Inequality and Growth: What Can the Data Say?

This paper describes the correlations between inequality and the growth rates in cross-country data. Using non-parametric methods, we show that the growth rate is an inverted U-shaped function of net changes in inequality: changes in inequality (in any direction) are associated with reduced growth in the next period. The estimated relationship is robust to variations in control variables and estimation methods. This inverted U-curve is consistent with a simple political economy model but it could also reflect the nature of measurement errors, and, in general, efforts to interpret this evidence causally run into difficult identification problems. We show that this non-linearity is sufficient to explain why previous estimates of the relationship between the level of inequality and growth are so different from one another.     

Welfare Implications of Non‐scale R&D‐based Growth Models

Non‐scale R&D‐based growth models imply that the decentral and the socially optimal long‐run growth rate coincide. Nonetheless, the distortions inherent in a market economy bias both the R&D investment share and the saving rate. As a result, the level of the balanced growth path may differ substantially between the two types of solution, implying a dramatic loss in welfare. The present paper explores the sources and magnitude of this gap. In addition, the consequences of public policies are examined, distinguishing between isolated policy measures from an overall policy programme.     

旅游经济增长因素的空间计量研究

文章在文献分析的基础上,构建了旅游经济增长影响因素的空间计量模型,并运用2000—2009年大陆31个省、市、自治区的数据进行实证研究。结果表明：在考虑空间效应的影响下,我国旅游经济增长具有空间依赖性,其中2000—2008年出现正的空间溢出效应,2009年出现负的空间溢出效应;旅游业发达省份旅游经济增长速度低于欠发达省份,低增长和高增长省份在空间上聚集。旅游接待设施数量的增加、居民消费水平的提高对旅游经济增长具有显著的促进作用;旅游景区数量的增长对旅游经济的增长作用不显著;而交通里程的增长对旅游经济的增长具有反向作用。     

军费开支、治安水平与随机内生增长

建立一个随机宏观模型,考虑到军费开支和治安水平,采用随机最优化的方法,把军费开支作为宏观经济变量并进入个人效用和生产函数,得到经济达均衡时军费开支、个人收入的风险对治安水平的影响。同时求出最优的增长率和个人资本与财富比、消费和财富比。     

Stochastic Optimal Growth with Unbounded Shock

This paper considers a neoclassical optimal growth problem where the shock that perturbs the economy in each time period is potentially unbounded on the state space. Sufficient conditions for existence, uniqueness, and stability of equilibria are derived in terms of the primitives of the model using recent techniques from the field of perturbed dynamical systems. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C61, C62, O41.     

集聚与增长整合研究评述

集聚与增长整合研究是新经济地理学的理论前沿,也是对新增长理论的新拓展.通过在新经济地理框架中引入内生增长,集聚与增长整合模型使得我们能够明确地思考经济活动区位与经济增长速度之间的相互作用问题.整合模型阐释了集聚与增长之间的互动关系和机制,加深了我们对一体化现象和政策的理解,得到了比新经济地理更为丰富的结论.对该领域文献进行了系统梳理和分类,总结了其研究框架与方法,并叙述了理论演进的路径.     

Brexit and the Politics of UK Growth Models

Brexit has reopened and repoliticised the debate about future growth models for the UK economy. This contribution argues that this debate is built around historically specific path dependencies that reflect the particular character of public debate about British political economy, while also suggesting that the debate around Brexit takes place at a very distinctive moment in the history of democratic capitalism in Europe. This combination gives the renewed politicisation a specific and perhaps perverse character. The paper considers how we should approach debates about growth models, paying particular attention to the importance of the politics of support. It suggests that recent debate about growth models has been largely subsumed within the politics of Brexit, which has politicised that debate, albeit through the emergent political economy frames that Brexit has provoked. The paper explores the ways in which the demise of three key props of European democratic capitalism – a sustained period of economic growth, a governing philosophy that subordinated the market to wider social purposes and strong political parties – play out in the context of Brexit and the search for a new politics of support.     

