Research and development in the growth process

This paper introduces into Schumpeterian growth theory an important element of heterogeneity in the structure of innovative activity—namely, the distinction between research and development. We construct a simple model of growth to investigate how the (steady-state) rate of growth affects and is affected by the relative mix between research and development. Although we assume for simplicity that the total supply of innovative activity is given it turns out that, with one important exception, the growth rate responds to most parameter changes in the same way as in previous models where growth was determined by the total amount of innovative activity. In particular, the level of research tends to covary positively with the rate of growth, even in the extreme case where the general knowledge that underlies long-run growth is created only by secondary innovations arising from the development process. The exception concerns the effects of competition on growth. Although simpler Schumpeterian growth models implied that increased competition would reduce growth by reducing the incentive to innovate, introducing the distinction between research and development implies that this effect is likely to be reversed.     

Political versus economic institutions in the growth process

After a decade of research on the relationship between institutions and growth, there is no consensus about the exact way in which these two variables interact. In this paper we re-examine the role that institutions play in the growth process using data for developed and developing economies over the period 1975–2005. Our results indicate that the data is best described by an econometric model with two growth regimes. Political institutions are the key determinant of which regime an economy belongs to, while economic institutions have a direct impact on growth rates within each regime. These findings support the hypothesis that political institutions are one of the deep causes of growth, setting the stage in which economic institutions and standard covariates operate.     

美国农业近代化的动因与特点

美国由建国初的殖民地小农经济转变为近代化农业经济只用了80年时间.通过分析美国农业近代化的形成过程,可以找出其由自给自足的小农经济向近代资本主义大农场经济快速转变的内部规律与动因.西进运动、工业革命、南北战争这三个有利条件是美国农业近代化形成的直接动因,而小农经济与大农场经济交替发展是其特点.     

论中国农业现代化中的政府作用

政府在农业现代化中具有重要作用,这不仅是理论判断同时也是发达国家农业现代化实践的经验总结。中国政府在农业现代化过程中发挥了积极的作用,同时也存在许多不足。政府应在农业立法、资金投入和服务组织等方面加强其主导作用。同时,要处理好政府与市场、政府与农民以及政府与农业协作组织之间的关系。     

Endogenous trade policy: Political struggle in the growth process

This paper develops a dynamic theory that accounts for the evolution of trade policy, underlying internal class conflicts, and output growth performance. Analysis of political responses to the distributional effects of international trade reveals that economies with a comparative advantage in manufacturing may reach a developed stage through the ebb and flow of protectionism. This nonmonotonic evolution of trade policy is consistent with the historical experience of Western Europe over the last few centuries.     

评现代化与人的异化

现代工业文明作为一把利弊并存的“双刃剑”，在赢得巨大面效应的同时，也引发种种负面效应，其严重程度可以使其被称做“现代病”，并非危言耸听，归结起来便是工业文明诞生以来日益滋长起人类自大症和急功近利，及时行乐的短视症，加之现代人掌握了空前强大的工具理性，由自然，社会，人文三重因素组合对生态环境造成渐趋加重的毁损。使人类文明发展的可持续性面临严重挑战。     

Business groups,the financial market and modernization*

Business groups are an important aspect of the industrial organization of many developing countries. This paper develops a theory suggesting that they may be organizations that facilitate modernization in the presence of financial market constraints. An important function of the stockmarket is the diversification of risk that comes with specialized, productive technology. But in the face of serious information problems a well functioning stockmarket may fail to emerge, relegating the economy to a low productivity‐poverty trap. Bilateral links between a firm and a group of others may be a more cost effective way to achieve risk‐sharing. Such business groups may be feasible when a full‐fledged stockmarket is not. As modernization takes place, either because information problems become less severe or more firms enter the economy, business groups actually expand in size before being abruptly rendered obsolete by the stockmarket. This is consistent with empirical results from a number of emerging economies.     

Privatization and economic growth in Australia: the shorthand of a long process

The impact of privatization on economic growth has been little investigated relative to disaggregated approaches. A growth accounting framework is used here to investigate the impact of privatization on growth for the Australian economy. The contribution of public capital to the private sector and whether the growth process is endogenous or Solow is evaluated. Separate measures of public and private capital are computed in order to estimate their impacts with labour on Australian gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the period 1960 to 2003. A simple growth rates version is found preferred by stationarity and other tests. Labour growth appears to strongly positively influence the growth of GDP. In contrast, public capital growth has no statistically significant effect on GDP growth, or on private capital productivity. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that the coefficients of the growth equation are the same before and during privatization.     

农业现代化几个前提的研究

农业现代化是现在理论界热议的问题之一,也是发展经济学的重要议题,旨在理清研究农业现代化过程中的几个问题,以便进一步开展农业方面的研究。     

Evolution and the growth process: Natural selection of entrepreneurial traits

This research suggests that a Darwinian evolution of entrepreneurial spirit played a significant role in the process of economic development and the dynamics of inequality within and across societies. The study argues that entrepreneurial spirit evolved non-monotonically in the course of human history. In early stages of development, risk-tolerant, growth promoting traits generated an evolutionary advantage and their increased representation accelerated the pace of technological progress and the process of economic development. In mature stages of development, however, risk-averse traits gained an evolutionary advantage, diminishing the growth potential of advanced economies and contributing to convergence in economic growth across countries.     

