Twenty-two econometric tests on the gravitation and convergence of industrial rates of return in New Zealand and Taiwan

We test the hypotheses of industry return rates either gravitating around or converging towards a common value in Taiwan and New Zealand. We adopt various econometric approaches. The results are then nested in a meta-analytic framework together with those of the past literature. Various kinds of limitations to capital mobility can hamper the tendential equalization of return rates. Focusing on those arising from different innovation capabilities across industries can pave the way to collaboration between evolutionary and radical political economics.     

Unproductive labour,capital accumulation and profitability crisis in the Greek economy

The focus of this paper is on the evolution of the major macroeconomic variables of classical political economy and the contrast with their orthodox counterparts in the quest to identify the causes of the current crisis in the Greek economy. Our analysis shows that declining profitability past a certain point leads to a stagnant mass of real net profits that discourage investment and increase unemployment. More specifically, for the period 1970–2007 for which we have detailed data, we identify the so-called silent depression of the 1970s and early 1980s, the new golden age of accumulation during which the capitalization of the production process led to a rapidly growing productivity and with stagnant or slowly rising real wages increased the rate of surplus value to new heights. As a consequence, the rate of profit from the mid-1980s onwards displayed a mildly rising trend and remained at a much lower level than that of the early 1970s. The rate of profit starts to fall after 2007, the year of the onset of the (world) economic crisis, and this continues up to 2014. Our econometric analysis based on an ARDL model further shows that the incremental rate of return, a variable derived from, and therefore strictly related to the average rate of profit, constitutes a by far more concrete measure of profitability and, in combination with the real interest rate, shapes the process of capital accumulation.     

An empirical investigation of the relationship between education and growth in Pakistan

In this paper we try to examine the impact of education on growth in Pakistan for the time period of 1973–2001. Education, measured as gross enrollments and total expenditures, is broken down into primary, secondary and tertiary as well as by gender in each of the above categories. Time series techniques are used to determine whether education, for each category, has a causal impact on growth. The robustness of these results is then examined using the Levine–Renelt (1992) methodology. We find that secondary and higher education has a strong and robust impact on growth, whereas, at the primary level only initial female enrolments show a causal but not robust impact on growth.     

Economies of scale in the US computer industry: An empirical investigation using data envelopment analysis

Up to recently, economists have had no good tools to measure the returns to scale of individual corporations in an industry. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a linear programming technique for determining the efficiency frontier (the envelope) to the inputs and outputs of a collection of individual corporations or other productive units. While DEA offers an avenue for calculating the returns to scale of individual corporations, the approach has been riddled by mathematical complications arising from the possibility of alternate optima. The present paper develops theory for calculating the entire range of these alternate optima. Furthermore, in a quite ambitions empirical application, DEA is employed to determine the time path of returns to scale of all publicly held U.S. computer companies over the time period 1980–1991. For the great majority of companies, a unique time path is obtained; only in less than 4 percent of the linear programming calculations is an entire range of alternate optima obtained. The results indicate that the computer industry was polarized into two camps: large aging corporations with decreasing returns to scale, and swarms of small upstart companies with advanced technology exhibiting increasing returns to scale.     

The impact of IT investment on firm performance in China: An empirical investigation of the Chinese electronics industry

Over the past three decades, the impact of information technology (IT) investments on firm performance has been the subject of active research. Although many studies have shown positive and significant benefits derived from IT investment, the findings of almost all these studies are based on data collected in developed countries. Few studies have been conducted to validate these results and to determine whether or not they are still applicable in developing countries. This study tries to investigate the effects of IT investment on firm financial performance in the electronics industry of China, still classified as a developing country, and compare it with the United States. Findings show that IT investment has a positive impact on firm performance in China. Moreover, the impact in China is not different from what occurred in the United States in terms of direction and the size against the assertion of previous studies and expectations.     

上海近代崛起的人力资本因素分析——1933年上海人力资本的估算及与全国的比较

居于中国近代化中心地位的上海,当时的人力资本状况与近代化进程之间有何联系?文章运用现代人力资本估算中的LIHK方法对1933年上海和中国的人力资本进行了估算和比较。结果表明:上海在平均人力资本上具有极其显著的优势。1933年,上海人力资本总存量占当年全国人力资本总存量的26%以上,其平均人力资本约为全国平均人力资本的33倍。与物质资本相比,上海1933年平均人力资本仅及平均物质资本的27.7%,但这一比例仍大大高于全国的水平。     

An empirical investigation of the balance of embodied emission in trade: Industry structure and emission abatement

By constructing the world panel dataset for the pollution emission embedded in international trade of 132 countries for the period between 1988 and 2008, we investigate whether the balance of embodied emission in trade (BEET) is consistent with the implication of pollution haven hypothesis (PHH). By using two differently constructed datasets, we are able to distinguish between the composition (i.e., changes in industry structure of international trade) effect and the technique (i.e., improvement in emission abatement) effect. We find that the composition effect is neither related with the income level nor the democracy level of countries. However, the empirical evidence, with consideration for the technique effect, provides a partial support that income level is negatively related with the BEET. Therefore, the BEET in fact has worsened for developing countries, but not by the composition effect assumed in the PHH.