Nature’s Economy and the Human Economy

Human beings and the human economy are entirely integrated into nature’s economy—the biosphere and the ecosystems that comprise it. Society is therefore utterly dependent on the free services provided by ecosystems. But population growth, rising per capita consumption, and the use of environmentally malign technologies are steadily eroding those services. Projecting how long that process can continue without a global calamity depends on numerous uncertainties, many created by the existence of nonlinearities, thresholds, and lag times in ecological systems. A major problem is to determine how to allocate resources in various ways to solve the human predicament. Scientists have much of the information necessary for making those decisions, so the biggest problem is in the purview of social scientists. They must help to determine how best to move society from knowledge to action.     

The Welfare Economic Theory of Green National Accounts

This paper takes a critical look at the literature on green national accounts. The problem studied is to find a linear index of economic variables that responds to perturbations in the same direction as social well-being. The thesis of a large literature, that net national product (which is a flow) is that index in closed economies, is shown in some interpretations to be simply false and in others to suffer from deep estimation problems. It is argued that capital depreciation using shadow prices should certainly be included in national accounts, but that the right welfare index is a comprehensive measure of wealth, defined as the shadow value of an economy’s stock of all capital assets. It is shown that comprehensive wealth is usable as a criterion for policy evaluation as well as for determining sustainable economic development.     

Assessing sustainability, a comprehensive wealth accounting prospect: An application to Mozambique

We estimate the wealth of Mozambique in 2000 and 2005 in order to assess the sustainability of its development path. Our methodology builds on Arrow et al. (2010). We show that Mozambican wealth increases through human and physical capital accumulation, while the pressure on natural capital remains low. The growth of total factor productivity enhances the outcome of the different capital assets, but population growth has a strong downward effect on wealth per capita. Results suggest that Mozambican development was sustainable between 2000 and 2005, but these remain ambiguous and are highly sensitive to data and assumptions used.     

论民生视域下包容性增长的实践取向

改善民生,实现包容性增长,健全公平正义、共同富裕的社会主义分配机制是根本,建构人人享有、尊严生活的社会保障机制是基础,完善就业优先、体面工作的人力资源厚植机制是重点,构建促进机会均等、成果共享的社会长效机制是核心。     

Population and economic growth with human and physical capital investments

We present a two-sector endogenous growth model with human and physical capital accumulation to analyze the long-run relationship between population growth and real per capita income growth. Formal education and investment in physical capital are assumed to be two separate components of human capital production. Along the balanced growth path equilibrium, population change may have a positive, negative, or else neutral effect on economic growth depending on whether physical and human capital are complementary/substitutes for each other in the formation of new human capital and on their degree of complementarity.

社会资本外部性的经济分析——以信任关系为例

以往理论研究与经验研究均指出社会资本具有正面的效应,但对这种效应是怎样取得的并无共识.我们尝试建立一个不完全信息动态博弈模型,说明社会资本-信任如何产生正的外部性,亦即产生超出个体理性计算之外的利益.我们的分析得出这样的结论,在一个多人互动的环境中,能否达到彼此合作或彼此信任,虽然会受到欺骗者所遭到的惩罚与欺骗利益多少的影响,但主要受到所处环境中具有社会资本者人数比例的影响.因此,可以说社会资本具有正的网络外部性,信任者人数越多,信任者所享受到的利益越大.     

人口、资源与环境经济学结构框架的生产视角分析

本文从生产的视角勾画了人口、资源与环境经济学的结构框架.通过对生产过程、生产要素的分析,揭示了人口、资源、环境与经济系统的内在联系;在人口、资源、环境经济大系统中分析了人口生产系统、资源环境生产系统和经济生产系统的生产目的及其相互关系;人口、资源与环境经济学应该实现对来自人口的人力资源、来自生态系统的自然资源和来自经济系统的人造资源三种生产性资源的有效配置,实现人与自然的协调发展.     

