Regional disparity and economic growth in China: The impact of labor market distortions

The paper tries to analyze China's regional disparity in a framework of convergence in neoclassical theory of growth. We employ comparative productivity of agricultural labor as an index of labor market distortion to see the impact of difference of labor market maturity among regions on regional growth performance, controlling for a set of variables determining growth rate. The finding is that (1) there is an evidence of conditional convergence in China's growth, namely, per capita GDP in the initiative year is negatively related to growth rates in following years, (2) labor market distortion negatively impacts regional growth rates, and (3) many other variables used at previous studies impact growth performance, as is expected by neoclassical theory of growth.     

Working hours in the European periphery: The length of the working day in Spain, 1885-1920

This paper studies the decline of the working day in Spain from 1885 to 1920. The decline was more continuous than previously thought. Differences in hours reinforce wage differentials, showing labor markets were not well integrated. Cross-sectional and time-series analysis suggests that hour reductions reflect a labor supply rather than a labor demand effect. Given the comparatively slow growth of real wages in Spain from 1870 to 1920, the Spanish case shows that international convergence in hours of work must have been stronger than convergence in wages.     

Long-Run Economic Performance and the Labor Market

This article uses a simple variation of the Solow model to study the interrelations between economic growth and the labor market. We show, both analytically and empirically, that income and capital per worker in the steady state depend positively on flexibility of the labor market; that the steady-state unemployment rate depends positively on the rate of population growth and the productivity growth rate and negatively on the savings rate and flexibility of the labor market; and, finally, that labor market flexibility affects convergence toward steady state.     

劳动力流动、区际变量冲击及宏观经济影响

长期以来,经济学界关于劳动力迁移对宏观经济影响的研究,主要集中在迁移对地区差距的影响上。其实劳动力迁移引起的区际差距收敛或扩散只是表面现象,其内在变化是经济变量的变动。劳动力迁移不仅以生产要素数量的变动在空间上影响产出,还会以消费主体数量的变动在空间上影响消费需求。本文认为,劳动力迁移的根本动力是劳动者对高收益和高效用的区位追求,在规模报酬递增条件下,劳动力在追求自身最大化收益和效用空间时,会对物价、产出等宏观变量带来不同冲击,但能带来宏观经济增长。     

Convergence (divergence) and the U.S. states

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether established trends in labor productivity convergence have continued among the contiguous states of the U.S. from 1969 to 1990. This paper brings new and additional state data to bear on the question of productivity convergence among the U.S. states. The findings indicate that when the state value-added is deflated by the state-specific price deflator, a dramatically different picture of productivity convergence emerges. The study also finds that there is less evidence of state productivity convergence once the peculiar behavior of mining or extraction industries is taken into account.     

福建省先进制造业R&D投入产出效率研究

首先对随机前沿函数的变量和形式加以确定。然后采用该函数和面板数据模型,研究了福建省先进制造业的R&D投入产出效率及其影响因素和收敛性。研究结果显示:R&D人员投入、R&D经费内部支出及新产品研发投入对新产品产值产出具有显著效应,其中R&D人员投入的正效应偏大;福建省高新技术产业R&D投入产出效率总体上居中,具有增长趋势和收敛性;九大行业样本期间的企业数量和政府资助对其R&D投入产出效率具有显著影响。最后针对研究中发现的问题,提出企业和政府对R&D发展应该采取的对策和解决措施。     

International labor-cum-capital migrations: Theory,welfare implications,and evidence

Although capital is often portrayed as being more internationally mobile than labor, the theory of labor migrations typically ignores capital flows. Economic historians provide long-term evidence suggesting close linkages between capital and labor movements for high labor immigration/emigration economies. Analyzing this linkage shows that labor-cum-capital migrations have distinctive economic effects compared to labor migrations alone. These distinctive effects impact on international economic economic convergence. GNP per head is invariably a poor indicator of development trends when labor (with or without capital) migrates.     

The role of migration in regional wage convergence: Evidence from Sweden 1860–1940

Sweden experienced a decline in inter-county real wage differentials for agricultural workers between 1860 and 1940, historical evidence of early labor market integration well before widespread unionization in agriculture occurred. By means of dynamic panel data analysis, this paper examines whether internal and external migrations caused real wage beta convergence across Swedish counties. To account for statistical problems such as endogeneity of migration, time-invariant county characteristics and autocorrelation in the regression model, we adjust our estimates using fixed effects, instrumental variables and GMM. The preferred model shows that both internal and external migrations contributed to wage convergence before the First World War and internal migration mainly during the interwar years. The agglomeration effects of urbanization were not sufficiently pervasive to offset the labor supply effects of internal and external migrations.     

