Franchise fee, competition and economic growth

This paper introduces the different kinds of franchise contract bargaining into a macroeconomic model and accordingly researches the relationship between competition and economic growth. In Nash bargaining model/vertical integration we find an inverted-U shaped or a monotonically increasing relationship between the competitive degree of the intermediate goods market and economic growth. In bargaining of the right to manage model/vertical non-integration our result shows an inverted-U shaped or a monotonically decreasing relationship between the competitive degree of the intermediate goods market and economic growth. In addition, there is an overall negative relationship between the competitive degree of the final goods market and economic growth. Especially, our interesting findings that the pricing rule for intermediate goods firm depends not only on market power but also bargaining power are more general. Therefore, we can further explain the firms' vertical control strategy.     

Advertising media and cigarette demand

Using state-level panel data for the USA spanning three decades, this research estimates the demand for cigarettes. The main contribution lies in studying the effects of cigarette advertising disaggregated across five qualitatively different groups. Results show cigarette demand to be near unit elastic, the income effects to be generally insignificant and border price effects and habit effects to be significant. Regarding advertising effects, aggregate cigarette advertising has a negative effect on smoking. Important differences across advertising media emerge when cigarette advertising is disaggregated. The effects of public entertainment and Internet cigarette advertising are stronger than those of other media. Anti-smoking messages accompanying print cigarette advertising seem relatively more effective. Implications for smoking control policy are discussed.     

商品分类法用于农机企业战略型采购管理的探讨

探讨商品分类法与战略型采购管理在农机企业中的应用规范。方法：用运筹学的原理,结合造纸企业日常生产所需的商品在市场上采购的难易程度、技术要求、宏观环境以及企业的支出能力等,对不同的商品实行不同的采购管理规范。结果：农机企业日常生产所需的商品品种多、价值差别大、供应渠道复杂,符合运用商品分类法与战略型采购管理。结论：农机企业运用商品分类法与战略型采购管理规范可提高管理水平,提高采购质量,降低成本,提高经济效益。     

Impact of tariff rates on the probability of trade relationship survival: Evidence from ASEAN+6 manufactured goods

This article explores the links between imported trade relationships, their duration and tariff rates. We use survival analysis to investigate how the probability of trade relationship survival is affected by the difference in the tariff rates. We use the ASEAN+6 as the basis of our report and consider a total of 89 trading partners for manufactured goods from 1996 to 2011. Our findings are as follows. First, low‐tariff trade survives longer than high‐tariff trade of manufactured goods. Second, we find a significantly negative correlation between tariff rates and duration, and regional trade agreements help prolong the length of trade relationships. Third, the hazard ratios of intraregional differentiated goods and the parts and components trade are lower. We have also obtained robust results for distinct specifications through consideration of production networks and Rauch's product classification. Finally, we believe that these findings could be used as a reference for other economic organizations working toward the diminution of tariff rates.     

Trade volume and economic growth in the MENA region: Goods or services?

This paper explores the macroeconomic and sectoral effects of goods and service trade on the economic performance of MENA countries for the period 1960–2011. While the MENA region has been widely neglected in the trade and growth literature, this paper offers a decomposition of MENA GDP growth in order to disentangle the contributions of both service and goods trade. The results show a positive association between real GDP and both service and goods trade. The interaction term between trade in goods and trade in services is negative, suggesting that as goods trade increases, the marginal effect of service trade on real GDP decreases. However, the overall effect of service trade on real GDP is positive. The decomposition of GDP growth reveals a greater impact of goods trade, although service trade is important, and for most countries greater than the effect of tertiary enrolment.     

公共资本性支出、经常性支出与内生经济增长

本文基于一个含有两类不同产出能力的公共商品的内生增长模型,通过数理分析得出在市场经济条件下最优公共支出结构的依据是公共商品各自的产出弹性.进而采用面板数据模型对13个发达国家1972～2009年的公共支出实践进行了实证研究.实证结果表明,经常性(资本性)支出对经济增长有正(负)效应.该研究结论为平衡预算下的公共支出结构决策提供了参考依据.     