体面劳动问题研究的新进展与未来研究展望

全球化加剧了劳资关系的不平衡状态,强资本弱劳工的局面得以维护并日益加强,资方为追求利益最大化而忽视劳动者利益的事情屡屡发生。随着转型时期经济社会改革的深入推进,劳资关系问题也越来越引起人们的关注并成为社会的焦点问题之一,全面实现体面劳动成为各级政府的重要方针,企业、各类劳动组织以及劳动者都对实现体面劳动发出了强烈的呼声。金融危机后体面劳动研究有了新进展,未来体面劳动问题研究也大有可为。     

The Influence of Socioeconomic Factors on Economic Growth

The main goal of this paper is to analyse the relationship between social capital and economic growth taking into account the role of fiscal policy from theoretical and empirical points of view. To achieve this goal, “Human Capital and Public Capital Effects on Economic Growth” is focused on the effects of two traditional factors: human capital and public capital effects on economic growth. “Social Capital Effects on Economic Growth” considers qualitative variables introducing some socioeconomic effects on economic growth process analysis. In this case, social capital the main variable will be considered. “Empirical Analysis,” an empirical analysis is developed considering the case of European countries prior to the EU enlargement. Finally, in Conclusions,” the main conclusions will be resumed.      

Growth and social security: the role of human capital

This paper studies the growth and efficiency effects of pay-as-you-go financed social security when human capital is the engine of growth. Employing a variant of the Lucas model [Lucas, R.E., 1988. On the mechanics of economic development. Journal of Monetary Economics 22, 3–42.] with overlapping generations, it is shown that a properly designed, unfunded social security system leads to higher output growth than a fully funded one. Furthermore, the economy with an unfunded social security is efficient, while the other one is not. These results stand in sharp contrast to those obtained in models where the reason for economic growth is physical capital accumulation.     

Revisiting the process of aggregate growth recovery after a capital destruction

We study the implications of a growth model including social capital and habit formation concerning the recovery of economies that suffer from an exogenous destruction in their capital stock. Habits exhibit very low persistence and depend only on last period’s consumption as suggested by empirical evidence. In addition to physical capital, agents invest in social capital which generates both market (production) and non-market (utility) returns. We study an infinite horizon model and compare its implications to a model with habit formation but without social capital. Our framework is more efficient in generating dynamic patterns that replicate the behavior of the main economic variables during the reconstruction period. High investment in social capital at the beginning of the transition is a key element of our results.     

How economic growth becomes a cost: The scarcity multiplier

Competent macro-allocation of natural capital would allow micro-allocation by economics to be fully useful and may help prevent the latter being confused with the former. This macro-allocation requires social choice, so to see whether it is likely to be competent the effectiveness of democratic politics is investigated. Dysfunction is predicted because democratic institutions produce elements of irresponsibility and ignorance. These permit inflation of want by supply (IWS), a positive feedback in which wants are increased by their supply, provoking more supply, hence more want. Four IWS systems combine under common conditions to indefinitely escalate the scarcity of natural capital, a crucial failure of macro-allocation. This ‘scarcity multiplier' causes apparently rational attempts to satisfy a few wants to exacerbate many, increasing dissatisfaction. Institutions for deliberative public participation may enable democracies to recognize and control IWS. Unless this is done the scarcity multiplier may make cost-benefit analysis misleading: it may make the costs of development projects exceed their benefits in proportion to their financial success.     

Testing the null hypothesis of no regime switching with an application to GDP growth rates

This paper presents tests for the null hypothesis of no regime switching in Hamilton’s (Econometrica 57:357–384, 1989) regime switching model. The test procedures exploit similarities between regime switching models, autoregressions with measurement errors, and finite mixture models. The proposed tests are computationally simple and, contrary to likelihood based tests, have a standard distribution under the null. When the methodology is applied to US GDP growth rates, no strong evidence of regime switching is found. I thank Don Andrews, Peter Phillips, Yuichi Kitamura, Anat Bracha, Patrik Guggenberger, Orit Whiteman and three anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions.     

Aggregate returns to social capital: Estimates based on the augmented augmented-Solow model

We extend the augmented-Solow model to estimate the aggregate output elasticity and depreciation rate of social capital that characterize aggregate returns. The estimated output elasticity is approximately 0.1. While social capital positively affects economic growth, the magnitude is much smaller than that of other production inputs. The estimated depreciation rate is at least 10% per annum, which is higher than that of physical capital. The median value of the implied aggregate return of social capital is approximately 19.11% at the global level. In OECD countries, it is likely to be considerably smaller than the individual returns, suggesting the fallacy of composition. While there is no systematic relationship between GDP per capita and returns to physical or human capital, the aggregate returns to social capital seem to be negatively related to the level of development.     