Openness and economic growth in developing countries

Openness and Economic Growth in Developing Countries. — Openness appears to have a strong impact on economic growth especially in DCs which typically exhibit a high share of physical capital in factor income and a low share of labor. In the neoclassical growth model with partial capital mobility, physical capital’s share in factor income determines the difference in the predicted convergence rates for open and closed economies. With a 60 percent share as in many DCs, the convergence rates should differ by a factor of 2.5. The regression results for a sample of open and closed DCs roughly confirm this hypothesis.     

Spatial rebalancing and industrial convergence in China

Our study documents the recent narrowing of the coast-inland divide in China. We argue that this rebalancing reflects, with a time lag, the catching up process which has been at work in the industry of the inland region since the end of the 1990s. The pattern is in line with the rapid and unconditional convergence observed in China's manufacturing industry over this period. The convergence of labor productivity suggests that advanced coastal regions have transferred capital and technology to the interior.     

Wage increases, wage convergence, and the Lewis turning point in China

We examine the wage trends of ordinary workers and the wage convergence between unskilled and skilled workers in China. First, we find that wages in all non-agricultural sectors, wages of migrant workers, and wages of hired workers in the agricultural sector have increased dramatically since 2003. Second, through comparing wage differentials between migrant and urban resident workers and between heterogeneous education groups within migrant workers, and by investigating the changes in the contribution of the returns to education to wage differentials, we find that the wages of unskilled and skilled workers have converged. Both the increasing wage trends and wage convergence are interpreted as evidence supporting the hypothesis that China has passed what can be called the Lewis turning point in the industrial sector. We conclude that the sustainability of economic growth in China requires an upgrading of labor market institutions to accommodate the merging of the rural and urban labor forces.     

More similar and less equal: Economic growth in the European regions

More Similar and Less Equal: Economic Growth in the European Regions. — This paper examines the growth process of 109 European regions using a new data base. Applying various statistical tools, it concentrates on per capita income and labor productivity. The main results are the following: There has been a clear process of aggregate productivity convergence across the European regions over the 1980s. At the sectoral level, there has not been convergence in agriculture, while the industrial and services sectors show ß-convergence. Most crucially, the regional dispersion in per capita income has remained almost constant so that the differences in wealth conditions of the European citizens are still extremely high.     

广东省各行业的收敛性及其对经济增长的贡献

文章从部门这个新角度分析了广东省经济增长和差异问题。分析表明，工业和其他三产对劳动生产率增长的贡献高达64％。运用新古典收敛模型检验各部门之间是收敛还是发散，结果表明，部门之间存在很大的异质性。交通运输业是显著发散的，其他三产也显示出了微弱的发散，农业、批零贸易餐饮业则是显著收敛的，建筑业收敛但不显著。对劳动生产率差距的分解表明，广东省劳动生产率的增长，95％左右来源于增长效应，其余5％来源于份额效应。     

高铁能否促进产业结构升级:基于资源再配置的视角

高铁建设进一步完善了我国的交通网络体系,这对地区经济时空格局将产生深远影响。文章采用2000-2016年地级市辖区数据构建"反事实"框架下的双重差分模型,研究高铁开通对我国地区产业结构升级的因果净效应。结果发现,高铁建设显著提升了地区产业结构由低级向高级转变的高级化进程,且东、中部地区高铁开通的净效应显著,西部地区却不明显,稳健性检验结果依然显著。进一步从资源再配置视角检验高铁建设的作用机制,研究发现,高铁开通加速了地区劳动力流通和资本积累,并且高铁建设主要通过提升资本和劳动力再配置效应来实现地区产业结构由低级向高级的动态转化。同时劳动力和资本再配置效率存在明显的区域差异性,即东、中部地区劳动力和资本再配置效率显著高于西部地区,具有潜在的"俱乐部收敛"特征。     

Theoretical review of globalization thesis: Capital mobility and the state

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the present understanding of the political economy of globalization, in particular the globalization of capital. In the contemporary age, the regulatory capacity of the state seems to stand in a different relation to the transnational capital because its space is not bound by conventional jurisdictions. This paper closely examines how the transnational capital influences the politics of the state. It takes the increasing capital mobility as one of the key features of globalization, and explores the impact of capital mobility on politics in relation to the convergence and divergence debates among scholars. It deals in detail with the impacts of globalization on monetary autonomy of the state, on financial market governance, and on labor market governance, and discusses how capital mobility influences the politics of the state, enforcing the power configuration among the state, capital, and labor.     

Does the dispersion of unit labor cost dynamics in the EMU imply long-run divergence?

