A macroeconomic model of Russian transition

We present a model in which capital assets can only be owned by members of a relatively small politically connected elite (‘the oligarchs’), each member of which faces a given risk of being expropriated, and we investigate the implications of such an imperfection of property rights for the transition to a market economy. At the start of the transition, the oligarchs are long on local capital assets but short on safe deposits abroad. This causes a depression phase characterized by acute liquidity constraints and large capital outflows at the same time. As the oligarchs acquire enough safe deposits, the economy enters a recovery phase, still accompanied by capital outflows. The model can parsimoniously explain both the steep decline suffered by the Russian economy in the first stage of its transition to a market economy and the subsequent turnaround. The decline could be avoided by allowing foreigners to own some domestic capital assets, but home‐country oligarchs may not be able credibly to collectively commit to such a reform.     

Dictators and oligarchs: A dynamic theory of contested property rights

In an economy with weak economic and political institutions, the major institutional choices are made strategically by oligarchs and dictators. The conventional wisdom presumes that as rent-seeking is harmful for oligarchs themselves, institutions such as property rights will emerge spontaneously. We explicitly model a dynamic game between the oligarchs and a dictator who can contain rent-seeking. The oligarchs choose either a weak dictator (who can be overthrown by an individual oligarch) or a strong dictator (who can only be replaced via a consensus of oligarchs). In equilibrium, no dictator can commit to both: (i) protecting the oligarchs' property rights from the other oligarchs and (ii) not expropriating oligarchs himself. We show that a weak dictator does not limit rent-seeking. A strong dictator does reduce rent-seeking but also expropriates individual oligarchs. We show that even though eliminating rent-seeking is Pareto optimal, weak dictators do get appointed in equilibrium and rent-seeking continues. This outcome is especially likely when economic environment is highly volatile.     

The role of Provincial Government Spending Composition in growth and convergence in China

China’s development policy since 1978 has differed across regions. With rapid aggregate growth has come widening regional inequality. The fiscal decentralisation reforms in 1994 shifted political pressure onto provincial officials to boost local growth through local public investments. These investments affect regional convergence by counteracting regulatory frictions in factor accumulation, and can also determine steady-state growth. However, the effect of public spending allocations across physical and human capital on growth and convergence processes is empirically unexplored for Chinese provinces. We take provincial time-series data on public spending by category, finding local public spending and its components augment convergence rates differently across regions. Spending on education and health contributes significantly more to growth and convergence than capital spending, confirming that the public capital-spending bias is not a local growth-optimising strategy. We suggest a policy of aligning local government promotion incentives to human capital targets to correct local resource misallocation.     

The Coevolution of Finance and Property Rights: Evidence from Transition Economies

The transition from communism to capitalism was necessarily accompanied by a sudden and abrupt increase in the financialization of society. This increase occurred in an environment that, even now, still has little experience with or expertise in financialization. Given that financialization occurred simultaneously with the growth and evolution of other political and economic institutions, the question arises: What was the effect on these other nascent institutions like property rights? This article empirically analyzes the relationship between financialization and property rights in transition countries. Using a unique monthly database of twenty transition countries over a period from 1989 to 2012, this article finds that the influence of financialization depends on which definition of “financialization” is used. In particular, increases in basic financial intermediation improved property rights. However, higher-order “financialization,” proxied here by the size of capital markets and the wages in the financial sector, appeared to have a negative impact on the development of broad-based property rights in transition.     

Financial integration,capital market development and economic performance: Empirical evidence from Botswana

A substantial body of literature suggests that financial market development plays a significant role in economic growth through fostering savings mobilization, easing risk management, promoting technological transfer and reducing information and transaction costs. However, the effect of financial integration on growth remains an empirically controversial topic. This paper explores the impact of financial integration on economic growth in Botswana over the period 1974–2009. We do not find a direct, robust and statistically significant association between financial integration and economic growth in Botswana. However, our results show that financial integration is positively and significantly correlated with financial development in the Botswana economy. Although the relationship between financial integration and growth initially is, at best, weak, we believe this is not to say that financial integration does not promote economic growth, as it could do so indirectly through fostering financial development. Policy-wise, we observe that institutional quality, lower level of government spending and a stable macroeconomic environment are important determinants of both financial development and long-term economic growth. Thus, the Botswana government should continue strengthening and developing its capital market to international standards so as to attract both local and foreign investors and encourage foreign investment in the non-mining sectors. The government should ensure that financial reforms are coordinated, law enforcement authorities are strengthened and property rights are protected to reduce investment risks.     

Rapacious Resource Depletion,Excessive Investment and Insecure Property Rights: A Puzzle

For a country fractionalized in competing factions, each owning part of the stock of natural exhaustible resources, or with insecure property rights, we analyze how resources are transformed into productive capital to sustain consumption. We allow property rights to improve as the country transforms natural resources into capital. The ensuing power struggle about the control of resources is solved as a non-cooperative differential game. Prices of resources and depletion increase faster than suggested by the Hotelling rule, especially with many competing factions and less secure property rights. As a result, the country substitutes away from resources to capital too rapidly and invests more than predicted by the Hartwick rule. The theory suggests that power struggle boosts output but depresses aggregate consumption and welfare, especially in highly fractionalized countries with less secure property rights. Also, adjusted net saving estimates calculated by the World Bank using market prices over-estimate welfare-based measures of genuine saving. Since our theory suggests that genuine saving is zero while empirically they are negative in resource-rich, fractionalized countries, we suggest ways of resolving this puzzle.     