Population and economic growth: Ancient and modern

This paper focuses on the evolution of the relationship between population and economic growth from Hume to New Growth Theory. In this paper, we show that there were two main views on the subject. There were those who assumed that the relationship between fertility rate and income was positive. On the other hand, there were those who raised the possibility that this linkage did not occur, and they emphasised that an increase in income did not necessarily lead to having more children. Following from Hicks’ methodological precept, the paper will show that their position on the issue was related to a socio-economic fact: the sibship size effect. We show that those who took the view that an increase in income leads to the desire to have more children did not take into consideration the sibship size effect, while those maintaining that there existed a negative relationship introduced into their utility function a sibship size effect.     

基于基尼系数人均人力资本的中国地区收入差距分析

以全国所有省区 (除西藏外) 1997-2006年人均人力资本和人均GDP增长率的面板数据为基础,引入基尼系教人均人力资本,采用 Panel Data 固定效应模型进行分析.结果发现,基于基尼系数的人均人力资本具有基尼系数的性质,中部和西部地区的人均人力资本边际报酬远高于东部地区,且仍处在收益远高于成本的初级阶段,这是造成地区收入差距的主要原因.所以,加强人均人力资本的积累,为中部和西部地区提供同等的受教育机会,制定有效的进人用人机制,这将是缩小地区收入差距的根本途径.     

Too Much of a Good Thing? The Quantitative Economics of R&D‐driven Growth Revisited

This article augments an R&D‐based growth model of the third generation with human capital accumulation and impure altruism, calibrates it with U.S. data, and investigates whether the market provides too little or too much R&D. For benchmark parameters, the market share of employment in R&D is close to the socially optimal solution. Sensitivity analysis shows that the order of magnitude of possible deviation between market R&D and optimal R&D is also smaller than suggested by previous studies. Small deviation of total research effort, however, can be compatible with large sectoral misallocations. Furthermore, the model allows for two additional channels through which population growth may affect the resource allocation so that its overall economic impact is no longer predetermined as positive. Numerical calibrations show that economic growth at the average rate in the U.S. over the last century can be consistent with a small and probably negative partial correlation between population growth and economic growth.     

Social security and retirement incentives in Austria

This paper provides an overview of the interaction between social security and retirement behavior in Austria in the decades up to the on-going reform process. The key question is, how much of the retirement behavior can be attributed to incentive effects of the pension system. We describe the labor market and retirement behavior of the elderly in Austria, survey the key features of the public pension system and finally present the results of a series of simulations aimed at assessing the retirement incentives generated by the pension system. We compute levels and accrual rates of social security wealth and implicit tax rates on continued work according to the method portrayed in Gruber and Wise [Gruber J, Wise D (1999) Social security and retirement around the world. University of Chicago Press, Chicago London]. To some extent, the sharp drop in labor force participation among the elderly must be attributed to major disincentives of the Austrian pension system; the system turns out to provide significant incentives to retire early. Past reforms have reduced the disincentives. Our results, however, show the need to further reform the public pension scheme and to reorient it stronger towards the principle of actuarial fairness.     

The Social Connectedness and Life Satisfaction Nexus: A Panel Data Analysis of Women in Australia

This study explores the interplay between time pressures at home and at work, social connectedness, and well-being as reported by Australian women. Specifically, taking advantage of longitudinal data (from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey for the years 2001 to 2013) and employing the newly developed “blow up and cluster” estimation technique, this study finds there has been a marginal decline in the life satisfaction of Australian women. After accounting for changes in sociodemographic characteristics, a more pervasive negative trend in life satisfaction appears to be reported by both men and women, and both genders report higher levels of life satisfaction for greater levels of almost all measures of social connectedness. This study adds to a growing body of evidence pointing toward the importance of frequent and meaningful social connections to societal well-being, as well as the need to refocus attention on well-being in public-policy spheres.