The effect of real wages and inflation on labour productivity in Malaysia

This study examines the relationship between labour productivity, real wages and inflation in Malaysia using the bounds testing approach to cointegration and also the Granger causality test. The findings of this study suggest that inflation is negatively related to labour productivity. However, the effect of real wages on labour productivity is non-linear and the two have an inverted-U shape relationship. From a policy viewpoint, the Granger causality test shows that real wages Granger-cause labour productivity, but there is no evidence of reversal causation. Hence, the Malaysian dataset supports the claims by the efficiency wage theory. Moreover, we find that inflation and labour productivity in Malaysia have bilateral causality in the short- and the long-run.     

Low skill wages and mismeasured inflation

The current literature presents evidence that the real wage of male workers at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution has fallen since 1970. Yet, contributions within this literature deflate nominal wages using a mismeasured deflator. Another strand of literature documents that the mismeasurement of the deflator is sizable, with recent estimates exceeding0.6 percentage points per year. In this paper, I adjust the deflator and reestimate the implied evolution of male low skill wages. This simple exercise implies that male low skill wages were about 15 log-points higher in 2013 than in 1970.     

我国房地产税与房价关系的实证研究

本文以我国1988--2006年房地产税和房价的相关数据为基础,通过协整分析、向量自回归、误差修正和Granger因果检验,研究了我国房地产税对房价的短期影响及两者的长期关系。结论如下：我国房地产税和房价之间存在长期稳定的均衡关系,房价和房地产税存在正相关关系,调高房地产税会引起房价增长;在不考虑地方公共支出对房价影响的情况下,房地产税的长期影响效应要大于短期影响效应;我国房地产税制设置欠完善,房地产税的变化会影响房价,而房价的变化不会影响房地产税。最后,本文提出,应对现行的房地产税收制度进行改革,减少房地产流通环节的税种和税负,开征物业税。     

Community banks,money and labour productivity

Does money affect productivity? We examine whether bank deposits, a measure of the money supply that excludes currency in circulation, influence labour productivity. Banks deposits are special in that they facilitate transactions and, in aggregate, add liquidity and credit availability to a region. By exploiting the distribution of community bank deposits across the states, we test the hypothesis that money is an input to the production function under a variety of panel data methods. We find evidence that bank transaction deposits and total deposits along with other production function inputs such as wages, labour and gross state product are cointegrated across the states; however, the economic contribution of money to labour productivity appears limited.     

Advanced technology,innovation, wages and productivity in the Canadian manufacturing sector

In this article, we used a two-step estimation procedure, where in the first stage, the number of advanced manufacturing technologies used in the firm was estimated using a negative binomial regression, and the expenditure on process and product innovation was estimated using a type II Tobit procedure. In the second stage, we used the predicted values from the first stage in wage and labour productivity equations. The data were from the 2009 Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy which was linked to the General Index of Financial Information (2004–2009) and the Longitudinal Employment Analysis Program (2004–2009). The implications for policy are that we should not expect large aggregate effects of innovation on productivity and employment. We should expect wage increases and productivity increases, with process innovation. We should also expect moderate wage increases with product innovation, and contrary to process innovation, the effect on productivity of product innovation was negative.     

Tax decentralization,labour productivity,and employment in OECD countries

Tax decentralization should improve the efficiency of local governments and ultimately boost output growth. However, the empirical evidence is mixed. Decomposing output growth into labour productivity and employment growth, we show that the ultimate effect of fiscal decentralization on growth depends on which factor prevails, thus rendering the direct estimation of tax decentralization on growth ambiguous. Using an instrumental variable approach, with instruments based on institutional similarities and geographic distance, the empirical analysis on a sample of 20 OECD countries shows that the positive and significant effect of tax decentralization on the employment growth rate is offset by the reduction of labour productivity growth, resulting in the absence of any statistically significant effect on output growth.     

On the Granger causality between median inflation and price dispersion

The Granger-causal relationship between the size and dispersion of fluctuations in sub-components of the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) is examined using both in-sample and out-of-sample tests and data from January 1968 to December 2008. Strong in-sample evidence is found for feedback between median inflation and price dispersion; the evidence for Granger-causation from median inflation to price dispersion remains strong in out-of-sample testing, but is less strong for Granger-causation in the opposite direction. The implications of these results for the variety of price-level determination models in the literature are discussed.     

