TFP growth slowdown and the Japanese labor market in the 1990s

Unemployment in Japan nearly tripled during the 1990s. Underlying this upsurge lie an increase in the probability of workers to lose their jobs and a decrease in the probability that the unemployed find jobs. This paper analyzes the sources responsible for these labor market changes in Japan in the decade of the 1990s. We build, calibrate, and simulate a neo-classical growth model with search frictions in the labor market. Using actual TFP data, the model is able to reproduce the path of unemployment and the job flows, as well as that of output. We find it to be the decrease in productivity, coupled with the reduction in hours worked, which curtails the profits of firms, inducing a drop in employment and an increase in unemployment.     

长城换标：扎根本土国际化——访中国长城计算机深圳股份有限公司总裁周庚申

更换品牌标识,几乎成为中国企业国际化的代名词。长城显示器的换标与国际化思路却给了我们以另类思考近近几年,许多中国企业频频“变脸”,将使用已久的中文品牌更换为英文标识。2006年6月5日,中国长城计算机深圳股份有限公司在京宣布长城显示器启用“GreatWall”品牌新标识,取代已经沿用了多年的产品品牌“金长城”,并在新标识的统领下,向国内、国际市场全面推出其主打产品——宽屏液晶显示器。长城显示器在国内市场耕耘了近二十年,“金长城”也已成为中国显示器行业的知名品牌。放弃早已被市场认知和熟悉的品牌标识,企业要冒极大的传播风…     

齐长城下的石寨人家——孝里镇方峪村

这是一处让人回味无穷的地方，走进方峪村，仿佛走进一个尘封已久的故园.     

Carting in the Northern Province: Structural and geographical change

Throughout the world rural transportation is grossly underresearched. In southern Africa the nature of transport in country areas is only beginning to be studied. Indications are that pre-industrial forms have persisted despite changed economic and social conditions, and that these should be seen as a cost-effective alternative under certain socio-economic conditions of transition to a modern economy. As also in other places, in the Northern Province donkey carting has adapted its socio-economic and technological structure to new conditions; these changes have occurred at a different pace in different localities. The prime aim of the research is to ascertain the degree to which deliberate alterations in the geography of carting have been a successful strategy for the survival of carters. The finding that emerges from this study is that low-technology transport has persisted despite the introduction of modern means of transport and tarred roads, but that it is ignored and dismissed because it falls outside the formal purview of the state.     

Efficiency change and growth in productivity: the Asian growth experience

This paper focuses on identifying the sources of productivity growth in ten Asian economies including China, Japan, the NIEs and the ASEAN-4. We calculate productivity growth and its components using distance-function-based Malmquist productivity indexes following Färe, Grosskopf, Norris, and Zhang (1994a). Hong Kong and Singapore are found to have the capabilities to shift the grand frontier of the APEC economies. But the productivity divergence might have occurred since the 70’s. The FDI contributes to the Asian growth either through catching-up or through technological innovations when a sufficient learning capacity is available in the host economy.     

On the puzzling slowdown of wage and productivity growth in Taiwan: evidence from a comparison with South Korea

Since the early 2000s, the growth rate of real wages in Taiwan has been very low, even negative for high‐skilled workers. This paper sheds light on the potential causes of this puzzling development through a comparison of Taiwan's performance with that of South Korea. In many dimensions, most notably wages and labour productivity, both economies developed quite similarly between 1995 and 2001–02, but diverged thereafter. We relate the development of wages and labour productivity in the two economies to sectoral structural change and to sectoral differences in labour productivity growth, skills upgrading, and foreign trade.     

Real money balances and the productivity growth slowdown: The U.S. manufacturing sector, 1955–81

Summary and Conclusions The model of labor productivity for the U.S. manufacturing sector was developed in this paper within the context of a three-input production function where time entered as a proxy for technical change. The growth rate of labor productivity was found equal to the share-weighted contributions from growth in the capital-labor ratio, changes in the composition of the capital stock, growth in the money-labor ratio, and total factor productivity.The empirical results of this research yield three important conclusions. First, labor productivity growth has suffered a continuous and increasing retardation, the most severe of which occurred in the newly-examined 1978–81 time period. Second, real money balances were shown to have contributed to this slowdown in the same direction as, but somewhat less than, the contributions of either the capital-labor ratio or changes in the composition of the capital stock. Thirdly, a deletion of the monetary effect from the analysis results in an overestimation of the importance to productivity growth and its slowdown of both the capital-labor and the composition effect.Based upon these main empirical results, this study concludes that the real money balances held by firms in the U.S. manufacturing sector have played a non-passive role in that sector's labor productivity growth slowdown.This paper is part of the author's doctoral dissertation, written at West Virginia University.     

