On measuring the utilization rate of employed labour

This paper deals with the factors that influence plans to retire from the labour force. We use a theoretical model to explain the empirical findings from a bivariate probit model relating economic, demographic, and social characteristics to retirement plans for over 7000 women and men between the ages of 40 and 64. The results of the analysis concerning retirement intentions suggest that personal, economic and household characteristics are more important determinants of retirement plans for women than men.     

Discounting long run average growth in stochastic dynamic programs

Summary. Finding solutions to the Bellman equation often relies on restrictive boundedness assumptions. In this paper we develop a method of proof that allows to dispense with the assumption that returns are bounded from above. In applications our assumptions only imply that long run average (expected) growth is sufficiently discounted, in sharp contrast with classical assumptions either absolutely bounding growth or bounding each period (instead of long run) maximum (instead of average) growth. We discuss our work in relation to the literature and provide several examples. Received: July 26, 2000; revised version: July 10, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" I am specially grateful to Cuong Le Van and to anonymous referee for detecting an error in a previous version of this paper and for suggestions that sensibly improved the paper. Comments and suggestions are also acknowledged to Michele Boldrin, Raouf Boucekkine, Fabrice Collard, Tim Kehoe, Omar Licandro, and Luis Puch. I am also indebted to participants to the III Summer School on Economic Theory held at the Universidade de Vigo, the Macroeconomics Workshop at the Universitat Autò}noma de Barcelona, and the Econometrics Seminar at Tilburg University. Financial support from the Belgian government, under project PAI P4/01, at the IRES-UCL, from a European Marie Curie fellowship, Grant HPMF-CT-1999-00410, at the CEPREMAP, and from IVIE and Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and FEDER, under project BEC2001-0535, at the Universidad de Alicante, is gratefully acknowledged.     

Estimating average economic growth in time series data with persistency

This paper studies estimation of average economic growth in time series models with persistency. In particular, a joint estimation of the trend coefficient and the autoregressive parameter is considered. An analysis on the proposed estimator is provided. Our analysis is also extended to the case with general disturbance distributions. A nonlinear M estimator and a class of partially adaptive M estimators which adapt themselves with respect to a measure of the tailthickness are considered. The joint estimator and its partially adapted version are compared with several conventional estimators. Monte Carlo experiments indicate that the proposed estimators have good finite sample performance. We use the proposed estimation procedure to estimate the growth rates for real GNP and consumer price index in 40 countries.     

组织学习测度的研究述评

(一)基于组织的测度研究 在基于组织的组织学习测度研究中,相关的研究主要集中在三个方面,即以企业或者其下属部门为研究对象的宏观研究、以个人为研究对象的微观研究以及混合了两种方法的中观研究。     

促进经济增长的利率政策

(一)利率与经济增长关系的理论回顾 虽然绝大多数经济学家都承认利率是影响经济增长的重要变量,但是对于何种利率政策对经济增长最有利这个问题,经济学家的观点则存在深刻的分歧。     

On measuring the benefits of lower transport costs

Despite large amounts invested in rural roads in developing countries, little is known about their benefits. This paper derives an expression for the willingness-to-pay for a reduction in transport costs from the canonical agricultural household model and uses it to estimate the benefits of a hypothetical road project. Estimation is based on novel cross-sectional data collected in a small region of Madagascar with enormous, yet plausibly exogenous, variation in transport cost. A road that essentially eliminated transport costs in the study area would boost the incomes of the remotest households – those facing transport costs of about $75/ton – by nearly half, mostly by raising non-farm earnings. This benefit estimate is contrasted to one based on a hedonic approach.     

Autonomous demand and the warranted rate of growth

Unless equality is exogenously imposed between the rate of growthof autonomous demand and the warranted rate, a given rate ofgrowth of autonomous demand generates various 'short-period'warranted rates of growth, period by period. In a stable case,these 'short-period' warranted rates converge to a unique 'long-period'warranted rate, this being determined independently of the rateof growth of autonomous demand. Thus one has a non-steady pathof normal output growth. Different rates of growth of autonomousdemand engender, for one and the same configuration of normalincome distribution, different paths of normal output growth.Moreover, in a circulating-capital-only model with a given constantrate of growth of autonomous demand, different initial ratesof growth in aggregate demand also produce different paths ofnormal output growth. These results point to the importanceof effective demand in capital accumulation.     

Does exchange rate volatility hinder export growth?

The paper examines the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade using an ARCH-in-mean model. The advantages of this statistical approach vis-a-vis earlier approaches is that it provides more efficient coefficient estimates and avoids the problem of spurious regressions. Exchange rate volatility was found to have a negative impact on Canadian and Japanese exports to the United States and on Australian exports to the world. For Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the relationship was found to be positive. The magnitude of the impact of a 10% increase in exchange rate volatility on export volumes was found to range from a reduction of 7.4% (Canada) to an increase of 5% (Sweden). The results indicate that exports invoiced in the importer's currency are affected negatively by exchange rate volatility, and exports invoiced in the exporter's currency are affected positively. A partial equilibrium, profit maximization model is derived to support these findings.     