基于空间计量视角下的碳排放与经济增长分析与对策--以中国地级市为研究对象

基于空间计量经济学为方法,实证分析中国31个省域2005—2012年经济增长与碳排放的关系。结果表明：在空间分布上中国31个省域的碳排放呈现出正自相关性和空间集聚效应,表现出环渤海地区、长三角地区等;经济增长与碳排放表现出正相关系,高碳排放、低碳排放分别处于经济发达的沿海地区、经济落后的内陆地区,表现出经济增长对碳排放的依赖性强,中国短时间内实现低碳经济较为困难。     

Measures of Human Capital and Nonlinearities in Economic Growth

In this paper we study the relationship between human capital accumulation and economic growth using various measures of human capital frequently employed by researchers. We use semiparametric estimation techniques to uncover any nonlinearities that may exist. Using mean years of schooling measures of human capital we find a nonlinear effect on economic growth. There seem to be important differences in the growth effect of educational attainment by gender and level of education. Enrollment rates do not yield a nonlinear effect.     

Climate and Scale in Economic Growth

This paper introduces new data on climatic conditions to empirical tests of growth theories. We find that, since 1960, temperate countries have converged towards high levels of income while tropical nations have converged towards various income levels associated with economic scale and the extent of the market. These results hold for a wide range of tests. A plausible explanation is that temperate regions' growth was assisted by their climate, perhaps historically for their transition out of agriculture into sectors whose productivity converges across countries, while tropical countries' growth is relatively more dependent on gains from specialization and trade.     

消费需求与经济增长关系的计量经济分析

消费需求是拉动经济增长的三驾马车之一,足以说明消费需求在经济增长中的重要地位.改革开放以来,伴随国民经济的快速发展和消费者收入的增加,我国的消费总量呈现出显著增加的趋势,消费结构得到不断的优化.本文基于计量经济学的基本理论,依据消费需求与经济增长之间的辨证关系,选用1978年以来我国经济发展和消费需求的32年数据,使用不同的计量经济方法,从经济增长的因素分析、经济增长对消费需求的影响和消费需求对经济增长的影响三个方面验证了消费需求与经济增长之间的数量关系和相互影响作用,同时利用格兰杰因果关系检验的方法确认了消费需求与经济增长之间互为因果的影响关系.数量关系的确立,为探求二者之间的变化趋势,进行科学决策提供了数量依据.     

Output Growth Decomposition in the Presence of Input Quality Effects: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

How do physical capital accumulation and total factor productivity (TFP) individually add to economic growth? We approach this question from the perspective of the quality of physical capital and labor, namely the age of physical capital and human capital. We build a unique dataset by explicitly calculating the age of physical capital for each country and each year of our time frame and estimate a stochastic frontier production function incorporating input quality in five regions of countries (Africa, East Asia, Latin America, South Asia and West). Physical capital accumulation generally proves much more important than either the improved quality of factors or TFP growth in explaining output growth. The age of capital decreases growth in all regions except in Africa, while human capital increases growth in all regions except in East Asia.     

Econometric policy evaluation and expectations

Recently large-scale econometric models have been criticized as inappropriate tools for policy evaluation. One critical point often mentioned is the way expectations are formed. This paper shows that the way the process of expectations formation is considered does not play a crucial role. Instead, the ability to model agents' reactions to changes in policy is the essence of the critique. As long as government behaviour is sufficiently accessible in the model, applied econometrics may still use large-scale systems for which rational expectations solutions would be troublesome if not impossible to reach.     

Demographic Change and Economic Growth in Asia

Trade openness, high savings rates, human capital accumulation, and macroeconomic policy only accounted for part of the 1965–1990 growth performance in East Asia. Subsequently, demographic change was shown to be a missing factor in explaining the East Asian growth premium. Since 1990, East Asia has undertaken major economic reforms in response to financial crises and other factors. We reexamine the role of the demographic transition in contributing to cross-country differences in economic growth through to 2005, with a particular focus on East Asia. We highlight the need for policy to offset potential negative effects of aging populations in the future.     