China's Great Ascendancy and structural risks: consequences of asymmetric market liberalisation

China's great ascendancy from a poor agrarian economy to an economic superpower is unprecedented. But in the process, structural imbalances, resource inefficiency, and income inequality worsened rapidly. It is argued that the coexistence of China's extraordinary growth and serious structural risks are two sides of the same coin: asymmetric liberalisation of product and factor markets. Distortions in markets for labour, capital, land, energy, and the environment lower production costs, increase corporate profits, raise investment returns, improve the international competitiveness of Chinese goods, and therefore lift China's growth. But they also depress consumption. China needs to accelerate factor market liberalisation in order to complete the transition to a market economy and to lock the economy onto a more sustainable path.     

最沧桑的地方—城子崖遗址 VS 齐长城

所谓老济南,其实很难说是老到哪一天,它的上限在哪里?多少人一直在孜孜以求.在堪称悠久且闻名于世的众多历史文化遗迹中,有两个地方是我们绕不过的:一是有着近五千年历史的城子崖遗址,一是比秦长城还早300多年的齐长城.     

Total factor productivity growth and the productivity slowdown in the west german industrial sector, 1970-1981

Zusammenfassung Das Wachstum der Totalfaktorproduktivit?t und die Produktivit?tsverlangsamung in der westdeutschen Industrie 1970-1981. -Die Produktivit?tsentwicklung der westdeutschen Industrie in den 70er Jahren wird im Rahmen einer einfachen Wachstumszerlegung untersucht. Für das Jahrzehnt insgesamt zeigt sich, da? die Totalfaktorproduktivit?t oder das “esidual”chstum und die Substitution zwischen Kapital und Arbeit zu ungef?hr gleichen Teilen zur Erh?hung der Pro-Kopf-Produktion beigetragen haben. W?hrend die Totalfaktorproduktivit?t mit einer durchschnittlichen Jahresrate von 2,5 vH zunahm, verringerte sich die Kapitalproduktivit?t im Laufe der gesamten Periode. Hinzu kommt, da? die Kapitalausstattung pro Kopf weiterhin anstieg, w?hrend die Besch?ftigung im Industriesektor zurückging. Mit anderen Worten: Die Faktorsubstitution hat keine Gewinne in Form zus?tzlicher Besch?ftigung erbracht.

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Résumé Croissance de la productivité totale des facteurs et l’affaiblissement de la productivité dans le secteur industriel ouest-allemand dans la période 1970-1981. -La performance productive du secteur industriel ouest-allemand pendant les années soixante-dix est analysée dans le cadre simple de ?growth accounting?. Pour la décade entière, l’auteur argue que la productivité totale des facteurs ou la croissance ?résiduelle? et la substitution capital/main-d’oeuvre expliquent la croissance d’output par tête plus ou moins à parts égales. Pendant que la productivité totale des facteurs s’augmenta au taux annuel de 2,5 p.c., la productivité du capital tomba pendant la période entière. De plus, le capital par tête continua d’augmenter pendant que l’emploi industriel tomba. En d’autres mots, la substitution des facteurs n’a pas généré des gains mesurés en termes d’emploi additionnel.

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Resumen El crecimiento de la productividad total de los factures y la aminoración de la productividad en el sector industrial de Alemania Occidental, 1970-1981. -El rendimiento productivo del sector industrial de Alemania Occidental en los anos setenta es analizado en el marco de ?growth accounting?. Tomando la década entera la sugerencia que se dériva es que a la productividad total de los factures o crecimiento ?residual? y a la sustitución de capital y trabajo se les atribuye el crecimiento per capita en proporciones casi iguales. Mientras que la productividad total de los factores aumentó a una tasa anual media del 2,5 %, la productividad del capital disminuyó durante todo el período. Además, el capital per cápita continuó aumentando mientras que el empleo industrial disminuyó. En otras palabras, la sustitución de factores no generó beneficios en términos de empleo adicional.

     

China's Trade Liberalization and Structural Adjustments for the World Economy

While China's open-door policy has benefited the world economy, there are anxieties, both in China and abroad, about increased competition and the cost of dramatic adjustments. This paper attempts to analyse the implications of China's trade reform for structural change and welfare in China and the rest of the world. Three sets of experiments are implemented with the GATP model. The study finds that China is the biggest gainer from its own liberalization, its labour-intensive sector will expand but other sectors, including agriculture will contract. The structural adjustment for other countries is likely to be concentrated on the clothing sector. But the economies which experience the biggest adjustments are also the biggest gainers. Multilateral trade liberalization, such as the APEC free trade process, increases the gain both for the rest of the world and for China.     

