Convergence crisis: economic crisis and convergence in the European Union

The success of the integration process of the new EU Member States is reflected by the convergence performance. Sustainable convergence assumes that potential growth rates of the less developed countries continuously exceed the dynamics of the potential output of the developed countries. However, the financial and economic crisis of 2008 has resulted in a fundamentally new situation as regards these issues. This paper considers real convergence, catch-up processes and in terms of these the main economic growth trends. The study focuses mainly on the potential growth trends. The recession has, however, affected the individual countries to different degrees. The study classified the Member States into four groups based on the initial circumstances and the vulnerability originating from them; these are ‘Developed’ countries and ‘Convergence’ countries, three groups of the latter are ‘Mediterranean’ countries, ‘Catch-up’ countries and ‘Vulnerable’ countries. Potential growth and the contribution of the individual growth factors might follow significantly different paths in these country groups. The convergence countries might face especially great challenges. Potential growth rate of the ‘Convergence’ countries—according to simulations—is expected to recover less in the mid-term, than that of the ‘Developed’ countries, i.e. convergence slows down, it might come to a halt or even divergence might occur in certain countries. It might result in a ‘Convergence Crisis’ particularly in certain ‘Mediterranean’ and ‘Vulnerable’ new Member States. Also, longer term simulations indicate that the European convergence processes might slow down and stop in certain countries. These trends may have significant effects on economic policies facilitating potential growth. We apply extensive quantitative analysis, production function and growth accounting approaches in the study.     

国际垂直专业化分工条件下的中国贸易利益分析

尽管国际垂直专业化分工能给发展中国家带来静态、动态两方面贸易利益，且中国参与这一新型国际分工的水平也在不断提升，然而由于所处层次较低，中国在分工进程中获取的贸易利益相当有限。若想提升贸易所得，必须在继续积极参与垂直分工与贸易的同时，加大研发投资，培养自主创新能力，以促使生产环节或产业由低附加值状态向高附加值状态演进。     

Technical change and the ‘technology’ myth

Abstract

In recent years, historians and other English-speaking commentators on technical change and technical functions have often chosen to discuss these matters under the heading ‘technology’. Thus, there have been discussions about such matters as ‘echnological innovation’, ‘technological invention’, and even ‘the imperatives of technology’, ‘the technostructure’ and ‘technological drivenness’.¹ One economist with a special interest in historical matters, Kuznets, has virtually defined a separable condition of ‘modernity’ as the era of ‘technology’ — ‘The epochal innovation that distinguishes the modern economic epoch is the extended application of science to problems of economic production’ alternatively, it is ‘the utilization of a potential provided by modern technology’. An economic historian (Musson) has it that ‘applied science is … the major force behind modern economic growth’. And a prominent historian of the so-called ‘technology’, Forbes, has argued that in ‘our modern world both technology and engineering are branches of applied science’.²     

Technological specialization in industrial countries: Patterns and dynamics

Technological Specialization in Industrial Countries: Patterns and Dynamics. — This paper employs distribution dynamics and patent data to study the empirical dynamics of technological specialization in industrial countries. Large countries spread innovation activities across a wider range of technologies, and their specialization level in a field displays lower probability to move around its initial level (country size effects). Mobility is high and asymmetric: it is difficult to improve specialization in very disadvantaged technologies, while high comparative advantages revert towards lower specialization levels. These findings undermine the theory of technological accumulation and path dependence, its implication of persistence in trade specialization patterns and the effectiveness of targeted industrial and technology policies.     

Is there a poverty trap for developing countries? Polarization: Reality or myth

A general view that as between countries ‘the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer’ supported in the development literature by explanations relating to cumulative causation, economies of scale etc., and statistically based on the relation between GNP per capita in 1978 and its growth rates during 1960–1978, is shown to contain considerable elements of ‘myth’ or statistical ‘delusion’. The ‘naïve’ polarization hypothesis based on income levels at the end of the period over which growth rates are measured is left with a much weakened empirical basis when the proper substitution of levels of income at the beginning of the period is made. This is particularly so for low- and middle-income countries taken separately, while for the 18 industrialized countries a strong tendency towards convergence in per capita incomes emerges. Finally, for the growth in manufacturing value added during 1960–1977 a significant tendency towards convergence was observed in the case of a group of 24 least developed countries.     

基于DEA方法的江苏省制造业上市企业创新绩效研究

基于道格拉斯生产函数,构建了企业创新绩效评价指标体系,运用DEA-CCR、DEA-BCC、DEA-Malmquist模型测算了2018—2020年169家江苏省制造业上市企业静态效率和动态效率。研究表明,江苏省制造业上市企业研发投入呈现逐年递增趋势,但创新绩效整体没有达到最优状态,主要是由于纯技术效率较低所致,需要提升资源配置效率;且受疫情影响创新绩效整体上经历了一个从增长到衰退的过程,相对来说企业技术进步率大于技术效率变化率。     

Agglomeration externalities and productivity growth: US cities, 1880–1930

We investigate the role of industrial structure in labour productivity growth in manufacturing in US cities during the ‘second industrial revolution’. We find that initially greater specialization was associated with faster subsequent productivity growth but that only the very high levels of diversity which obtained in some very large cities had a positive correlation. We interpret our results as demonstrating the existence of dynamic Marshallian externalities. The impact of industrial specialization in our sample of US cities after 1890 is found to have raised the level of labour productivity in manufacturing by about 4 per cent by 1920.     