Financial Liberalization, Property Rights, and Growth in an Overlapping-Generations Model

Using an endogenous growth model in which countries differ with respect to property rights protection, the paper analyzes the growth and welfare effects of removing capital controls, and studies the political support for a reform which improves the quality of property rights. When these are poorly protected, liberalization of capital movements may foster growth in the short run but eliminates it in the long run. The removal of capital controls may benefit agents at the time of liberalization, hurting future generations. Ceteris paribus , political support for a reform of property rights is stronger in the closed than in the open economy.     

Exchange Rate Uncertainty, Sociopolitical Instability and Private Investment: Empirical Evidence from Latin America

Using exchange rate uncertainty (ERU) and sociopolitical instability (SPI) as measures of macroeconomic imbalances and political disorder, respectively, we investigate the link between these two factors and private investment in Latin America. The analysis shows that while ERU and SPI negatively impact private investment jointly, the individual impact of ERU is much greater than that of SPI. Our results should prove useful both to policymakers and others interested in understanding the impact of uncertainty on private investment. Most importantly, macroeconomic policies that limit excess volatility in relative prices should lessen an economy’s general level of investment risk leading to enhanced private investment. Further, though lesser in degree, institutional reforms that reduce social tensions and strengthen property rights should also stimulate private investment. Finally, structural reforms that combine these two are likely to foster a robust market for private investment thus contributing to an economy’s growth potential.     

知识产权保护的技术创新效应——基于技术交易市场视角和省级面板数据的实证分析

文章利用1997-2008年省级面板数据,以技术市场成交额占当地GDP的比重来衡量地区知识产权保护水平,采用系统广义矩估计和门槛回归方法实证分析了知识产权保护对技术创新的影响。研究结果表明,加强知识产权保护能够显著促进技术创新;知识产权保护与研发物质资本和人力资本投入之间分别具有互补性和替代性;我国大部分地区已经跨越了知识产权保护水平的门槛值,加强知识产权保护不会阻碍技术创新。因此,要提高我国的自主创新能力,进一步加强知识产权保护不容懈怠。     

Educated Bandits: Endogenous Property Rights and Intra‐Elite Distribution of Human Capital

This article presents a simple model of endogenous institutions linking property rights to the distribution of human capital between political and economic elite groups. In the absence of institutional constraints, the commitment problem of the political elites is intensified, because their human capital can turn out to be a double‐edged sword raising their efficiency in predation as well as in production. In general, the more human capital the political elites have, the stronger the institutional concessions they are ready to offer to attarct investment. Provided that predation depends sufficiently on human capital, the political elites can credibly commit to respect property rights by specializing in fields that are relevant for the priavte sector. Brain drain can undermine the transition to stable property rights even when the political elites are well‐educated. Comparative narratives from Malaysia and Zimbabwe are presented to motivate the theoretical discussion.     

INSTITUTIONS AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE: CROSS-COUNTRY TESTS USING ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONAL MEASURES

The impact of property rights on economic growth is examined using indicators provided by country risk evaluators to potential foreign investors. Indicators include evaluations of contract enforceability and risk of expropriation. Using these variables, property rights are found to have a greater impact on investment and growth than has previously been found for proxies such as the Gastil indices of liberties, and frequencies of revolutions, coups and political assassinations. Rates of convergence to U.S.-level incomes increase notably when these property rights variables are included in growth regressions. These results are robust to the inclusion of measures of factor accumulation and of economic policy.     

Product life‐cycle,knowledge capital,and comparative advantage

This paper empirically investigates the effect of product life‐cycle on trade patterns. We measure the product life‐cycle length with patent citation data at the industry level. Using bilateral trade data from 2002 to 2006, we find that countries with more knowledge capital endowment export more in industries with shorter product life‐cycles. We show that this pattern is largely driven by the risk of imitation. The pattern is reversed when imitation is limited by stronger intellectual property rights.     

Effects of financial liberalization on financial market development and economic performance of the SSA region: An empirical assessment

This study investigates the role of financial liberalization in promoting financial deepening and economic growth in Sub-Saharan African countries (SSA). We apply the more efficient system GMM estimator in dynamic panel data that combines first difference and original level specification to deal with the problems of weak instruments. Our dataset covers 21 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period of 1981–2009.Additionally, the paper sought to examine both the direct and indirect impacts of financial liberalization policies on economic growth and financial deepening using a much more comprehensive and recent financial liberalization dataset. The econometric results suggest that, on average, financial liberalization is negatively associated with income growth in SSA region. Our findings provide support for the skeptical empirical view of financial liberalization in emerging markets, which show that liberalization, by itself, might be associated with lower economic growth through leading to destabilization, stimulating domestic capital flight and increasing the risk of financial fragility. However, the research finds that financial liberalization does indeed impact positively on financial deepening and resource mobilization in SSA region, after controlling for key macroeconomic factors such as institutional quality, fiscal imbalances and inflation. In fact the study reports a stronger reforms effect for countries that have stronger legal institutions, protection of property rights and higher human capital. Policy-wise, the study finds that institutional and human capital factors are important in explaining growth and financial development; therefore, it is necessary for SSA governments to promote a stronger and more transparent institutional development as we move forward.     

