The Productivity Effects of Internal and External R&D: Evidence from a Dynamic Panel Data Model*

We examine the impact of internal and external R&D on labour productivity in a 6‐year panel of Dutch manufacturing firms. We apply a dynamic panel data model that allows for decreasing or increasing returns to scale in internal and external R&D and for economies of scope. We find complementarity between internal and external R&D, with a positive impact of external R&D only evident in case of sufficient internal R&D. These findings confirm the role of internal R&D in enhancing absorptive capacity. The scope economies are accompanied by decreasing returns to scale at high levels of internal and external R&D. The analysis indicates that productivity grows by increasing the share of external R&D in total R&D.     

Precautionary and Entrepreneurial Savings: New Evidence from German Households*

Various studies interpret the positive correlation between income risk and wealth as evidence of significant precautionary savings. However, these high estimates emerge from pooling non‐entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, without controlling for heterogeneity. This article provides evidence for Germany based on representative panel data that includes private wealth balance sheets. Entrepreneurs, who face high income risk, hold more wealth than employees, but this tendency is not because of precautionary motives. Instead, they appear to save more for their old age, because they are usually not covered by statutory pension insurance. The analysis accounts for endogeneity in entrepreneurial choice and heterogeneous risk attitudes.     

The Impact of Training on Productivity and Wages: Evidence from British Panel Data*

It is standard in the literature on training to use wages as a sufficient statistic for productivity. This paper examines the effects of work‐related training on direct measures of productivity. Using a new panel of British industries 1983–96 and a variety of estimation techniques we find that work‐related training is associated with significantly higher productivity. A 1% point increase in training is associated with an increase in value added per hour of about 0.6% and an increase in hourly wages of about 0.3%. We also show evidence using individual‐level data sets that is suggestive of training externalities.     

预防动机对居民储蓄的影响--应用平行数据模型的实证分析

通过检验我国居民的教育、医疗、住房开支与储蓄之间的相关性，我们发现平行数据的应用能够很好地解释我国居民的“预防性储蓄”动机。建立完善的医疗保障体系、改革教育体制、完善住房信贷是降低我国巨额储蓄的必经之路。     

转轨时期中国城乡居民消费行为比较研究

本文选取分省(市、自治区)的板块统计数据,运用预防性储蓄和流动性约束假说以及动态建模方法,对转轨时期中国城乡居民的消费行为特征进行了比较研究。实证检验结果表明,中国城镇居民中受流动性约束者的比重要大于农村居民,而农村居民对不确定性以及实际利率变动的反应则要比城镇居民更加敏感,同时,其长期收入弹性系数也较城镇居民要高一些。因此,解决目前的消费不振,迫切需要更多地关注农村和农民问题。     

Monetary Policy and Macroprudential Policy: New Evidence from a World Panel of Countries

The event of the recent financial crisis raises the question of whether policy makers could have done more or something different to prevent the build‐up of financial imbalances. This paper contributes to the field of regulatory impact by tackling the debate on whether central banks should ‘lean against the wind’, while in case the response is positive, how macroprudential policies should be combined with monetary policy. Using an augmented Taylor rule and a sample of 127 global economies, the results provide evidence on the importance of macroprudential issues for the implementation of an effective monetary policy. They also document that the type of adopted macroprudential instrument has a substantial effect on such effectiveness, with this policy mix being less ‘integrated’ when the monetary rule aims at primarily safeguarding inflation stability. The results survive robustness checks under alternative assets.     

State Dependence and Stickiness of Sovereign Credit Ratings: Evidence from a Panel of Countries

Using data from Moody's, we examine three sources of sovereign credit ratings persistence: true state dependence, spurious state dependence and serial error correlation. Accounting for ratings persistence, we also examine whether ratings were sticky or procyclical for two major crises: the European debt crisis and the East Asian crisis. We set up a dynamic panel ordered probit model with autocorrelated disturbances and nonparametrically distributed random effects. An efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is designed for model estimation. We find evidence of stickiness of ratings and of the three sources of ratings persistence, with the true state dependence being weak. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Life‐Cycle Consumption and Children: Evidence from a Structural Estimation