Structural change in China: the role of factor market distortions

This paper proposes a systematic accounting framework to decompose the reallocation of labour out of agriculture into factor market distortions and market-driven forces. The findings are twofold. First, the removal of factor market distortions is a dominant driving force of the structural change in China in the last decades, which contributes 50.52%, and market-driven forces account for the rest 49.48%. Second, the contribution of market-driven forces has been increasing with the deepening of market-oriented reforms, while the impact of the removal of factor market distortions has been decreasing especially along with the slowdown of labour market reforms after China joined the WTO in 2001. The results imply that further reforms that aim at correcting factor market distortions could still be an important impetus of structural change in the future.     

Forecasting China's economic growth and inflation

Although macroeconomic forecasting forms an integral part of the policymaking process, there has been a serious lack of rigorous and systematic research in the evaluation of out-of-sample model-based forecasts of China's real GDP growth and CPI inflation. This paper fills this research gap by providing a replicable forecasting model that beats a host of other competing models when measured by root mean square errors, especially over long-run forecast horizons. The model is shown to be capable of predicting turning points and to be usable for policy analysis under different scenarios. We find that M2 supply, rather than interest rates, is a key variable for forecasting macroeconomic variables. Annual GDP growth for the next five years is predicted to be close to the 6.5% official target and a future GDP growth path is predicted to be of L-shape rather than U-shape.     

The long-run effects of the imperial bureaucracy: Two tales along the Great Wall of Ming China

This article examines the long-term effects of the administrative system using the Great Wall as a geographical discontinuity. Using town-level nighttime light luminosity per capita as a measure of economic development, we find that today, luminosity per capita is significantly and robustly higher in towns south of the Great Wall than in those north of it. The holding of resource allocation authority by the administrative hierarchy and the uniform enforcement of justice by hierarchy officials were advantageous for city building and judicial cross-territory enforceability on the south side of the great wall, which had a long-term impact on the imperial bureaucracy.     

Japan's economic slowdown and its global implications: a review of the economic modelling

Despite its role as a driver of global economic growth through the 1970s, in recent decades the rise of China has seen the international importance of Japan's economic performance recede from the public discourse. This is notwithstanding its continuing key role as economic partner to both industrial and developing countries and changes in its economic performance that would otherwise be a matter for global concern. In particular, the tendency for the Japanese economy and its external trade to stagnate not only has immediate consequences for global performance but also foreshadows a path to industrial transition for other key Asian economies. This paper reviews quantitative studies of Japan's performance. It identifies a paucity of results addressing global implications and suggests new research in this direction.     

Structural change in federal spending and deficits: Legislative and cyclical influences

This paper analyzes the behavior of federal expenditures and budget deficits since 1955. It is found that growth in these series is well described by two simple step functions allowing for three discrete increases in the means of the variables. When adjusted for the changes in means, both series are stationary with no significant time trend. It is found that the increases in means are associated with government attempts to implement countercyclical fiscal policy during recessions. Also, the increases in means coincide well with specific legislative acts which increased the budgetary power of individual members of Congress and ended the ability of the president to use impoundment as a substitute for a line-item veto.     

Climate change impacts on China's agriculture: The responses from market and trade

China's food security has been facing several challenges, which are likely to be worsened due to climate change. The purpose of this paper is to provide an evidence on the impacts of climate change on China's agriculture, with particular attention to the market and trade responses. Using projected crop yield changes for China and its' main trading partners under changing climate, we employ an agricultural partial equilibrium model (CAPSiM) and a linked national and global equilibrium model (CAPSiM-GTAP) to assess the impacts on food production, price, trade and self-sufficiency of China. Our results show that climate change will have significant effects on crop production though with large differences among crops. Under the worst climate change scenario RCP 8.5, wheat yield in China is projected to decline by 9.4% by 2050, which is the biggest yield reduction among the crops. However, the market can also respond to the climate change, as farmers can change inputs in response to reduced yields and rising prices. As a result, production losses for most crops are dampened. For example, wheat production loss under RCP8.5 reduces to only 4.3% due to market response. The adverse impacts on crop production will be further reduced after accounting for the trade response as farmers adjust production to much higher prices in the more severely affected countries. The paper concludes that we need to learn more from farmers who optimize their production decisions in response to the market and trade signals during climate change. A major policy implication is that policymakers need to mainstream the market and trade responses into national plans for climate adaptation.     

国际收支失衡下的中国货币政策——基于结构型VAR的经验研究

本文采用结构型VAR模型,旨在揭示中国国际收支失衡下货币政策的反应及其对于宏观经济波动的影响。我们发现:(1)针对经常项目和资本项目盈余,央行分别采取扩张性和紧缩性政策;(2)紧缩性货币政策会增加经常项目盈余,但对资本流动的影响很小;(3)净出口和净资本流入的正向冲击分别导致CPI的下降和上升。除净出口冲击降低CPI并伴随扩张性货币政策外,其他发现都符合理论判断,说明了央行针对国际收支失衡实施的货币政策的合理性。