中国房地产投资与经济增长的计量分析

近几年,中国房地产市场比较热,不断掀起投资的浪潮,中国的经济随之也较快地增长。但是金融危机席卷全球,对于2009年,中国的房地产投资与经济增长又如何呢？本文立足于现实情况,采集了15年的数据先对房地产投资和GDP进行组合预测,然后运用计量经济的相关知识对这十几年的数据进行定量分析,提出自己的见解,并展望未来。     

Endogenous R&D networks when labour unions have preferences over wages and employment

We develop a model to analyse the pattern of R&D network formation when unions have relative preferences over wages and employment. Within a three-firm industry, we show that when the unions place a low weight on wages and technological spillovers are low, a partial R&D network that includes two firms but excludes the third emerges in equilibrium. In contrast, when the unions care a lot about wages, a complete R&D network that includes all firms emerges. For all other intermediate levels of union preferences over wages, there is no strong stable equilibrium network. Empirical implications emerge from these findings, which are also discussed.     

Active labour market programmes and reservation wages: it is a hazard

This article uses a randomized controlled trial to show that positive earnings effects of a labour market programme can be caused by either a faster return to employment together with a lowering of reservation wages or a more moderate return to employment together with an increase in reservation wages. I model wages and unemployment duration simultaneously in a hazard framework allowing for unobserved heterogeneity.     

In-school labour supply,parental transfers,and wages

In many industrialised countries, teenagers have a significant spending power, and they are important customers for specialised industries. The income of teenagers still in full time education comes from two major sources: parental pocket money and earnings from part-time jobs. Little is known about the way these sources interact, and how they depend on parental, school and family characteristics. In this paper, we analyse labour supply of 16 year old British teenagers together with the cash transfers made to them by their parents. We first develop a theoretical model, where labour supply and transfers are jointly determined. We then estimate labour supply and transfers jointly, using unique data on labour supply of teenagers, the wages they receive, and the transfers from their parents. We show how these two processes depend on each other, and how transfers and labour supply react to changes in wages. We are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for financial support for this research, which has also benefited from support to the IFS as a Designated Research Centre of the ESRC. We thank Murali Agastya, Richard Blundell, Ian Preston, Frank Windmeijer, and two anonymous referees and the editor Bernd Fitzenberger for useful comments.     

房价波动与银行信贷风险的动态相关关系研究

对房地产价格及银行信贷之间的联动机制进行了理论分析,并以VAR模型为基础,借助Granger因果检验、脉冲响应函数及方差分解等方法,分别对银行贷款余额、贷款资产恶化率与房地产价格指数之间的关系进行了实证研究,以揭示房价波动与银行信贷风险之间的动态相关关系。实证结果表明:银行信贷对房地产价格具有单向引导关系,银行信贷扩张引发房地产价格的上涨,而房地产价格上涨对银行信贷扩张的作用不大,但却会导致贷款资产恶化率的提高,进而加剧银行的信贷风险;由于存在时滞,银行信贷对房地产价格的冲击滞后一期才会显示出来且产生长期的正反馈效应,房地产价格对贷款资产恶化率的冲击当期就会产生影响,且贡献率稳定在7%左右。据此提出了抑制房价非理性上涨、控制银行信贷风险的相关建议。     

Inflation, Deflation and Normal Price Adjustment

This paper thinks that the price of a commodity depends on both the value of the commodity and that of the currency. The change in either value will cause the change of the price of the commodity. Only the price rising caused by the decreasing of the currency value can be called inflation, and the price rising led by the increasing of the value of the merchandise can not be called inflation. Therefore, it is not proper, as defined by the modem economics, to think that any price increasing should be in general called inflation.     

Does productivity growth lower inflation in Korea?

We investigate Granger causality between productivity growth and inflation in Korea using quarterly data for the period 1985Q1–2002Q4. Our results indicate unidirectional Granger causality from productivity growth to inflation. In light of such causality, we estimate the effect of productivity and other variables on productivity. According to our regression results, a 1% increase in labour and Total Factor Productivity (TFP) reduces Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation by 0.07–0.08% and 0.37–0.44%, respectively. Our results also suggest that the productivity-inflation nexus became stronger in Korea since the Asian financial crisis, and that this was largely due to structural reform and technological progress.     