Dynamic Effects of Economic Integration: A Survey

This review article discusses recent models investigating the long-run effects of economic integration. Using endogenous growth approaches this literature looks at the channels through which integration policies (trade liberalization, liberalization of factor mobility, free flow of technological knowledge, etc.) might change the long-run growth rates and specialization patterns of countries involved. We distinguish between international integration, referring to the integration of a country in the world economy, and regional integration, i.e., the formation of regional integration blocs.     

Trade Openness and Growth: Who Benefits?

We investigate the relationship between economic growth andforeign trade, testing whether the benefits of trade vary overtime and across countries. Our results confirm previous findingsthat specialization in primary exports is bad for growth. Whiletrade openness promoted convergence in the 1960s and 1970s,we find that since 1980 the benefits of trade accrued mostlyto the richer economies, with little benefit to the less developedeconomies. Most of the dynamic benefits of trade are obtainedthrough productivity growth, with a small contribution comingthrough increased investment.     

International diffusion of technology,industrial development and technological leapfrogging

This paper anlyzes how the international diffusion of technology fits historically within the overall process of ‘spurts’ of industrialization and what lessons can be learned by the present industrializing countries in the context of the microelectronics revolution. A review of some of the most important contributions to the technology diffusion literature and their relevance to structural theories of industrial development of economic growth is presented in the first part of the paper. A discussion of international diffusion, especially historical changes in technological leaderships, follows. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of diffusion analysis for industrializing countries and argues that the developing countries' potential for technological ‘leapfrogging’ into microelectronics has never been higher.     

Dynamism and development

In industrialized countries, the human needs and purposes to be served by science and technology are increasingly subject to greater social control. People in developing countries are also preoccupied with controlling choices in the development and application of technology - and the priceless ingredient in controlling their own destiny.The encounter between the more and less dynamic societies makes developing countries the targets of an ‘information bombardment’. Science, technology, values and organization - the ‘active ingredients’ in development - are all forms of information (a resource that is not merely renewable but expandable). The capacity of indigenous people to understand and manipulate the information flow - linking science (‘know what’) and technology (‘know-how’) to human values (‘know why’) and social authority and organization (‘know who’) - is consequently the key to the dynamics of ‘development’.     

Machine tools and mass production in the armaments boom: Germany and the United States, 1929–44

This article anatomizes the ‘productivity race’ between Nazi Germany and the US over the period from the Great Depression to the Second World War in the metalworking industry. We present novel data that allow us to account for both the quantity of installed machine tools and their technological type. Hitherto, comparison of productive technologies has been limited to case studies and well‐worn narratives about US mass production and European‐style flexible specialization. Our data show that the two countries in fact employed similar types of machines combined in different ratios. Furthermore, neither country was locked in a rigid technological paradigm. By 1945 Germany had converged on the US both in terms of capital‐intensity and the specific technologies employed. Capital investment made a greater contribution to output growth in Germany, whereas US growth was capital‐saving. Total factor productivity growth made a substantial contribution to the armaments boom in both countries. But it was US industry, spared the war's most disruptive effects, that was in a position to take fullest advantage of the opportunities for wartime productivity growth. This adds a new element to familiar explanations for Germany's rapid catch‐up after 1945.     

Recent declines in fertility in less developed countries,and what ‘population planners’ may learn from them

Significant and rapid fertility declines have occurred in many countries in the poor world over the past decade; many of these were unanticipated by demographers. Despite advances in statistical technique and demographic theory, little is yet known about the demographic rhythms of life in poor countries, or of the social forces behind them. Fertility decline, however, appears to have much to do with changes, economic and otherwise, within the family structure. The impact of ‘family planning’ programmes on fertility decline appears to have been exaggerated. ‘Population planners’ should be sensitive to the fact that a decline in fertility does not necessarily mean that an improvement in the standard of living has occurred, and they should not assume that reducing fertility automatically increases either the quality of life or the prospects for ‘development’.     

