Trade Openness,Structural Change and Total Factor Productivity

The impact of trade openness on growth of total factor productivity (TFP) is investigated. Given the differences in tradability of goods across sectors as well as the ongoing structural change, we examine whether trade openness has had a differential impact on TFP growth of the three main sectors of an economy. While the positive impact of openness on TFP growth for the aggregate economy is confirmed, openness has had no appreciable impact on the growth of TFP in the agricultural and industrial sectors. We find that the positive effect of openness on TFP growth for the economy as a whole was mostly due to the positive relationship between the two variables for the services sector. Further, we conclude that the lack of a general consensus in past studies could be due to their neglect of structural change and temporal factors when analyzing the trade-TFP nexus.     

Structural Change,Expanding Informality and Labor Productivity Growth in Russia

Strong growth, intensive structural change, and expanding informality have characterized many developing and emerging economies in recent decades. Yet most empirical investigations into the relationship between structural change and productivity growth overlook informality. This paper includes the informal sector in an analysis of the effects of structural changes in the Russian economy on aggregate labor productivity growth. Using a newly developed dataset for 34 industries covering the period 1995–2012 and applying three alternative approaches, aggregate labor productivity growth is decomposed into intra-industry and inter-industry contributions. All three approaches show that the overall contribution of structural change is growth enhancing, significant, and decreasing over time. Labor reallocation from the formal sector to the informal sector tends to reduce growth through the extension of informal activities with low productivity levels. Sectoral labor reallocation effects are found to be highly sensitive to the methods applied.     

The Role of Agricultural Productivity on Structural Change

Many authors have estimated and found that the productivity growth in agriculture is higher than that in non‐agriculture in today's richest countries. Several papers suggested that growth in agricultural productivity was essential for today's richest countries to take off early. However, few articles noticed that growth in agricultural productivity is critical in driving structural change in today's richest countries. This paper studies a two‐sector neoclassical growth model with subsistence agricultural consumption and shows that growth in agricultural productivity plays a more important role than growth in non‐agricultural productivity in governing massive structural change in today's richest countries.     

保险发展、储蓄结构变化与经济增长

在一个世代交叠的内生经济增长框架内分析了财产险和人身险促进经济增长的机制.研究发现,保险中介在跨时平滑行为主体面临的生产率风险和疾病风险冲击的同时,减少了行为人的流动性资产持有,提高了行为人的非流动性资产投资.在行为人的储蓄由流动性资产和非流动性资产构成的情况下,保险发展产生储蓄结构效应,而储蓄结构效应导致的非流动性资产投资的相对增加促进了资本和知识的积累,进而形成内生经济增长.基于中国数据的实证检验支持了这一机制.     

农业技术发展与经济结构变迁

本文发现,工业部门就业与投资率在经济增长过程中呈现的驼峰形变化可以用农业生产技术的转变来解释。从传统农业向现代农业转变需要新的资本投入,转变所释放的剩余劳动力需要积累资本进入其他现代产业,这都增加了对资本品的需求,进而带动工业部门扩张,引发工业化过程。随着农业技术的现代化趋于完成,对资本品的需求渐趋回落,使得工业部门不断收缩,并逐步收敛到长期的广义平衡增长路径上。本文利用一组包括34个国家经济结构变迁过程的数据,对上述推论进行检验并证实:农业部门的变化在工业化过程中对投资率有显著的影响,进而影响了工业部门的就业占比。但是,在去工业化过程中,农业部门的变化将不再影响投资率。     

Productivity and American Leadership

A Review of W. J. Baumol, S. A. B. Blackman and E. N. Wolff, Productivity and American Leadership: The Long View     

Schooling,educational achievement,and the Latin American growth puzzle

Latin American economic development has been perceived as a puzzle. The region has trailed most other world regions over the past half century despite relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle, however, can be resolved by considering educational achievement, a direct measure of human capital. We introduce a new, more inclusive achievement measure that comes from splicing regional achievement tests into worldwide tests. In growth regressions, the positive growth effect of educational achievement fully accounts for the poor growth performance of Latin American countries. These results are confirmed in a number of instrumental-variable specifications that exploit plausibly exogenous achievement variation stemming from historical and institutional determinants of educational achievement. Finally, a development accounting analysis finds that, once educational achievement is included, human capital can account for between half and two thirds of the income differences between Latin America and the rest of the world.     