Demographic structure and the security of property rights: The role of development and democracy

It is often argued that countries with a high population share of children and young workers should attract large capital inflows from aging industrialized economies. However, many of these countries deter foreign investors by a high risk of creeping or outright expropriation. In this paper we explore whether the correlation between countries' demographic structure and the perceived security of property rights reflects a causal relationship. We show that, in low-income countries, the ratio of young to old workers has a positive effect on the perceived security of property rights if the political system is sufficiently democratic. By contrast, this relationship cannot be observed in middle income countries.     

人力资本对湖南经济增长贡献的实证研究

人力资本正逐步取代物质资本和劳动,成为经济增长的关键因素。通过构建以科布一道格拉斯生产函数为基础的计量经济模型,定量分析了人力资本在湖南经济发展中的作用,并对人力资本的作用进行了省际间的横向比较,得出结论：人力资本虽对湖南经济增长发挥着积极作用,但其作用机制不如北京和广东两地强。因此,建议通过增加教育经费投入、强化人才吸纳机制等措施提高湖南人力资本存量。     

Economic growth,financial crisis,and property rights: observer bias in perception-based measures

Recent years have seen an increasing number of empirical papers using subjective indicators in cross-country quantitative analyses of growth. We evaluate potential observer biases in the three most commonly employed subjective measures of property rights – taken from the Heritage Foundation, Fraser Institute, and World Economic Forum. Drawing on cross-national data for 156 countries during the years 2000 – 2010, we use Granger causality tests to assess whether exposure to recent information on economic performance introduces bias to coding of property rights scores. Further, we evaluate whether the Great Recession led observers to change property rights scores in advanced nations. We find consistent evidence that observers who provide subjective coding of property rights scores rated nations more positively when their economic performance was positive, and more negatively during the recent global financial crisis. Taken together, our findings suggest that coding of commonly employed property rights measures are subject to substantial observer bias.     

Property Rights,Governance, and Economic Development

In this review article we give an intuitive account of why good institutions in general, and secure property rights in particular, matter for economic growth and development. We also discuss implications for good governance, defined as the efficient provision of property rights and other aspects of governance. Finally, we briefly touch on political institutions that might be conducive to good governance and thus economic development.     

Economic Growth and Decline with Endogenous Property Rights

This article introduces endogenous institutional changeinto a neoclassical growth model. For some parameter values,all Markov perfect equilibria involve a shift from common propertyto private property followed by a shift back to common property.Even in the presence of a linear production technology, thissequence of switches generates growth rates that are increasingat low levels of capital and decreasing at high levels of capital.This result rationalizes the hump-shaped growth path followedby some countries through history, as well as the conditionalconvergence observed in postwar data. For other parameter values,there are also equilibria in which common property prevails forever.This result rationalizes the low-growth traps in which many poorcountries find themselves.     

地方经济增长目标与要素市场扭曲

本文采用中国2005—2017年省级政府工作报告中的经济增长目标数据,实证检验了地方经济增长目标对要素市场扭曲的影响。研究发现:(1)地方经济增长目标对要素市场具有显著的扭曲效应。通过干预信贷资源配置、扩大土地出让和压低劳动力工资等方式扭曲要素市场是地方政府实现经济增长目标的主要方式。(2)地方经济增长目标对要素市场扭曲的影响存在区域异质性。经济增长目标对要素市场的扭曲效应在中西部地区和保增长压力较大地区更为明显。(3)地方经济增长目标对要素市场扭曲的影响存在基于制度环境的门槛效应。随着金融制度、法律制度和产权制度的改善,经济增长目标对要素市场的扭曲效应将会减弱。本文为政府目标管理和要素市场扭曲等领域的研究提供了新视角,为相关政策的制定提供了重要的现实依据。     

地方经济增长目标与要素市场扭曲*

本文采用中国2005—2017年省级政府工作报告中的经济增长目标数据，实证检验了地方经济增长目标对要素市场扭曲的影响。研究发现：（1）地方经济增长目标对要素市场具有显著的扭曲效应。通过干预信贷资源配置、扩大土地出让和压低劳动力工资等方式扭曲要素市场是地方政府实现经济增长目标的主要方式。（2）地方经济增长目标对要素市场扭曲的影响存在区域异质性。经济增长目标对要素市场的扭曲效应在中西部地区和保增长压力较大地区更为明显。（3）地方经济增长目标对要素市场扭曲的影响存在基于制度环境的门槛效应。随着金融制度、法律制度和产权制度的改善，经济增长目标对要素市场的扭曲效应将会减弱。本文为政府目标管理和要素市场扭曲等领域的研究提供了新视角，为相关政策的制定提供了重要的现实依据。