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.     

Real wages,inflation and labour productivity in Australia

This article presents an analysis of real wages, inflation and labour productivity interrelationships using cointegration, Granger causality and, most importantly, structural change tests. Applications of tests to Australian data over the 1965 to 2007 period corroborate the presence of a structural break in 1985 and show that a 1% increase in manufacturing sector real wages led to an increase in manufacturing sector productivity of between 0.5% and 0.8%. Comparable estimates for the effect of inflation on manufacturing sector productivity have limited statistical significance. Granger causality test results suggest that real wages and inflation both Granger cause productivity in the long run.     

汇率对中国制造业企业生产率的影响

在文献回顾的基础上,就汇率对企业生产率的作用机理进行了理论剖析。构建面板数据模型,利用2006—2013年中国制造业上市公司的数据,实证检验了汇率改革以来中国汇率变动对企业生产率的影响。研究结果表明:汇率波动对企业劳动生产率有很大影响,汇率与企业生产率负相关;企业资产、营业利润、FDI、出口依存度、资本密集度会不同程度地影响汇率对企业生产率的传递效应。     

Computer capacity utilisation – a multilevel perspective on decades of decline

This article uses a multilevel perspective to explain why there has been a dramatic decline in the utilisation of computer-processing power during the last two to three decades. It identifies that computers have been used in two different ways – either as single-user systems where each users received his or her own computer or as time-sharing systems where each computer was shared by several users. It finds that the time-sharing systems made considerably better use of the computers' resources than the single-user systems and that the utilisation of computer-processing power began to decline as single-user microcomputers began to replace time-shared minicomputers and mainframes. The article argues that this development contradicts much of the recent research on capacity utilisation, but argues that this contradiction can be explained by analysing this development as a transition process with multiple levels of interaction.     

Productivity,real exchange rate,and aggregate demand: An empirical exercise applied to Brazil from 1960 to 2011

This research analyzes, from a post Kaleckian perspective, the interactions among the aggregate demand, the real exchange rate, productivity, and real wages in the Brazilian economy from 1960 to 2011. It adopts the longstanding perspective that demand is the driver of capital accumulation and economic growth. The research comprises the following steps: (a) a critical assessment of the growth regime literature, with a particular emphasis on issues related to productivity and the real exchange rate; (b) understanding the relationship between the real exchange rate and the productivity and growth regimes; (c) proposing a theoretical model that relates the real exchange rate, productivity, and the growth regime; and (d) an empirical test of the interaction between the real exchange rate, productivity, and the growth regime. Theoretically the study develops a model showing the interactions between the aggregate demand, the real exchange rate, productivity, and real wages. Furthermore, this research attempts to address the lack of theoretical and empirical studies about the relationship between the aggregate demand, the real exchange rate, productivity and real wages.     

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE: AN APPLICATION TO GREEK MANUFACTURING

To comprehend the impact of public infrastructure on economic performance this paper provides a measure of productivity growth as derived from duality theory. This productivity growth is decomposed into the components of technical change, returns to scale and the effects of public infrastructure, the variable of our interest. In an application, we opt for Greek manufacturing so as to investigate whether the decline in its growth rate is partly explained by public infrastructure. Despite some variation in the estimation results of shadow shares across industries, public infrastructure asserts a cost saving effect in most industries, though it also appears that traditional labour‐intensive industries with lower level of technological advancement do not benefit from the provision of public infrastructure. The estimation results further demonstrate that while public infrastructure enhanced productivity growth over the sample period for most industries, low infrastructure investment in the 1970s and the 1980s undermined productivity growth.     

全球制造业工资停滞之谜——来自进口中间产品质量视角的经验证据

本文从快速增长的中间产品贸易及其质量视角研究了全球制造业工资停滞现象。首先,基于DS垄断竞争框架和Koch & Smolka(2019)的研究,本文重新构建开放条件下的工资决定模型,发现进口中间产品质量影响各国劳动工资。其次,借鉴Feenstra & Romalis(2014)的研究,本文构建全新的测度产品—行业—国家层面进口中间产品质量GEKS 指数法,估算1995—2011年37个国家从248个出口市场进口的制造业四位码中间产品质量指数,发现全球制造业进口中间产品质量上升趋势明显但分化严重,中等和低等收入国家质量指数持续上升,高等收入国家质量指数持续下降。最后,本文从跨国—行业层面定量识别进口中间产品质量对进口国制造业工资的具体影响,发现：(1)进口中间产品质量对全球制造业的劳动工资有显著负向影响,对中等收入国家、中级技术密集型行业、高技能劳动者以及进口矿物类中间产品制造业的工资降低效应最大;(2)进口中间产品质量通过“就业破坏效应”和“研发激励效应”两种机制造成全球制造业工资下降;(3)进口中间产品质量变化造成制造业工资下降是全球化中的市场性经济规律和暂时性“全球冲击波”。上述发现解释了全球制造业工资停滞之谜,并启示各国须尊重全球化的市场规律,加强国际合作,共同应对冲击,提高民众福祉,携手共建人类命运共同体。     

Sectoral sources of sub-Saharan Africa’s convergence

From 1970 to 2010, sub-Saharan African’s (SSA) labour productivity hovered at around 6% of the US level. This lacklustre performance, which remained stubbornly low despite the SSA’s growth spurt that started in the mid-1990s, masks a great deal of variations across sectors and countries. Using a structural decomposition, we examine, for a representative sample of SSA countries, the sectoral sources that hold back their convergence to the US frontier. Our results suggest the presence of strong – and possibly long-lasting – headwinds that have wiped out the favourable effects of substantial, yet circumstantial, tailwinds. Headwinds, quantified by the unfavourable within- and reallocation-effects, are indicative of significant capital-deepening and technology gaps, both of which are extremely hard to bridge. The tailwinds, represented by favourable between-effects, result from the convergence of the SSA labour force to sectors where some US sectors have seen a slowdown of their productivity relative to that of the whole economy – a development unrelated to the fundamentals underlying the SSA economy. Although few exceptions emerged out of this general pattern, these results are indicative of a bleak outlook for the SSA economic performance at least in the medium run.