垂直专业化分工对我国本土企业技术创新影响的实证研究

已有的研究大多从外商直接投资、加工贸易、外包等垂直专业化分工的重要表现形式入手,研究它们对技术进步和技术创新的影响。文章在前人的研究基础上,利用1998--2003年间23个行业的垂直专业化比率数据和其他行业相关数据建立企业技术创新的解释方程,研究垂直专业化分工对本土企业技术创新的影响。实证结果表明：垂直专业化比率和本土企业专利申请数量、科技人员占从业人员比重呈正相关关系,说明垂直专业化比率的提高有利于本土企业技术创新能力的提高。     

Lead markets, innovation differentials and growth

This article suggests that the specialization of countries in international trade is determined by the lead-lag market pattern of national markets. Many internationally successful innovations have been adopted first in one country while other countries initially either preferred other designs or an established product. A model for the international diffusion of innovations is presented in which nationally preferred innovation designs compete to become a globally dominant design. In this model, there are country-specific market attributes that increase the likelihood that the choice a country makes among alternative technologies is followed around the world. It is argued that technological knowledge gaps are not the origin of an international competitive advantage. Instead, a country gains a competitive advantage because a specific innovation design was adopted earlier than in any other country. This gives local firms a head start in producing, gathering marketing intelligence and securing the property rights of a globally successful innovation. In countries with lag market characteristics, domestic innovations are less likely to get adopted worldwide. Lag markets often switch from a domestic innovation design to a foreign innovation design, which increases imports. The lead-lag market explanation of trade specialization has implications for national policies. In this model domestic innovations do not always foster exports; idiosyncratic innovations induced by lag market contexts can hamper the export chances of local firms and in the end lead to an increase in imports. It is suggested that in order to increase exports, national policies have to distinguish between a domestic lead and lag market context in each industry. While in a lead market context, traditional policy instruments that enhance the rate of innovations are effective, in a lag market situation national follower strategies are more appropriate.     

Growth Patterns and Inequality in the Presence of Costly Technology Adoption

The stylized facts that motivate this article include the diversity in growth patterns that are observed across countries during the process of economic development and the divergence over time in income distributions both within and across countries. We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model in which technology adoption is costly and agents are heterogeneous in their initial holdings of resources. We interpret the adoption cost as the resources expended in acquiring skills associated with new technologies. Endogenous growth occurs in our model largely as a result of human capital deepening. The analytical results of the model characterize three growth outcomes associated with the technology adoption process depending on productivity differences between the technologies. These outcomes are labeled ‘poverty trap,’ ‘dual economy,’ and ‘balanced growth.’ The model is then capable of explaining the observed diversity in growth patterns in addition to the divergence of incomes over time and across countries.     

The growth path of the dynamic Asian economies

The rapid and sustained growth of several Asian economies led researchers, policymakers, and decision‐makers in the world of international business to search for a plausible Asian model of growth. Numerous explanations of the dynamic growth in Asia have been put forward, including the ‘new structuralist’ approach proposed by Lin (2012). This paper examines the various explanations of what these countries did to unleash their growth potential. Industrial policy and market intervention are two such explanations. While the dynamic Asian economies did not flout the Washington Consensus, they adapted it in different ways. The policies that they followed under the Beijing Consensus allowed them to proactively follow pro‐business policies. They also exploited the concepts of economic statism or state capitalism, which became an integral part of what became known as the ‘Asia model’.     

Innovation of renewable energy generation technologies at a regional level in China: a study based on patent data analysis

This paper is a pioneer study which examines the innovation of renewable energy generation technologies based on residential patent applications in 30 regions of China between 2006 and 2015. Wind power, solar energy, geothermal energy, ocean energy, hydro power, and biomass & waste energy are the subject technologies for this analysis. Different indicators such as absolute numbers, growth rates and revealed technology advantages are used to measure the various green innovation dynamics in different regions. The results show that some regions with a higher number of patent applications or growth rates did not show stronger technological advantage (specialization) in such technologies. On the other hand, the region of Inner Mongolia shows a very strong specialization but with a much smaller number of patent applications.     

网络经济下垄断的动态效率探析

网络经济时代的市场结构发生了新的变化。主要表现为出现了以垄断和竞争双双强化为主要特征的竞争性垄断结构。这标志着传统产业组织理论中垄断低配置效率或静态无效率的论断在网络经济条件下已不再适用。基于此，本文从创新激励的角度出发，论证了网络经济条件下竞争性垄断市场的动态性。结论认为：企业暂时的垄断地位推动着技术创新的进化和演进．创新、竞争和垄断这三者在网络条件下的互动机制保证了竞争性垄断市场的动态效率。     

上海工业六大重点行业效率研究——基于DEA和Malmquist指数法的实证分析

对上海工业六大重点行业投入产出效率进行了探讨,使用DEA和Malmquist指数法,从静态和动态两个角度切入,研究了投入产出效率和全要素生产率。研究发现,静态来看,上海工业行业规模效率不高,技术创新能力缺失;动态来看,全要素生产率的提高归因于技术进步,而技术效率在下降,规模效率不足是主要影响因素。研究认为,提高上海工业效率的科学路径可以从“优化投入资源配置,优化产业结构,加强技术创新,提高全要素生产率”等几个方面展开。