Do all countries follow the same growth process?

We estimate finite-mixture models in which countries are sorted into groups based on the similarity of the conditional distributions of their growth rates. We observe countries growth experiences over the 1970–2000 period and find evidence for a model in which there are two classes of countries, each with its own distinct growth regime. Group membership does not conform to the usual categories used to address parameter heterogeneity such as region or income. We find strong evidence that the quality of institutions and specifically, the degree of law and order, helps to sort countries into different regimes. Once we control for institutional features of the economy, we find no evidence that geographic features such as latitude and being landlocked play a role in determining the country groupings.     

On the long-run outcome of the Lewis-Nurkse international growth process

This essay formalizes the model of international growth advanced by W. Arthur Lewis in his 1979 Nobel Prize address and by Ragnar Nurkse in the 1950's. Both of them employed the model to support their respective cases for pursuit of a ‘balanced growth’ strategy by the LDC's. The purpose of the formalization undertaken here is to examine the theoretical consequences for the secular ratio of LDC to MDC incomes as the Lewis-Nurkse growth process unfolds. The paper explores whether or not growth in Lewis-Nurkse fashion must mean persistent poverty for the LDC's. In addition, the formalization provides an explicit characterization of economic ‘dependence’.     

我国传统农业现代化的困境与路径突破

传统农业向现代农业转变的逻辑起点和经济基础是农业生产发展,然而目前我国农业生产发展内含着多重困境.本文论述了实行农业规模经营和集约经营对我国传统农业改造的作用,分析了我国传统农业现代化过程中面临土地产权制度和农业投资困境的约束,提出了改革农村土地产权制度和合理确定农业投资主体,增加农业投入的路径.     

社会现代化与中国现代国家建构

中国现代国家构建需要置于社会现代化进程中考察。必然围绕社会与社会发展、公平正义及公共福利共享,促成社会结构的合理重建和良性整合,最终改善现代“社会人”的生活质量和生存状态。,通过公共服务的均衡化、公共福利的社会化、政治文化的世俗化、社会发展的科学化以及制度供给的本土化和制度调试的常态化等,实现国家职能范围的可控性、国家权威的合法性以及国家能力的支配性。     

汉语现代化的阻力和动力——从语言生态看中国语言现代化（下）

向纵深推广国家通用语言普通话,推广书写普通话的规范汉字,推广拼写普通话和给规范汉字注音的汉语拼音。进一步推动汉语实行词式书写改革,消除语言现代化误解。     

Human capital formation,learning by doing and the government in the process of economic growth

We present an endogenous growth model with human capital and learning by doing. Human capital is not an input factor in the production process of final output but it affects the ability to build up knowledge capital as a by‐product of cumulated investment (learning by doing). Human capital is formed in the schooling sector that is financed by the government. The government may run into debt but obeys the inter‐temporal budget constraint. The article analyzes the structure of the model and studies the effects of different budgetary policies as regards the balanced growth rate, transition dynamics and with respect to welfare.     

Stochastic growth with a likelihood-increasing estimation process

Summary. We formulate an optimal estimation process in a stochastic growth model with an unknown true probability model. We consider a general reduced model of capital accumulation with an infinite horizon and introduce a learning process in the stochastic dynamic programming. When the only available information is a sample realization generated by a stationary and ergodic stochastic process, we prove that the optimal estimation process based on likelihood-increasing behavior converges to the true probability measure and the likelihood-increasing estimator defines a transition function on the sample space.Received: 24 January 2004, Revised: 18 February 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C13, C44, C61, O41.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual Meeting of the Japanese Economic Association at the University of Tokyo, at the annual Conference of the Japan Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics at Keio University, and at the 7th Czech-Japan Seminar on Data Analysis and Decision Making under Uncertainty in Awaji Island. I have benefited from useful comments from Hidetoshi Komiya, Andrew McLennan, Toru Maruyama, Nancy Stokey, Shinichi Suda, Shin-Ichi Takekuma, Akira Yamazaki, and an anonymous referee. I would also like to thank Fumihiro Kaneko for invaluable technical discussions. This research was partly supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 14730021) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.     

Poverty among ethnic minorities: the transition process,inequality and economic growth

This article investigates the process of reducing poverty in ethnic minority households. Using two recent Vietnam household surveys, we find that ethnic minority households are more likely to be persistently poor and less likely to be persistently non-poor than ethnic majority households. The within-group component generated by the variation in income within each ethnicity group explains more than 90% of the change in total inequality. Income redistribution plays an important role in decreasing the poverty gap and decreasing poverty severity. Different ethnic groups have different poverty patterns, which should be noted when designing policies to alleviate poverty and inequality.