I estimate by maximum likelihood a dynamic model of optimal intertemporal allocation of consumption in the presence of children using high‐quality Danish longitudinal data. The number and age of all children can affect the marginal utility of consumption while income uncertainty, credit constraints and postretirement motives also influence household behaviour. While I estimate that children have a surprisingly small effect on the marginal utility of non‐durable consumption, data simulated from the estimated model replicates similar correlations between log consumption growth and changing household composition as found in the Danish data and typically found in UK and US data. To reconcile the results with existing studies, I illustrate how ignoring precautionary motives increases the estimated importance of children. The results indicate that precautionary motives might play a larger role than children in explaining the observed consumption age profile.     

Consumption insurance and entrepreneurial risk: Evidence from Italian micro-data

Using cross-sectional data from the Bank of Italy's Survey on Household Income and Wealth, we make an attempt to assess the relevance of entrepreneurial risk, i.e., idiosyncratic risk borne by firm owners while running their operations. Our new testing procedure will show that progressively more articulated forms of entrepreneurship do not enjoy a larger degree of risk sharing and will suggest some links between a larger or smaller degree of consumption insurance and variables such as net wealth, asset holding, and net indebtedness. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the corresponding institutions.     

Financial Constraints on German Firms after the Crisis: Evidence from Threshold Panel Estimation

This article studies the existence and magnitude of financial investment constraints in Germany between 2006 and 2012 with a special emphasis on small and medium‐sized firms. The core contention is that the sensitivity of the investment rate to the cash flow rate is a function of a firm's financial position contributing to its access to external finance. The application of a nonlinear panel threshold model reveals that the marginal effect of the cash flow rate on the investment rate is almost twice as strong for ‘high debt’ firms compared to ‘low debt’ firms. This result holds for six out of seven balance sheet threshold variables. For a single specification, the results reveal a non‐monotonic relationship between the cash flow rate and investment rate. Firm size, however, does not explain differences in the cash‐flow‐investment nexus.     

影响电力消费的因素——基于省域面板数据分析

进行中国(不含港、澳、台)电力消费影响因素分析,对中国各个地区电力供求与经济协调发展意义重大。本文收集了1999-2012年以来的31个省区电力消费量的相关数据,对此建立多元回归模型,再对模型分析检验,求该模型,并最终得到模型。     

集聚经济与劳动生产率:基于中国城市面板数据的实证研究

本文基于中国2003～2006年的城市面板数据,通过就业密度、城市相对多样化水平和相对专业化水平等集聚经济因素对城市非农劳动生产率的影响进行了实证分析.在研究过程中,我们通过工具变量法解决了关键解释变量的内生性问题,从而得到更加可靠的研究结果.研究发现,在控制住其他影响因素后,一个城市的就业密度和相对专业化水平对其非农劳动生产率存在着显著的正向影响.本文并在此基础上提出了一些政策建议.     

前景理论、流动性约束与消费行为的不对称--以我国城镇居民为例

本文基于行为经济学提出的“前景理论”,对我国城镇居民的消费行为进行研究。笔者认为,如果把对收入变化的预期作为参照,那么收入的实际变动将可分为“优于预期”和“劣于预期”两类时段,对于不同时段,“前景理论”下的损失规避特征将使消费行为呈现不对称形态。本文由此构造了一个可检验的计量模型,并利用GMM对我国的数据进行检验,结果支持“前景理论”假说的成立,同时拒绝短视行为和流动性约束假说。最后,对消费的时变因素加以考察,发现我国居民的消费也在一定程度上受到制度变革的影响。     

The Effects of UI Benefits on Unemployment and Subsequent Outcomes: Evidence from a Kinked Benefit Rule

This paper analyses the effects of unemployment insurance benefits on unemployment exits and subsequent labour market outcomes. We exploit a piecewise linear relationship between the previous wage and benefits in Finland to identify the causal effects of the benefit level by using a regression kink design. Although we only find weak evidence of an effect on the time to the next job, higher benefits decrease the time spent in part-time unemployment and thus result in more full-time unemployment. The re-employment probability and post-unemployment wage are also negatively affected. The results for the duration of the first post-unemployment job are not conclusive, but in total both employment and earnings in the two years following the beginning of the unemployment spell decrease with higher benefits.     

