How important are dual economy effects for aggregate productivity?

This paper brings together development accounting techniques and the dual economy model to address the role that factor markets have in creating variation in aggregate total factor productivity (TFP). Development accounting research has shown that much of the variation in income across countries can be attributed to differences in TFP. The dual economy model suggests that aggregate productivity is depressed by having too many factors allocated to low productivity work in agriculture. Data show large differences in marginal products of similar factors within many developing countries, offering prima facie evidence of this misallocation. Using a simple two-sector decomposition of the economy, this article estimates the role of these misallocations in accounting for the cross-country income distribution. A key contribution is the ability to bring sector-specific data on human and physical capital stocks to the analysis. Variation across countries in the degree of misallocation is shown to account for 30–40% of the variation in income per capita, and up to 80% of the variation in aggregate TFP.     

基于生态系统服务的绿色GDP核算方法初探

绿色GDP核算是通过将资源环境成本纳入国民经济核算中来实现环境管理的一种有效的经济手段。如何合理地计算资源环境成本是绿色GDP核算的技术难点,也是生态经济研究领域的热点问题。本文充分分析了已有绿色GDP核算的两种思路,即或在GDP核算体系中扣除环境污染、资源损耗的成本,或增加生态系统服务的价值。展望了绿色GDP核算的新的方向,即将环境污染、资源损耗成本和自然生态系统服务所带来的环境效益都纳入绿色GDP核算之中。     

Political foundations of the resource curse

In this paper we argue that the political incentives that resource endowments generate are the key to understanding whether or not they are a curse. We show: (1) politicians tend to over-extract natural resources relative to the efficient extraction path because they discount the future too much, and (2) resource booms improve the efficiency of the extraction path. However, (3) resource booms, by raising the value of being in power and by providing politicians with more resources which they can use to influence the outcome of elections, increase resource misallocation in the rest of the economy. (4) The overall impact of resource booms on the economy depends critically on institutions since these determine the extent to which political incentives map into policy outcomes. Countries with institutions that promote accountability and state competence will tend to benefit from resource booms since these institutions ameliorate the perverse political incentives that such booms create. Countries without such institutions however may suffer from a resource curse.     

资源配置与中国非农部门全要素生产率* ——基于制造业和服务业之间资源错配的分析

近年来,经济学家与政策制定者之间逐渐达成共识：有限的资源未能得到优化配置是阻碍发展中经济体生产率水平提升的重要原因。本文以1993-2011年中国制造业和服务业分行业数据为研究样本,从经验层面上系统分析了制造业和服务业之间的资源错配对中国非农部门TFP的影响。本文研究发现：（1）相对于中国制造业TFP的持续改善,服务业的TFP则长期徘徊在低位,二者之间的资源错配程度在进入21世纪后明显加重,造成非农部门TFP近40%的损失;（2）21世纪以来,制造业和服务业间的资源错配绝大部分来源于装备制造业与生产性服务业之间的错配;（3）装备制造业和生产性服务业之间的资本错配普遍高于劳动力错配。本文的引申含义是,现阶段的产业政策目标主要应定位于促进制造业和服务业二者之间的协调发展。     

基于生态足迹模型的沿海城市可持续发展分析——以大连市为例

根据《大连统计年鉴》等相关资料,利用生态足迹模型,对大连市2004—2008年生态足迹进行计算和分析;并计算出大连市这五年的万元GDP生态足迹和社会发展能力指数。利用这些指标分析大连的可持续发展情况,并提出相应的对策。结果表明：大连这五年的平均生态赤字为4.3184hm2,说明大连的区域生态系统正面临过度开发的压力;生态足迹多样性指数五年均低于中国平均水平,意味着大连生态经济系统生态空间分布很不均匀;社会发展能力指数高于中国平均水平和万元GDP生态足迹大体处于减少状态,说明大连在经济社会发展的同时,资源利用率也在不断地提高。     

Valuing ecosystem services: A shadow price for net primary production

We analyze the contribution of ecosystem services to GDP and use this contribution to calculate an empirical price for ecosystem services. Net primary production is used as a proxy for ecosystem services and, along with capital and labor, is used to estimate a Cobb Douglas production function from an international panel. A positive output elasticity for net primary production probably measures both marketed and nonmarketed contributions of ecosystems services. The production function is used to calculate the marginal product of net primary production, which is the shadow price for ecosystem services. The shadow price generally is greatest for developed nations, which have larger technical scalars and use less net primary production per unit output. The rate of technical substitution indicates that the quantity of capital needed to replace a unit of net primary production tends to increase with economic development, and this rate of replacement may ultimately constrain economic growth.     