Input-trade liberalization and firm export decisions: Evidence from Argentina

Trade openness contributes to the diffusion of the modern technologies embodied in imported intermediate goods, which play a central role in the economic growth of developing countries. This paper investigates the micro-economic effects of input-trade liberalization. Previous work has found positive effects of access to foreign inputs on firm performance. If the availability of imported intermediate goods yields firm productivity gains, we would also expect a positive effect of input-trade liberalization on firm export decisions. This paper contributes to this literature by looking at the relationship between changes in input tariffs and within-firm changes in export status. Using detailed firm-level data from Argentina, I demonstrate that the probability of entering the export market is higher for firms producing in industries that have experienced greater input tariff reductions. These empirical findings are robust to alternative specifications that control for other trade-policy reforms, and industry and firm characteristics.     

网络信息商品的定制化捆绑定价策略

该文基于网络信息商品的特征,对垄断公司的网络信忠商品定制化捆绑定价策略进行了研究.通过分析我们证明,当存在合同管理成本时,信息商品的纯捆绑合同定价与激励相容的定制捆绑合同定价并不是垄断公司的最优选择;相比之下,将这两种定价策略相结合的混合定制捆绑合同定价策略才是垄断公司的严格帕累托最优定价选择.     

Aid for Trade and Global Growth

Aid for trade increases a recipient's public services, which lower its import and export transport costs. Formulating a two‐country endogenous growth model, we obtain two main results. First, a permanent increase in the donor's aid/gross domestic product (GDP) ratio raises the steady‐state growth rate as well as both countries' long‐run fractions and cost shares of imported varieties if and only if it lowers the product of transport costs. Second, under a plausible condition, there exists a unique interior growth‐maximizing aid/GDP ratio. These results are robust to alternative specifications for congestion and stock‐flow nature of public goods.     

Regulation and investment in the U.S. telecommunications industry

Reversing a two-decade deregulatory trend of telecommunications services, in 2010 U.S. regulators embarked on an aggressive regulatory agenda including, but not limited to, the regulation of high-speed Internet services under the auspices of net neutrality using utility-style regulations codified in the 1930s. Firms, regulators, and analysts feared a reduction in capital spending, contradicting established policy goals of expanding Internet availability and adoption. In this article, a difference-in-differences regression model augmented with randomization inference is applied to government data on capital spending in telecommunications. Large negative effects on investment are found. The estimated effects are robust across changes in estimation periods and model specifications, and multiple tests of the model’s assumptions lend credibility to the findings.     

Ethnic fractionalisation, migration and growth

This paper has the aim of contributing to the existing research by analysing two particular topics. First of all, we show that the model specifications by Alesina et al. (J Econ Growth 8:155–194, 2003), which connects high ethnic fractionalisation to lower growth via bad policy variables, cannot fully explain the negative ethnic fractionalisation effect of the 1990s Sub-Saharan African growth experience. Moreover, we show that the remaining negative effect of ethnic fractionalisation on growth in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s is due to an increased importance of adverse governance. Second, and on a very different note, we empirically investigate if ethnic fractionalisation might have a positive effect in a nation which is ethnically diverse due to immigration. There is evidence that it is important to distinguish between these two different kinds of ethnic fractionalisation.     

Dynamic effects of externalities,optimal saving and economic growth

Conclusion Recognizing the fact that provision of mixed public goods can result in both consumption externalities of the Samuelsonian variety as well as production externalities we set out to extend the earlier results of Rao and Kalpagam (1977) on the effect of public goods on economic growth. In so doing, we considered three standard specifications of production externalities and enlarged the concept of consumption displacement. Our basic conclusion is that the results of our earlier paper remain valid under the more general conditions set out in this paper.     

Life expectancy and economic growth: the role of the demographic transition

This paper investigates the hypothesis that the causal effect of life expectancy on income per capita growth is non-monotonic. This hypothesis follows from the recent literature on unified growth, in which the demographic transition represents an important turning point for population dynamics and hence plays a central role for the transition from stagnation to growth. Results from different empirical specifications and identification strategies document that the effect is non-monotonic, negative (but often insignificant) before the onset of the demographic transition, but strongly positive after its onset. The results provide a new interpretation of the contradictory existing evidence and have relevant policy implications.     

Imperfect Competition and Growth with Entrepreneurial Risk

Abstract. This paper analyzes an overlapping generations endogenous growth model of occupational choice under risk in a two-sector economy with intermediate and final goods. Agents choose between business ownership in the monopolistically competitive intermediate goods industry or employment as a worker in this sector. Firm-specific profits are stochastic. Occupational choice under risk endogenizes the number of firms and products in the intermediate goods industry. The analysis shows that economic performance and growth both depend on the entrepreneurship rate and are inefficiently low compared with an economy with perfect markets for pooling risks. Monopolistic competition partly offsets the negative income effects from a too low level of entrepreneurial risk-taking.     