外商直接投资对我国就业的区域差异与动态效应——基于动态面板数据模型的分析

中国作为最大的发展中国家以及人口最多的国家,就业率高低一直是政府十分关注的宏观经济指标,并且利用外商直接投资增加就业是我国政府外资政策的直接目标之一。本文以我国各个省市区作为横截面单元,利用各横截面单元1988~2005年的样本组成面板数据,进而建立动态面板数据模型来考察FDI对我国不同地区就业的影响。结果表明,FDI对我国不同地区的影响有显著差异。对东部地区而言,FDI对就业有显著的替代效应,而对中、西部地区则效果不明显。     

持久收入与农户储蓄:基于八省微观面板数据的经验研究

本文利用中国八省1056个农户的微观面板数据,采用四种滤子算法分别估计了农户的持久收入和暂时性收入。以此为基础,在持久收入假说的理论框架下分析了中国农户储蓄行为。经验研究的主要结论包括:①中国农户的储蓄行为受到流动性约束和预防性动机的影响,二者都显著地提高了农户的储蓄,降低了农户消费水平。并且,对于低收入人群,流动性约束提高储蓄的效应更加明显;②农户储蓄函数的估计结果一致拒绝了标准持久收入假说的确定性等价推论,拓展的持久收入假说更适合刻画中国农户的储蓄行为。     

Product Market Competition,Monetary Policy Regimes and Inflation Dynamics: Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries

We empirically analyze the impact of product market competition on the responsiveness of inflation to macroeconomic imbalances. If competition is high the response of inflation to lagged inflation, unemployment and import prices is reduced, while inflation is more responsive to changes in productivity growth in countries in which competition is above the OECD average. Given the (‘good luck’) macroeconomic trajectories of the 1990s–2000s, the structural reforms that made goods markets more competitive improved the ability of OECD economies to smooth (dis)inflationary shocks, while changes in the monetary policy framework had a modest role in taming inflation during the Great Moderation.     

高隐含碳行业产出增长与能源消耗关系:中国工业部门的经验

回顾了贸易隐含碳以及增长与能源关系相关研究,推导投入产出模型以及计算CO_2排放强度矩阵,测算中国24个工业行业国内CO_2排放和出口贸易CO_2排放,证实部分行业属于高排放和高能耗行业,而且部分行业出口贸易国内碳排放比重较高;基于测算结果选择中国工业出口贸易隐含碳比重较高的11个行业,构建面板数据模型并进行平稳性检验、协整检验及个体固定效应检验,结果证实这些行业能源消耗与产出长期稳定关系和较大的弹性系数作用;最后提出政策建议,强调排放消费者负责制的排放责任认定原则,强化我国出口贸易隐含碳较高行业的产业结构低碳化,提高能源利用效率的技术创新。     

AAO工艺节能降耗研究

Anaerobic-Anoxic-Oxic (AAO)工艺是我国城市污水处理工艺中最为常见的一种,如何实现这些污水处理工艺的节能降耗对实现我国环保行业的节能减排目标意义明显。本文通过分析荆门竹皮河项目部污水治理工程中采用AAO工艺的单元在运行过程中能耗的基础上,从提高蓄水量、采用变频节能设备、自动控制技术的应用三个方面,提出AAO工艺的节能运行措施以及AAO污水处理工艺节能降耗的建议。     

FDI技术溢出效应的门限特征研究——来自中国省际面板数据的证据

已有的关于FDI(对外直接投资)技术溢出效应研究文献中,大多数学者认为FDI技术溢出会显著地促进东道主国家的经济增长,然而,利用中国1997年-2009年的省际面板数据,对FDI技术溢出效应进行研究却发现,FDI技术溢出效应在中国不同的地区存在显著差异;运用门限回归模型,从地区经济发展水平、地区开放程度、地区人力资本存量、地区金融发展程度等四个方面检验了FDI技术溢出效应的门限特征,并测算出了引发积极FDI技术外溢效应的门限水平。