增长、平等与治理:拉美的经验

经济增长会给政治管理带来怎样的挑战呢？这正是作者在本文中提出的问题。通过对智利、巴西和墨西哥这三个拉美国家的实证分析，作者认为，执政党要吸纳各种不同的社会力量并且要对收入差距问题予以重视。惟有如此，才能够在经济转型时期实现善治。     

Ownership, Productivity Change, and Financial Performance in Chinese Industry

This paper investigates Chinese industrial productivity from 1980 to 1996. Results include series for foreign-linked, shareholding, and private enterprises. We find long-term productivity increase, with growth rates declining during the 1990's. Productivity outcomes outside the state and collective sectors are modest, with shareholding enterprises suffering productivity declines. The paper examines differences in marginal factor productivity across ownership types, considers the impact of business cycles on the interpretation of productivity trends, and documents a statistical relationship among the profitability of state enterprises, the relative productivity performance of state firms, and the entry of new firms outside the state sector.J. Comp. Econom., December 2000, 28(4), pp. 786–813. Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02254; University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260; Institute of Quantitative and Technical Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 5 Jianguomennei Street, Beijing, China 100732.     

中国能源生产率增长中的结构变动——基于Shift-Share方法的分析

本文应用Shift-Share方法对近年来中国能源生产率变动状况在地区和产业层次上进行要素分解分析,研究表明,不管是在地区能源配置还是在部门能源配置中,效率因素始终是总体能效变动的决定性因素,结构因素作用较小。研究还发现,中国能源效率的变动受需求因素影响较大,这反映了国民经济运行中增长方式粗放等深层次矛盾。因此,针对中国能源经济发展的实际,应努力降低各产业部门的能源消耗强度,提高各部门特别是工业部门的技术创新能力,发展科技含量高、能耗小的新型产业,提高经济运行整体质量,立足长远目标,调整产业结构。     

Inflation,its variability and consumption in selected Latin American countries

The aim of this paper is to estimate the impact of inflation on consumer expenditures in Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Attention is also given to the impact of uncertainty about inflation and to the role of liquid assets.     

Production Structure, Technical Change, and Productivity Growth in Albanian Agriculture

This paper analyzes the production structure, technical change, and total factor productivity of Albanian agriculture during the postwar period. Albanian agriculture faced severe structural problems such as limited economies of scale, labor-using technical change, decreasing partial factor (land and labor) productivities, and slow growth of total factor productivity. Agricultural development in Albania was based mainly on input increases, which accounted for almost 90% of output growth. Consequently, the economic crisis appearing since 1990 is not due only to the adjustment process toward a market economy but has also been affected by the postwar agricultural development strategy.     

X-Efficiency and Productivity Change in Australian Banking

This paper investigates X -efficiency and productivity change in Australian banking between 1995 and 1999 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist productivity indexes. It differs from earlier studies by examining efficiency by bank type, and finds that regional banks are less efficient than other bank types. The study concludes that diseconomies of scale set in very early and hence are not a sufficient basis on which to allow mergers between large banks to proceed. Total factor productivity in the banking sector was found to have increased by an average annual 7.6 per cent between 1995 and 1999. All of the productivity increase was due to technological advance shifting out the frontier. The banking sector's performance was less efficient relative to the frontier in 1999 than it had been in 1995.     

中部六省制造业结构调整与劳动生产率关系的实证研究

本文对中部地区6省制造业2003—2007年的行业增加值及劳动投入数据进行研究,通过计算Hoover指数和Krugman指数发现各省发生了明显的产业结构调整,产业结构差异程度增强。然后使用偏离-份额分析法测算结构转变对劳动生产率增长的贡献,证实"结构红利"的影响存在,但不明显。最后根据中部地区各省制造业呈现的特点,提出劳动力资源应向内部增长型和动态转移增长型部门转移等政策建议。     

Latin American Growth and Exports to China*

ABSTRACT

After 2001, the booming trade between China and Latin American and the Caribbean countries (LAC) has led to concerns about a potential ‘resource curse’ and losses in manufacturing due to rising import competition. Little attention was paid to potential gains to LAC from growing Chinese demand for commodities. I address this issue empirically adopting a difference-in-difference framework and find that China's demand did deliver significantly higher growth rates to LAC exporters over the last decade and a half.