China's economic growth and its real exchange rate

The shocks that underlie China's comparatively rapid growth include gains in productivity, factor accumulation and policy reforms that increase allocative efficiency. The well-known Balassa–Samuelson hypothesis links productivity growth in tradable industries with real appreciations. Yet it relies heavily on the law of one price applying for tradable goods, against which there is now considerable evidence. In its absence, other growth shocks also affect the real exchange rate by influencing relative supply or demand for home product varieties. This paper investigates the pre-conditions for the Balassa–Samuelson hypothesis to predict a real appreciation in the Chinese case. It then quantifies the links between all growth shocks and the Chinese real exchange rate using a dynamic model of the global economy with open capital accounts and full demographic underpinnings to labor supply. The results suggest that financial capital inflows most affect the real exchange rate in the short term, while differential productivity is strong in the medium term. Contrary to expectation, in the long term demographic forces prove to be weak relative to changes in the skill composition of the labor force, which enhances services sector performance and depreciates the real exchange rate.     

Exchange rate volatility and export growth in Nigeria

This article examines the impact of exchange rate volatility on Nigeria's exports to its most important trading-partner–the United States over the quarterly period January 1980 to April 2001. Using cointegration and vector error correction (VECM) framework, empirical tests indicate the presence of a unique cointegrating vector linking real exports, real foreign income, relative export prices and real exchange rate volatility in the long run. Furthermore, the results show that increases in the volatility of the real exchange rate raise uncertainty about profits to be made which exert significant negative effects on exports both in the short- and long-run. Our results also show that improvements in the terms of trade (represented by declines in the real exchange rate) and real foreign income exert positive effects on export activity. Most importantly, we found that the trade liberalization and economic reform policies implemented in the post-1986 structural adjustment period contributed to Nigeria's export performance. Overall, our findings suggest that Nigeria's exporting activities can be further boosted by policies aimed at achieving and maintaining a stable competitive real exchange rate.     

The endogeneity of the natural rate of growth

The aim of this paper is to estimate the sensitivity of thenatural rate of growth to the actual rate of growth for 15 OECDcountries over the period 1961–95, on the hypothesis thatthe natural rate of growth is not exogenously given. To do this,we estimate the natural rate of growth and, then, how it changeswhen the actual growth rate is different from the natural rate.As a side test of the endogeneity hypothesis, we also test forthe direction of causality between national output and factorinputs for the same set of countries. Our results support theidea that the natural rate of growth is not independent of theactual rate of growth and bring to the fore the importance offocusing on demand as well as supply for an understanding oflong-run growthrate differences between countries.     

Macrodynamics of debt-financed investment-led growth with interest rate rules

This article demonstrates the diverse dynamic possibilities arising out of a simple macroeconomic model of debt-financed investment-led growth in the presence of interest rate rules. We show possibilities of convergence to steady state, and growth cycles around it as well as various complex dynamics. We investigate whether, given this framework, the financial sector can provide endogenous bounds to an otherwise unstable system. The effectiveness of monetary policy in the form of an interest rate rule targeting capacity utilization is examined under this context.     

On the endogeneity of exchange rate regimes

The literature has identified three main approaches to account for the way exchange rate regimes are chosen: (i) the optimal currency area theory; (ii) the financial view, which highlights the consequences of international financial integration; and (iii) the political view, which stresses the use of exchange rate anchors as credibility enhancers in politically challenged economies. Using de facto and de jure regime classifications, we test the empirical relevance of these approaches separately and jointly. We find overall empirical support for all of them, although the incidence of financial and political aspects varies substantially between industrial and non-industrial economies. Furthermore, we find that the link between de facto regimes and their underlying fundamentals has been surprisingly stable over the years, suggesting that the global trends often highlighted in the literature can be traced back to the evolution of their natural determinants, and that actual policies have been less influenced by the frequent twist and turns in the exchange rate regime debate.     

Data envelopment analysis for measuring economic growth in terms of welfare beyond GDP

Recent discussions about the definition of growth in terms of welfare beyond GDP suggest that it is of urgent need to develop new approaches for measuring the economic performance of firms and national economies. The new concepts should simultaneously take into account economic as well as social and environmental goals. First we present several approaches to productivity measures. Then we extend the data envelopment analysis models with environment indicators in order to measure the so called eco-efficiency and social indicators to take into consideration social performance. For illustration, we perform the analysis of 30 European countries for the year 2010. The last section concerns itself with the possibilities of inter-temporal analysis of the proposed models and their use in ex-ante evaluation of different policy scenarios.     

On optimal growth under uncertainty

In a recent paper Brock and Mirman showed that in a one-sector model of economic growth under uncertainty the long-run behavior of the optimal capital stock is governed by the basic properties of an acyclic ergodic Markov process. This paper considers a similar model and has two purposes. First, necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal policy functions are derived in a regime in which future utilities are discounted. These conditions lead, in an example, to an explicit optimal policy function, which is used to display the steady-state solution for the capital stock under an optimal policy. Secondly, in the Brock and Mirman paper it was assumed that the production functions are ordered. We show that all the properties proved by Brock and Mirman are satisfied even when the production functions are not ordered.