of land rental markets, which is still in its infancy, can contribute significantly to higher rice production in Southeast China. Another implication of our results is that worries about the negative impact that the continuously growing off-farm employment may have on China's goal to remain self-sufficient in grain production are less relevant at the moment for the region examined in our study.     

Sources of Growth and Structural Change in the Vietnamese Economy, 1996–2003: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis*

We use the MONASH‐VN model, a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the Vietnamese economy, to investigate Vietnam's rapid growth and structural change over the period 1996 to 2003. We do this in two steps. First, we estimate changes in variables representing production technologies, consumer preferences, government policy and other structural features of the economy. Movements in these structural and policy variables are then used to explain the recent history of Vietnam's rapid growth and structural change. We find the most important sources of growth and change to be technical improvements, favorable shifts in foreign demand for Vietnamese goods and employment growth. Other important factors include movement in household preferences away from primary products and towards manufactures and services, expansion in agricultural land supply, and tax reform.     

Engels’ pause: Technical change, capital accumulation, and inequality in the british industrial revolution

The paper reviews the macroeconomic data describing the British economy from 1760 to 1913 and shows that it passed through a two stage evolution of inequality. In the first half of the 19th century, the real wage stagnated while output per worker expanded. The profit rate doubled and the share of profits in national income expanded at the expense of labour and land. After the middle of the 19th century, real wages began to grow in line with productivity, and the profit rate and factor shares stabilized. An integrated model of growth and distribution is developed to explain these trends. The model includes an aggregate production function that explains the distribution of income, while a savings function in which savings depended on property income governs accumulation. Simulations with the model show that technical progress was the prime mover behind the industrial revolution. Capital accumulation was a necessary complement. The surge in inequality was intrinsic to the growth process: technical change increased the demand for capital and raised the profit rate and capital’s share. The rise in profits, in turn, sustained the industrial revolution by financing the necessary capital accumulation. After the middle of the 19th century, accumulation had caught up with the requirements of technology and wages rose in line with productivity.     

The dis-incentive effects of food aid and agricultural policies on local land allocation in developing countries: The case of Malawi

Food aid and other agricultural policies can create incentives/disincentives in local agricultural production. This paper provides empirical evidence on the disincentive effects of both food aid and some agricultural policies in Malawi. In contrast to previous studies, this paper analyses the impact of food aid on the proportion of land allocated to cereal crops and the interplay of both food aid and other agricultural policies in creating disincentive effects. Data were analysed using the logit transformation regression. It was found that, in addition to the disincentive effects of food aid, agricultural policies including price controls and sustained reliance on imported cereals were also undermining incentives to sustain local agricultural production. Therefore, both food aid and agricultural price policies need to be aligned to farmers' incentives to optimcally allocate land to food production.     

Climate change,urban settlements and quality of life: The case of the Southern African Development Community region

Climate change has become a major national, regional and international problem cutting across developed and developing countries alike. Within the developing world, the effects of climate change have been devastating; this has caused enormous human suffering. The Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional economic block of 15 countries, has been badly ravaged by the vagaries of climate change. The urban areas in particular appear to have been very badly impacted as flooding, drought, pollution and deforestation have become endemic. The impacts of climate change have triggered human suffering of immense magnitude, especially in areas occupied by the marginalised. This article is based on desk research and, using qualitative analysis, examines the impact of climate change on SADC countries, considers initiatives that the regional block has in place in efforts to mitigate the human suffering experienced as a consequence of the negative impact of climate change and, finally, considers a way forward.     

The effect of foreign competition on UK employment and wages: Evidence from firm-level panel data

The Effect of Foreign Competition on UK Employment and Wages: Evidence from Firm-Level Panel Data. —This paper contributes to the sparse empirical literature on the effects of foreign competition on domestic employment and wages. The authors estimate a structural labour demand equation on UK firm-level panel data between 1982 and 1989 and several wage equations. When they restrict the sample to the manufacturing sector only, they find for the unionized firms that foreign competition has a negative effect on both wages and on employment. However, when UK manufacturing firms face only a few rivals, foreign competition has a positive effect on wages, but no effect on employment.     