土地资源错配与经济波动的空间溢出效应实证分析

文章构建了一个采用时变引力空间权重矩阵的空间自滞后模型(SLX),探讨土地资源错配对经济波动的空间溢出效应。实证结果表明:本地区土地资源错配能够减缓邻近地区的经济波动,即土地资源错配会对经济波动存在负向空间溢出效应;土地资源错配对经济波动的负向空间溢出效应主要通过降低密度边际波动来实现。进一步研究发现,在三类不同等级城市间,土地资源错配对经济波动的空间溢出效应不尽相同:在自上而下的空间溢出效应中,并不是每类高等级城市都对低等级城市存在空间溢出效应,而在自下而上的空间溢出效应中,每类低等级城市都对高等级城市存在空间溢出效应,同等级城市间的空间溢出效应则并不显著。     

Green not (only) for profit: An empirical examination of the effect of environmental-related standards on employees’ recruitment

Thanks to an original database on French firms we investigate the impact of environmental-related standards on employees’ recruitment. Using a bivariate probit model, we show that voluntary environmental-related standards (i.e., ISO 14001 standard, organic labeling, fair trade, etc.) improve the recruitment of professional and non-professional employees. This finding suggests that, beyond environmental considerations, human resources management can drive registration.     

The cost of natural capital consumption: Accounting for a sustainable world economy

The System for integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) has been criticized in this journal for ignoring the benefits of ecosystem services for human well-being. This paper argues that extended national accounts should not attempt measuring economic welfare. Rather, they could and should assess the environmental sustainability of economic activity as the cost of natural capital consumption. The global application of SEEA concepts and methods demonstrates the feasibility of international green accounting. For the world economy, sustainability costs run to about 3 trillion US$ or 6% of world GDP. Large variations at national and regional levels suggest that conventional economic indicators may significantly overstate economic progress in some parts of the world. Data gaps and lack of data comparability affect these first estimates. National and international statistical services should be more aggressive in greening the national accounts. More prudent and more sustainable economic policies might be the result.     

生态系统服务的价格估计方法及真实增长测度

以国际统计规范中生态系统服务价值的估价方法为基础,利用市场价值法、替代成本法、影子工程法等方法,构建生态系统服务核算的动态价格体系,对京津冀地区的生态系统服务价值进行合理测度。实证结果发现,以往采用的价格体系低估了生态系统服务价值,根据构建的动态价格体系得出,2016年北京市、天津市和河北省的生态系统服务价值总量分别为27706.27亿元、5836.21亿元和104407.23亿元,分别是各地区GDP的1.08倍、0.326倍和3.26倍;2016—2017年京津冀地区生态系统服务价值增量分别为502.63亿元、628.12亿元和-1713.33亿元;三个地区中价格因素对北京市生态系统服务价值年度变化的影响最大,而天津市和河北省受到价格因素的影响较小,剔除价格因素影响后京津冀地区生态系统服务价值的真实增长率分别为-0.15%、13.11%和-1.7%。     

Misallocation and productivity in the lead up to the Eurozone crisis

We use Portuguese firm-level data to investigate whether changes in resource misallocation may have contributed to the poor economic performance of some southern and peripheral European countries leading up to the Eurozone crisis. We extend Hsieh and Klenow’s (2009) methodology to include intermediate inputs and consider all sectors of the economy (agriculture, manufacturing, and services). We find that within-industry misallocation almost doubled between 1996 and 2011. Equalizing total factor revenue productivity across firms within an industry could have boosted valued-added 48% and 79% above actual levels in 1996 and 2011, respectively. This implies that deteriorating allocative efficiency may have shaved around 1.3 percentage points off the annual GDP growth during the 1996–2011 period. Allocative efficiency deterioration, despite being a widespread phenomenon, is significantly higher in the service sector, with 5 industries accounting for 72% of the total variation. Capital distortions are the most important source of potential value-added efficiency gains, especially in the service sector, with a relative contribution increasing over time.     

去工业化、经济增长与区域协调发展——基于土地资源错配的视角

针对我国近年来的“去工业化”现象，本文通过280座城市的面板数据，以及城市地形和省级审批建设用地占比构造的工具变量，从土地资源错配视角考察了去工业化对经济增长和区域协调发展的影响。实证结果发现，在当前经济发展阶段工业化对经济增长仍然具有显著的积极影响，过快、过早地去工业化不利于保持经济持续增长和实现区域协调发展，而土地资源在地区间和部门间的双重错配是导致我国出现过早去工业化的重要原因。进一步的分析表明，较高的城镇化水平以及发达的生产性服务业有助于增强工业化对经济增长的推动效应。本文为新时期保持制造业比重基本稳定，推动我国经济持续稳定增长，推进区域协调发展以及促进土地资源优化配置提供了经验证据。     

铜陵市生态系统服务功能价值评估与调整

本文以生态服务价值定量评价的现有成果为手段,对铜陵市的生态系统服务功能价值进行评估。同时结合铜陵的经济社会发展状况,利用生态价值系数对评估的结果进行调整。结果显示,铜陵市2003年的生态系统服务功能的价值为643736万元,为当年GDP的62%;经生态价值系数调整后的生态系统服务功能的价值为275 146万元,为GDP的21%。     