Stochastic generalizations of demand systems with an application to telecommunications

Systems of demand equations are considered for at least two reasons. First, they offer a theoretical completeness, and second, they embody a number of restrictions which lead to a more parsimonious specification concerning the number of parameters. As it turns out, the quantity and quality of the data are often such that the demand systems considered are not restrictive enough in the sense that large numbers of parameters still remain which cannot be estimated with ‘great precision’. Paradoxically, the restrictions that are considered are often rejected by the data.In this paper we propose a system of random coefficient telecommunications demand equations in a panel data framework. These equations correspond to alternative ways (which have different costs) of placing a call. The system is formulated in such a way that it incorporates the homogeneity condition, as well as stochastic versions of the symmetry and weak separability restrictions. The stochastic versions are given in terms of moments and so they do not have to hold in each individual case. Under certain conditions they reduce to their deterministic counterparts. Finally, we empirically implement the model and compare the results to what they would be in a corresponding deterministic framework.     

Studying Growth in the Modern Classical Approach: Theoretical and Empirical Implications for the Analysis of Potential Output

Abstract

The main characteristics of the modern classical approach to growth are studied with particular reference to the notion of ‘potential output’. In contrast to mainstream approaches, which consider potential output to be exogenous and supply-determined, it is here regarded as endogenous and path-dependent. A tentative analysis is carried out of the implications of such a conception in empirical research, with special reference to the effects of the crisis on potential growth. Mainstream estimation methods (especially those used by international institutions) are shown to be deeply influenced by theory, but also to provide dubious and puzzling results. Very different empirical results and policy implications may be obtained from the standpoint of the alternative theoretical framework provided by the modern classical approach. On this basis, the paper proposes that the long-term policy target should be set in terms of the rate of unemployment rather than potential output or potential growth.     

Heterogeneity and Spatial Dependence of Regional Growth in the EU: A Recursive Partitioning Approach

We use model‐based recursive partitioning to assess heterogeneity of growth and convergence processes based on economic growth regressions for 255 European Union NUTS2 regions from 1995 to 2005. Spatial dependencies are taken into account by augmenting the model‐based regression tree with a spatial lag. The starting point of the analysis is a human‐capital‐augmented Solow‐type growth equation similar in spirit to Mankiw et al. (1992, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, 407–437). Initial GDP and the share of highly educated in the working age population are found to be important for explaining economic growth, whereas the investment share in physical capital is only significant for coastal regions in the PIIGS countries. For all considered spatial weight matrices recursive partitioning leads to a regression tree with four terminal nodes with partitioning according to (i) capital regions, (ii) non‐capital regions in or outside the so‐called PIIGS countries and (iii) inside the respective PIIGS regions furthermore between coastal and non‐coastal regions. The choice of the spatial weight matrix clearly influences the spatial lag parameter while the estimated slope parameters are very robust to it. This indicates that accounting for heterogeneity is an important aspect of modeling regional economic growth and convergence.     

Explaining Growth: A Contest Between Models

Recent contributions to the empirical growth literature show no tendency to convergence in specification, as researchers seek to identify new variables that can account for significant regional effects in earlier work. We conduct non-nested tests between the models of Barro (1997), Easterly and Levine (1997) and Sachs and Warner (1997). The data strongly prefer an encompassing model, but fail to reject any of the candidate models, implying that each model represents a partial truth. We identify a model that includes most (but not all) of the regressors in the candidate models and is robust to the inclusion of regional dummies.     

A Simple and Intuitive Method to Solve Small Rational Expectations Models

We present a nonlinear solution method of saddlepoint dynamics in discrete time optimization problems. It is based on the backward attractivity of the stable manifold and is very easy to implement. After an introduction to the general method we present two applications. First, we consider the deterministic neoclassical growth model and demonstrate accuracy and stability of the method. Second, we solve a basic real business cycle model.revised version received July 2, 2003     

新古典增长和内生经济增长中的金融发展效应

本文分别建立了引入金融部门的新古典增长模型和内生经济增长模型,并对金融发展的增长效应和水平效应进行比较分析.文章首先,在新古典增长模型中分析了金融发展的水平效应和增长效应.其次,分别在资本外溢、技术创新和人力资本积累等代表性内生经济增长模型中,探讨了金融发展的增长效应和水平效应.最后,概括总结全文观点.本文认为,在新古典增长模型中,金融发展只有水平效应,而无增长效应,在内生经济增长模型中,金融发展既有水平效应又有增长效应.