Sources of aggregate labour productivity growth in Canada and the United States

Abstract.  In this paper we propose a decomposition technique to examine the sources of industrial contribution to aggregate labour productivity growth. We show that in terms of pure labour productivity growth, the manufacturing and service sectors contributed equally to the aggregate Canada‐U.S. labour productivity growth gap during the 1987–98 period. But, in terms of total industrial contributions, which also take into account the contributions from a change in relative size, the service sector was the largest contributor. We also find that high labour productivity growth industries did not attract resources from stagnant industries – a phenomenon consistent with Baumol's cost disease of stagnant industries. JEL Classification: O47, C43     

Why was china trapped in an agrarian society? An economic geographical approach to the needham puzzle

This paper argues that before the world started to globalize, the differences in the geographical endowments that different population faced were the most important constraints to their long-term production and consumption. The paper uses this central hypothesis to explain the sharp contrast between the flourishing Song and the stagnant Ming and Qing. During the Song dynasty, despite the fact that China lost a significant amount of arable land to invading nomads as its population peaked, China witnessed a higher urbanization level, more prosperous commerce and international trade, and an explosion of technical inventions and institutional innovations. However, after having significantly improved its man-to-land ratio in the period after the Song China only found itself induced deeper into the agrarian trap, resulting in reduced urbanization, withering foreign trade, a declining division of labor, and stagnant in technology.     

Malthus in cointegration space: evidence of a post-Malthusian pre-industrial England

This paper re-examines the interaction between population growth and income per capita in pre-industrial England. Our results suggest that, as early as two centuries preceding the Industrial Revolution, England had already escaped the Malthusian Epoch and entered a post-Malthusian regime, where income per capita continued to spur population growth but was no longer stagnant. Our formulation of a post-Malthusian hypothesis implies cointegration between vital rates (birth- and death rates) and income and builds explicitly on a simple model of Malthusian stagnation. We show that this hypothesis can be interpreted as an extension of the latter model where the negative Malthusian feedback effect from population on income, as implied by diminishing returns to labor, is offset by a positive Boserupian and/or Smithian scale effect of population on technology.     

Technological Progress and Sectoral Shares

This paper studies the effect of differences in the rate of technological progress between sectors on their relative sizes. There are two sectors: a stagnant sector, where productivity does not change over time, and a progressive sector, where costs decrease over time. We consider a conjectural variation approach which encompasses perfect competition, oligopoly and monopoly. The evolution of the relative shares of the stagnant and progressive sectors over time depends on the type of competition, cost levels and the price elasticity of demand. The relationship with the cost disease literature is discussed.     

Coevolution of economic and ecological systems

This paper analyzes a model of economy–environment coevolution in which economic activities induce the genetic evolution of a biological species. This model is applied to the problem of pesticide resistance management. Just as in Munro (Environ Resour Econ, 9:429–449, 1997), we consider three main types of interactions: (1) a large pest population reduces economic revenues, (2) economic activities select for resistant genes and (3) the spread of resistant genes affects the size of the pest population. The model differs from Munro in that it includes evolutionary modeling of economic strategies. Economic agents are assumed to be boundedly rational, i.e they cannot compute the optimal level of pesticide use that minimizes resistance among pests. Economic evolution represents the change in the distribution of pesticide strategies in the population of economic agents and is modeled by a replicator dynamics equation. The interactions between economic evolution of pesticide strategies, pest population dynamics and genetic evolution of resistance of pests are studied in a system of three differential equations. We explore the dynamics and stability properties of the system using numerical simulations.     

Revealed stochastic preference: a synthesis

Summary. The problem of revealed stochastic preference is whether probability distributions of observed choices in a population for various choice situations are consistent with a hypothesis of maximization of preference preorders by members of the population. This is a population analog of the classical revealed preference problem in economic consumer theory. This paper synthesizes the solutions to this problem that have been obtained by Marcel K. Richter and the author, and by J. C. Falmagne, in the case of finite sets of alternatives, and utilizes unpublished research of Richter and the author to give results for the non-finite choice sets encountered in economic consumer theory.Received: 13 March 2003, Revised: 11 February 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D1, C6.The preparation of this paper was supported by the E. Morris Cox endowment at the University of California, Berkeley. I am indebted to Robert Anderson, Salvador Barbara, Werner Hildenbrand, Rosa L. Matzkin, and Aviv Nevo for useful suggestions and comments. I am especially indebted to Marcel K. Richter, who was the source of many of the ideas and arguments contained in this paper.     

Malthus to Solow

"A unified growth theory is developed that accounts for the roughly constant living standards displayed by world economies prior to 1800 as well as the growing living standards exhibited by modern industrial economies. Our theory also explains the industrial revolution, which is the transition from an era when per capita incomes are stagnant to one with sustained growth.... [The authors] use a standard growth model with...[several] technologies. The first, denoted the 'Malthus' technology, requires land, labor and reproducible capital as inputs. The second, denoted the 'Solow' technology, does not require land. [The authors] show that in the early stages of development, only the Malthus technology is used and, due to population growth, living standards are stagnant despite technological progress. Eventually, technological progress causes the Solow technology to become profitable and both technologies are employed. At this point, living standards improve since population growth has less influence on per capita income growth. In the limit, the economy behaves like a standard Solow growth model."     