Revisiting the threshold effect of remittances on total factor productivity growth in South Asia: a study of Bangladesh and India

Both Bangladesh and India are among the top recipient of remittances in absolute terms. However, in relative terms – remittances as a per cent of GDP – the two countries stand at 6.1% and 2.8%, respectively, well below the levels of the top 10 recipients. In this article, we explore the effect of remittances on the total factor productivity (TFP) growth considering Bangladesh and India, as reference countries over the periods 1980–2012 and 1977–2012, respectively. We examine the presence of a long-run association between remittances and TFP using a number of tests. The results indicate that remittances have threshold effects on TFP growth in both countries. Despite the two countries receiving substantial amount of remittances, we note that Bangladesh has a U-shaped relationship whereas India has an inverted U-shaped relationship with TFP growth. For Bangladesh, a minimum threshold of remittances (% GDP) is 5.3% and for India, a tipping point of remittances (% GDP) is at 1.8%. The causality tests confirm a bidirectional effect, which implies that remittances and TFP growth are mutually reinforcing. Interestingly, while the two economies have similar remittances impact in regards to causality, the study highlights two different tipping points of remittances.     

Individual wages and regional market potential

In this article, we study wage determinants in Poland by employing the augmented NEG wage equation that controls for individual worker characteristics. Our analysis is based on the Labor Force Survey (LFS) conducted by the Polish Central Statistical Office (CSO) for the period 1999–2009. Using annual data on about 10,000 Polish workers in 16 regions, we find that a significant fraction of inter‐individual wage differences can be explained by the geography of access to markets.     

Real wages and labor-saving technical change: evidence from a panel of manufacturing industries in mature and labor-surplus economies

Recent theories have provided a persuasive account of a key stylized fact of mature economies: the common long-run trends of average real wages and labor productivity, and the ensuing stationarity of functional distribution. Central to these theories is the notion of directed technical change, which claims that a rise in labor costs sparks the adoption of labor-saving innovations. This paper empirically examines a core prediction of these theories, namely that shocks to functional distribution elicit compensatory adjustments in real product wages and labor productivity. Using two disaggregated data-sets of manufacturing industries (EU-Klems and Unido), I find evidence of cointegration and two-way, long-run Granger causality between these two variables. These findings suggest that directed technical change is indeed key for producing stationarity in functional distribution, and they complement the recent empirical literature on distributive cycles and productivity growth. Preliminary evidence from the Unido data-set also suggests the importance of directed technical change in developing countries. To illuminate the empirical procedure, I present a theoretical model of growth and distribution with directed technical change.     

Macroeconomic uncertainty,growth and inflation in the Eurozone: a causal approach

In this article, we evaluate the causal relationship between macroeconomic uncertainty indices, inflation and growth rate for 17 Eurozone countries on a county-level examination. In performing a series of linear and nonlinear causality tests, we find little evidence of a causal relationship between uncertainty and macroeconomic variables. Thus, macroeconomic analysis based on uncertainty indices should be treated with caution.     

Foreign Direct Investment,Female Education,Capital Formation,and Economic Growth in Japan and South Korea

ABSTRACT

The influence of foreign direct investment (FDI) on host country‘s economic growth is a widely explored issues in the existing economic literature. This study attempts to examine the role of foreign direct investment, capital formation, and expansion of female education on economic growth of Japan during the period 1971–2014, using time series observations. The study further makes a comparison regarding the association with FDI and economic growth with South Korea, another major OECD economy of Asia The study utilises the auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds approach to cointegration to examine the long run causality association among the variables. Today, for sustainable economic development the social and institutional policy issues are important. The paper explores one such social issue, namely gender and economic prosperity. This paper has novel contributions in the current research on time series, econometric analysis for the following reasons: (1) it has investigated the relationship between economic growth, foreign direct investment and capital formation in a gendered differential framework (utilising the role of human capital formation among men versus women; (2) the study covers a long period and more recent time period (till 2014), which concurs with the upsurge of world FDI movements and (3) the study also explores the major structural breaks of the two economies and how economic growth is impacted thereof.