The double dividend of agricultural trade liberalization: Consistency between national food security and gains from trade

National food security is one of the main justifications for opposition to agricultural trade liberalization in Japan. Opponents of liberalization argue that because food crop production is subject to high variability, over-reliance on imports would be risky. To assess the risks to Japan with and without trade liberalization, we conducted Monte Carlo simulations of productivity shocks within a computable general equilibrium model for the four crops of greatest significance in the Japanese diet – rice, wheat, maize, and oilseed. Our results indicate that productivity shocks for rice and maize have a substantial effect on welfare. Liberalizing trade for these crops would both raise expected welfare and reduce welfare fluctuations. This double dividend was forecast even when we limited the simulation to cases of extremely poor crop yields in Japan's major source countries.     

Trade Opening,Fiscal Reforms,Poverty, and Inequality: A CGE Analysis for Bangladesh

We assess the short‐ and long‐run impacts of tariff reform policies on Bangladeshi households' poverty and income distribution by developing an 86‐sector, four‐factor, and nine‐household‐group computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The main findings are that the complete removal of tariffs leads to a decrease in overall poverty with rich household groups in a relatively better position. In the short run poverty incidence increases for rural landless, urban illiterate, and low‐educated household groups whereas rural large farmer and urban medium household groups enjoy improvements in all poverty indicators. In terms of income distribution, trade liberalization enhances inequality slightly, but there is a tendency towards more equitable distribution in the long run. The choice of a fiscal compensatory mechanism with consumption tax is likely to play a negative role in terms of poverty and inequality in the short run; however, interestingly, the results are pro‐poor in the long run.     

The Exchange Rate Macroeconomic Balance Approach: New Methodology and Results for the Euro,the Dollar,the Yen and the Pound Sterling

This paper presents an extension of the macroeconomic exchange rate balance approach. This extension comprises two new aspects. Firstly, it is based on a multinational framework which allows for macroeconomic linkages between countries. Secondly, it uses a procedure that does not require a full modeling of the world economy to derive a consistent set of equilibrium exchange rates. The findings reveal that, in 2001, the dollar was overvalued against the euro and the yen. The paper also shows that this result depends heavily on the chosen notion of current account sustainability.     

Terms of trade, catch-up, and home-market effect: The example of Japan

This paper explores theoretically and empirically the medium- and long-run relation of the terms of trade (ratio of traded goods prices) and economic growth of a pair of countries—one of which experiences a major catch-up process towards the other. Two theoretical interdependencies between the terms of trade and economic growth are offered: the home-market effect and the productivity-shock effect. These two effects are tested against each other in a cointegration analysis on data for Japan and the US from 1971 until 1997. Income is cointegrated with the terms of trade. The relevant empirical channel is the home-market effect. However, financial-market effects appear also to be relevant. J. Japanese Int. Economies 21 (4) (2007) 470–488.     

工业企业社会责任、市场关注与绿色技术创新——基于企业规模的调节作用

为探究工业企业社会责任、市场关注度、企业规模与绿色技术创新的内在联系,基于2013—2020年A股上市的工业企业面板数据进行分析,研究结果显示,工业企业社会责任对绿色技术创新的影响存在正向效应,其中市场关注度发挥正向中介效应,企业规模能够强化企业社会责任对绿色技术创新的促进作用,为促进工业企业绿色技术创新提供新的视角和经验证据,也为“双碳”目标的实现提供一定的政策启示。     

Commercialization as exogenous shocks: The effect of the soybean trade and migration in Manchurian villages, 1895–1934

The effects of commercialization and migration in traditional agrarian economies such as China's during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been a subject of ferocious debate. Using data from Manchuria on soybean cultivation and exports, we employ difference-in-differences and instrumental variable approaches to demonstrate a significantly positive relationship between growing soybeans for export and the returns to migration. Those who migrated to Manchuria in response to high market prices, and to villages more suitable for cultivating soy prospered most; they owned approximately two-thirds more of the arable land and one-third more of houses than those who failed to do so. Evidence suggests that the positive welfare effect of commercialization-cum-migration was confined not only to the rich, who seek to relieve the “land constraint” at home, but possibly also to the poor.