Earnings management behaviors under different economic environments: Evidence from Japanese banks

This paper investigates Japanese banks' earnings management behavior under three distinct economic environments: (1) high-growth with asset price bubble economy (1985–1990); (2) stagnant growth with financial distress economy (1991–1996); and (3) severe recession with credit crunch economy (1997–1999). Using bank balance sheet information of 78 Japanese banks, we find that earnings management behavior by Japanese banks differ considerably across the three periods. Our results indicate that banks used security gains as a means to manage earnings throughout all three periods. We also find that banks used loan loss provisions to manage earnings; however, this behavior is only prevalent during the first two periods. Due to the fact that banks faced record-high non-performing loans during the latter severe recession period, banks on average may have been restrained from using loan loss provisions to smooth income and/or to replenish regulatory capital. Consistent with previous studies, we find that the Japanese banks significantly lowered their lending with increased provisions.     

The optimal growth of the firm in a growing environment

The paper presents a growth model based on three essential assumptions: perfect knowledge of the future, descreasing returns on investment in a stagnant economy, appearance of new investment possibilities with the growth of the economy. Two cases are considered: the self-financing growth and the borrowing situation in the context of two management policies, the maximization of the discounted flow of dividends and the maximization of the growth rate.     

Green national accounting with a changing population

Summary. Following Arrow et al. (2003), this paper considers green national accounting when population is changing and instantaneous well-being depends both on per capita consumption and population size. Welfare improvement is shown to be indicated by an expanded "genuine savings indicator", taking into account the value of population growth, or by an expanded measure of real NNP growth. Under CRS, the measures can be related to the value of per capita stock changes and per capita NNP growth, using a result due to Arrow et al. (2003). The results are compared to those arising when instantaneous well-being depends only on per capita consumption.Received: 30 January 2003, Revised: 31 March 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: D60, D90, O47, Q01.This paper is inspired by the recent investigation of the genuine savings criterion and the value of population by Arrow et al. (2003). I thank Kenneth Arrow, Partha Dasgupta, Lawrence Goulder, and a referee for helpful discussions and comments. I gratefully acknowledge the hospitality of the Stanford University research initiative on the Environment, the Economy and Sustainable Welfare, and financial support from the Hewlett Foundation through this research initiative.     

The 1990s in Japan: A Lost Decade

This paper examines the Japanese economy in the 1990s, a decade of economic stagnation. We find that the problem is not a breakdown of the financial system, as corporations large and small were able to find financing for investments. There is no evidence of profitable investment opportunities not being exploited due to lack of access to capital markets. The problem then and today is a low productivity growth rate. Growth theory, treating TFP as exogenous, accounts well for the Japanese lost decade of growth. We think that research effort should be focused on what policy changes will allow productivity to again grow rapidly. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E2, E13, O4, O5.     

云南主要生态环境问题及其人口因素与对策

本文阐述了云南省的主要生态环境问题，如耕地质量下降、水土流失严重、生物多样性锐减、农村生态环境恶化等简述了产生生态问题的人口因素，包括人口的不断增长、人口的贫困、人口的教育问题。根据云南50年来的人口统计数据论了云南总人口增长的未来趋势。最后对云南省的生态问题进行了人口因素分析，提出了缓解生态压力的相应措施。     

Technological retard in small least developed countries — small is beautiful but fragile?

This paper argued the technological retard and its influence to stagnant economic growth in small least developed countries. First we measured the technological development by UNIDO's TCI, and found that the level of technical complexities in island or inland countries was lower than the normal level by 27 and 57 per cent. We also found that the development of technical complexity is very important to industrialization in developing countries. Thus the stagnant technological improvement is one of the reasons for low growth of LDCs handicapped by smallness or isolation. Secondly we analyzed the relation between stagnant technological improvement and the low growth of small LDCs by a simple growth model, which combines the Romer-type non-linear production function and human capital growth equation. The brain drain was explicitly considered a main hindrance of human capital formation in these LDCs.     

寻找阿基米德的"杠杆"-"出生季度"是个弱工具变量吗?