Relative importance of sectoral and aggregate sources of price changes

This paper estimates a dynamic common factor model to assess relative importance of the aggregate and the sector-specific factors that determine changes in the prices of individual products. It also examines how aggregate price changes are affected by these factors. Two different specifications of the model are estimated: the baseline model with one aggregate factor, and a second specification with two aggregate factors. In the one-actor model, the aggregate factor contributes little to the movements of changes in prices, mostly of nondurable goods whereas it seems to have important contributions to the movements of changes in prices of commodity groups mainly used as intermediate or capital goods. In the specification with two aggregate factors, the additional factor has significant effects on changes in prices of ‘farm products’ and ‘processed foods and feeds’ only. Forecast-error variance decompositions of both aggregate and disaggregate price changes suggest that sectoral factors account for most of the variability at short horizons while the contributions of the aggregate factors increase as the time horizon lengthens. The results also show that sectoral factors are not only important for relative price changes but also have significant impact on aggregate inflation. The estimated common factors have statistically significant correlations with money growth and changes in the unemployment rate.     

The Energy-Bias of North–South Technology Spillovers: A Global,Bilateral, Bisectoral Trade Analysis

We examine variations in the South–North ratios (emerging vs. industrialized countries) of energy and labor intensities driven by imports. We use the novel World input-output database that provides bilateral and bisectoral data for 40 countries and 35 sectors for 1995–2009. We find South–North convergence of energy and labor intensities, an energy bias of import-driven convergence and no robust difference between imports of intermediate and investment goods. Accordingly, trade helps emerging economies follow a ‘green growth’ path, and trade-related policies can enhance this path. However, the effects are economically small and require a long time horizon to become effective. Trade-related policies can become much more effective in selected countries and sectors: China attenuates labor intensity via imports of intermediate goods above average. Brazil reduces energy intensity via imports of intermediate and investment goods above average. Production of machinery as an importing sector in emerging countries can immoderately benefit from trade-related reductions in factor intensities. Electrical equipment as a traded good particularly decreases energy intensity. Machinery particularly dilutes labor intensity. Our main results are statistically highly significant and robust across specifications.     

Institutions,capital stock and wage setting in Spain

This article confronts two distinct perspectives of the labour market: the institutionalist view?–?highlighting equilibrium and labour market institutions?–?and the Chain Reaction Theory?–?emphasizing dynamics and the growth drivers’ role in labour market performance. We consider the ratio of public to private capital stock as a growth driver relevant to the labour market; provide different economic rationales for this ratio to exert a negative influence in wage setting; and explore its empirical relevance in the context of a wage setting curve for Spain comprising the standard variables. There are two main results. First, several institutional variables taken to be critical to explain unemployment in the mainstream literature are not relevant for the Spanish wage setting curve. Second, there is a negative and significant influence of the ratio of public to private capital stock, which is robust to different specifications of the wage setting equation.     

Income Distribution and Demand-Induced Innovations

We introduce non-homothetic preferences into an innovation-based growth model and study how income and wealth inequality affect economic growth. We identify a (positive) price effect—where increasing inequality allows innovators to charge higher prices and (negative) market-size effects—with higher inequality implying smaller markets for new goods and/or a slower transition of new goods into mass markets. It turns out that price effects dominate market-size effects. We also show that a redistribution from the poor to the rich may be Pareto improving for low levels of inequality.     

Trade in capital goods generated by international diffusion of technology

This paper examines the dynamics of national income of developing countries, which must import advanced capital goods so as to use technology which has been learned. The main result is that depending on foreign countries for capital goods has no negative effects on real wage rates, which are determined solely by labour productivity of indigenous industries. The analysis also covers the mechanism of export-oriented growth of developing countries and its effects on developed countries. All of the explanations are quite simple, however, none of them can be derived if international learning or trade in capital goods is ignored.     

Inequality and growth: the neglected time dimension

Inequality affects economic performance through many mechanisms, both beneficial and harmful. Moreover, some of these mechanisms tend to set in fast while others are rather slow. The present paper (i) introduces a simple theoretical model to study how changes in inequality affect economic growth over different time horizons; (ii) empirically investigates the inequality–growth relationship, thereby relying on specifications derived from the theory. Our empirical findings are in line with the theoretical predictions: Higher inequality helps economic performance in the short term but reduces the growth rate of GDP per capita farther in the future. The long-run (or total) effect of higher inequality tends to be negative.