Using unit labor cost (ULC) data from Euro area countries as well as US States and German Länder we investigate inflation convergence using different approaches, namely panel unit root tests, cointegration tests and error-correction models. All in all we cannot reject convergence of ULC growth in EMU. However, country-specific deviations from the rest of the currency union are much more pronounced and much more persistent in Europe than in the US or Germany. This holds before and after the introduction of the common currency. Hence, asymmetric shocks in the future might take a long time to dissipate.     

New evidence on the role of regional clusters and convergence in China (1952–2008)

A new panel method is applied to the case of Chinese provinces to analyze the existence of club convergence in terms of per capita income, labor productivity, and capital intensity, from 1952 to 2008. The advantage of this approach is that it takes into account the heterogeneity of Chinese regions in a nonlinear time-varying framework, where more attention is paid to the spatial dimension. This time-varying approach outperforms other methods used in the relevant literature for an economy in transition, such as China, that has undergone a significant transformation over the period under consideration. Our results indicate that Chinese regions have converged into clubs. However, it is observed that Heilongjiang is diverging in terms of labor productivity and capital intensity, while Liaoning and Guizhou display similar patterns in terms of labor productivity, and Shanxi and Hebei in terms of capital intensity. These results indicate that specific economic packages need to be implemented in the clusters that were identified, with special attention to those regions that show a divergence behavior, in order to guarantee the sustainability and equality of regional growth.     

人口红利贡献被高估了吗?——基于人力资本积累视角的研究

人口红利下降被认为是新常态下中国面临的重大挑战,然而劳动投入不仅包含劳动数量,还包含劳动质量,分别对应于人口红利与人力资本。由于在测量上忽视了高速城市化对人力资本积累的积极影响,在机制上忽视了人口红利和人力资本分布趋同的叠加影响,容易造成人口红利贡献高估且人口资本贡献低估。文章从人口迁移视角出发,参考拉姆齐无限期界模型建立人力资本积累方程,将城市化对人力资本积累的积极作用纳入分析,得出转换效应、迁移效应和共振效应,阐明人口红利和人力资本空间分布趋同的微观机制,得到检验人口红利和人力资本对经济增长贡献的一致性框架。以2013-2016年272个样本城市进行计量检验：固定效应回归分析和内生性检验表明人口红利和人力资本的增长弹性排序不确定,中介效应检验表明人力资本的增长贡献超过人口红利,分组检验进一步证实人力资本贡献超过人口红利,且存在相互叠加共同影响城市经济增长的共振效应。结论表明,若充分考虑城市化对人力资本的积极影响,则人口红利的贡献确实被高估,而人力资本的贡献被低估。由此得出政策建议,应持续推进城市化高质量发展,加速人力资本积累,构筑劳动质量替代劳动数量的机制,以更好地应对新常态下人口红利下降的负面冲击。     

Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the gender wage gap in Japan: A cohort analysis

In this article, I perform a cohort-based analysis of the female-to-male wage gap using aggregate data in Japan from 1975 to 2005. While the inter-cohort closing in the gender wage gap is apparent, the convergence is smaller when the gap is calculated for each level of education. This pattern suggests that a certain portion of the gender wage convergence is due to changes in the educational composition of the workforce. I find that educational composition changes played a larger role in closing the pay gap for younger cohorts than it did for older cohorts. Highly educated women who entered the labor market after the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law gained in that they had more regular full-time employment but did not experience wage gains relative to their male counterparts.     

Environmental growth convergence among Chinese regions

Since the end of the 20th century, numerous studies have analyzed Chinese economic development to gauge whether China's rapid growth is sustainable. Most of these studies focused on assessing total factor productivity (TFP) in Chinese mainland provinces but suffered from methodological weaknesses by assuming constant returns to scale (CRS) for the production frontier and/or incorrectly modeling variables returns to scale (VRS) technology taking into account bad output such as carbon dioxide emissions. Our paper offers a right non-parametric programming framework based on weak disposability and VRS assumptions to estimate environmental growth convergence among Chinese regions characterized by size heterogeneity. We explicitly separate regional efficiency gaps into two components: The first studies the technical catching-up process on each one (technical effect), and the second reveals convergence or divergence in the combinations of input and output among regions (structural effect). Moreover, carbon shadow price levels for provinces can be derived through the dual version of our activity analysis framework. Our empirical work focuses on 30 Chinese regions from 1997 to 2010. The results emphasize that environmental growth convergence among regions has mainly relied on the structural effect. We find that the structural effect largely depends on the pollution cost convergence and not on the evolution of the relative prices of capital or labor. The carbon shadow price is increasing at an annual rate of 2.5% and was evaluated around 864 yuan per ton in 2010 in China while regional estimates show significant disparities at the beginning of the period.