AK91用出生季度作工具变量估计教育回报率,在引起众多质疑的同时,也推动了微观经济计量学的一个活跃领域——探讨弱工具问题。本文使用2005年中国人口1%抽样调查数据,重新讨论了教育回报率的2SLS估计中,出生季度是否为弱工具变量问题:在发达国家,完成高中阶段教育者在队列人口中比例过高,导致出生季度对教育变异的影响很小,因此,出生季度可能是个弱工具变量;在发展中国家,能够进入高中阶段学习者,在队列人口中不到一半,出生季度对教育变异的影响很大,因此,是个强工具变量。重新估计的结果显示,2SLS估计及其改进形式得到的教育系数显著高于OLS估计值。除了数据质量,模型误设可能是AK91遭遇弱工具的另一个原因。     

Will that be cash or credit? Payment preferences and rising VAT in Argentina

This article studies how Argentina’s value-added tax (VAT) revenue has risen to historic highs since its 2001 sovereign default and continues to grow despite unchanged VAT rates, slow economic growth, stagnant household consumption, and low commodity prices after 2010. In 2015, VAT revenue accounted for one-quarter of all tax revenue in Argentina. We show that Argentina’s banked population went from less than 41.6% in 2003 to 89.6% in 2016. Consequently, there was significant growth in electronic payments via credit cards and debit cards. Using time series regression, the authors show that the rising banked population and card growth is correlated with VAT-to-GDP increases from 2002 to 2015. The authors posit that one reason for these correlations is that some consumption is shifting from informal (harder to tax) markets to formal (easier to tax markets) as cash use declined and card use grew. Also, rising electronic payments likely explains improved VAT compliance as well—the Argentine VAT noncompliance rate averaged 36.4% between 2000 and 2005 but improved to 20.5% between 2006 and 2010 (Trigueros, Longinotti, & Vecorena, 2013).     

烟台市耕地流向及其与经济发展的关系研究

改革开放20多年来，随着人口的增长、经济的迅猛发展，工业化、城市化进程的加快，烟台地区耕地资源持续减少。本文基于烟台地区相关的统计资料，初步分析了烟台市耕地资源利用与变化的基本特征及耕地流向与经济发展的关系，得出以下结论：(1)烟台市耕地资源的数量和质量不断下降，耕地的主要流向是工矿用地、居民点和各类交通用地以及果园等；(2)经济发展是耕地面积变化的主要驱动力。因此，科学合理地利用城市有限的土地资源，已经成为当前城市建设与发展以及规划决策所面临的紧迫问题。     

The Political Economy of Environmental Taxes with an Aging Population

This paper develops a two-period overlapping-generations model with environmental externalities and uncertain lifetimes, and studies how two sources of population aging, greater longevity and a lower rate of population growth, affect the politically determined environmental tax and the quality of the environment. It is shown that greater longevity and a lower rate of population growth have entirely different effects on these factors; greater longevity has no effect on the environmental tax and has a non-positive effect on the environmental quality, whereas a lower rate of population growth has a negative effect on the tax and has a positive effect on the quality. In addition, the political decision-making on the tax leads to an inefficient allocation of capital and environmental quality.JEL classifications: D72, D78, D91, H41, O40, Q20, Q28     

金刚藤丸联合热敷双柏散治疗湿热瘀阻型慢性盆腔炎患者的临床疗效

目的探讨金刚藤丸联合热敷双柏散治疗湿热瘀阻型慢性盆腔炎患者的临床疗效。方法选取2018年8月至2019年12月就诊于阳江市中医医院妇科门诊的湿热瘀阻型慢性盆腔炎患者120例作为研究对象,研究过程采用单盲法进行,将口服金刚藤丸联合热敷双柏散治疗的60例纳入观察组,口服金刚藤丸的60例纳入对照组。通过自制"疗效评分表"统计两组的综合疗效,比较两组治疗前后症状、体征评分变化。结果观察组治疗有效率为95.00,对照组治疗有效率91.67%,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05)。治疗后,两组患者症状、体征积分以及综合疗效积分均明显下降,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05)。结论金刚藤丸联合热敷双柏散对湿热瘀阻型慢性盆腔炎临床疗效显著。     

Continuous Stochastic Games of Capital Accumulation with Convex Transitions

We consider a discounted stochastic game of common-property capital accumulation with nonsymmetric players, bounded one-period extraction capacities, and a transition law satisfying a general strong convexity condition. We show that the infinite-horizon problem has a Markov-stationary (subgame-perfect) equilibrium and that every finite-horizon truncation has auniqueMarkovian equilibrium, both in consumption functions which arecontinuous and nondecreasingand have all slopes bounded above by 1. Unlike previous results in strategic dynamic models, these properties are reminiscent of the corresponding optimal growth model.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Codes: C73, O41, Q20.     

2017 KLEIN LECTURE: THE SCIENCE OF USING SCIENCE: TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE THREATS TO SCALABILITY

Policymakers are increasingly facing the challenge of scaling empirical insights. This study provides a theoretical lens into the science of how to use science. Through a simple model, we highlight three elements of the scale-up problem: (1) when does evidence become actionable; (2) properties of the population; and (3) properties of the situation. Until these three areas are fully understood, the threats to scalability will render any scaling exercise as particularly vulnerable. Accordingly, our work represents a call for more policy-based evidence, whereby the nature and extent of the various threats to scalability are explored in the original research program.