生态资源利用效率的理论模型及其对中国的检视

定义生态资源利用效率的含义,并用几何模型深入论述生态资源利用效率的理论模型,阐明生态资源利用效率的条件,运用该模型检视中国生态资源利用现状,得出中国生态资源总体上物质性产品利用过度,生态服务利用不足的结论。     

Ecosystem services and agriculture: Cultivating agricultural ecosystems for diverse benefits

Crop and rangelands are over 25% of the Earth's land area, and they are expanding. Agricultural ecosystems rely on a suite of supporting ecosystem services to provide food, fiber and fuel as well as a range of accompanying but non-marketed ecosystem services (ES). Ecosystem services from agriculture include regulation of water and climate systems, aesthetic and cultural services, as well as enhanced supporting services (such as soil fertility). Many of these ES are appreciated by people, but they lack markets, so they lack the incentives for provision that come with prices. For public policy decisions to take them into account, non-market valuation techniques are needed, such as travel cost, contingent valuation, hedonic valuation, and cost-based or factor-income approaches. This article offers an overview of ES from agriculture and non-market valuation methods as it introduces the articles in this special section on “Ecosystem Services and Agriculture.” Understanding how ecological functions generate ES is fundamental to management, but so too is understanding how humans perceive and value those services. Research is required both to design cost-effective incentives to provide ES and to measure which kinds of ES could provide the greatest overall welfare benefits to society. Agricultural ecosystems offer newly recognized potential to deliver more diverse ecosystem services and mitigate the level of past ecosystem disservices. This special section of Ecological Economics conveys both how these are becoming possible and the challenges to science and public policy design of turning that potential into reality.     

Ecosystem services and regional development: An application to Sweden

This study carries out interregional comparisons of development and sustainable use of natural capital with and without inclusion of non-marketed ecosystem services. A simple dynamic model of an open economy shows that appropriate adjustment of conventional income accounts includes flow and stock components, but excludes explicit entrance of pollution. Calculations are made for Swedish regions and for two types of ecosystem services — pollution sequestration and recreational services — provided by three types of ecosystems: forests, agricultural landscape and wetlands. When comparing the adjusted and non-adjusted regional income accounts it is shown that the two measurements generate significantly different pictures of regional income and growth; regions that are traditionally considered as relatively less growth promoting are shown to hold important sources of wealth from natural capital, while counties that are rich in conventional accounts fall behind when adjusting for values of changes in natural capital.     

Labour misallocation in China: 1980–2010

This article measures labour misallocation in Chinese provinces over the period 1980–2010 and investigates possible causal factors of the misallocation. It finds that: (1) labour misallocation fell substantially in the first half of 1980s, but there was no monotonic trend of improvement since then. (2) Wage differentials cross primary, secondary and tertiary sectors accounted for a substantial portion of measured overall labour misallocation; the secondary sector’s wage deviations from value of the marginal product of labour (VMPL) also contributed to labour misallocation. (3) There was persistence in labour misallocation, but a higher level of urbanization, the development of the tertiary sector, increasing trade openness and the growth of the nonstate sector appear to have contributed to more efficient labour allocation.     

Well-being and/or quality of life in EU countries through a multidimensional index of sustainability

The aim of my paper is to demonstrate that Sen's theory of well-being can be applied to make the concept of sustainable human development operational through the building of a multidimensional index of sustainability which takes into account, at the same time, economic, social and environmental variables. This index may be considered an alternative to the current measures of welfare/sustainability since not only conventional measures such as GDP, but also multi-attribute indices, such as Human Development Index (HDI), Genuine Savings, Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) etc., are found to be inadequate to make the concept of sustainable development operational. Therefore, the limitations of these measures of welfare/sustainability justify the search for a new index of sustainability. This index will show, at the operational level, how Sen's theory of well-being can be useful to sustainable development. It was applied to EU countries using the standardised deviation methodology being the closest and most suitable methodology to be adopted for building multidimensional indices. The factor analysis methodology will also be used in my paper. Lastly, the comparison between Sen's trend of sustainability and GDP trend index number-which are both of them applied to Italy-will show how much the criticisms and the limitations directed towards the indicator of GDP are founded.     

海南岛自然生态系统服务价值评估

以卫星遥感影像为基础,运用"3S"技术,解译并统计了海南岛陆地自然生态系统的类型和面积,利用生态经济相关理论基础,评估计算出年海南岛陆地自然生态系统服务价值。结果表明,2008年海南岛自然生态系统服务价值约2198×108元,是当年全省GDP的1.5倍;森林生态系统的服务价值占四类生态系统(森林、草地、湿地和淡水)服务价值的81.77%,单位面积价值量达3260×104元/km2;自然生态系统在维持营养物质循环、水调节、大气调节等方面的间接使用价值约2076×108元,是直接使用价值的17.0倍。研究首次建立了针对海南岛陆地生态系统服务价值全面的评估体系,并在评估方法上择优、改进,对海南岛自然生态系统服务价值监测体系的构建及深入研究具有重要意义。