When the baby boom grows old: impacts on Canada's public sector

The authors discuss the dependency burden that is expected to result from demographic aging in Canada. "The estimated size of the burden depends on projections of demographic change, economic growth, and structural aspects of the major age-sensitive public-sector programmes. The burdens are analysed for 2016 and 2036, the period when demographic aging may be expected to have its most adverse impacts on old-age dependency ratios and public-sector programme costs. Contrary to many popularly expressed concerns, demographic aging is not the most important factor in determining future public-sector costs and revenues. Rather, aspects of the design and management of public-sector programmes represent the greatest area of uncertainty."     

企业绩效与婴儿潮现象研究——基于人口政策的文献综述

与新中国成立以来人口政策管制对应的是三次婴儿潮现象。在当前的人口预期判断下,第四次婴儿潮或已失约。文章通过对上证综合指数和各年份出生总人口的分析,梳理了人口变动对企业绩效实现的影响。     

Relative income position,individual and social income satisfaction,and income inequality

Summary The survival probability as estimated by an individual is,ceteris paribus supposed to depend on his relative income position in a set of reference incomes. The relative income position is thus defined in close connection to the preference formation theory of Kapteyn. It is shown that then this survival probability, called ‘utility,’ may be equated to the relative income position. A nice result of this approach is the possibility to formulate a utilitarian welfare function, which leads to the definition of income inequality measures. It is shown that the use of sets of reference incomes may lead to considerably smaller measured inequality.     

Relative deprivation and health revisited: New evidence from middle-aged and older adults in rural China

The critical role of income in individual health is not only reflected in the direct effect of income but also derived from the relative income levels within cohorts. This study first constructs relative deprivation indicators to measure the relative income levels of rural households by taking village-level households as the reference group. Using the data from the four waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2011–2018), we apply a panel event study approach to detect the impact of relative deprivation on the health status of rural middle-aged and older adults. The estimation results show the significantly negative and persistent effects of deterioration in relative deprivation on the physical and mental health outcomes of these adults. In rural China, the impact of relative deprivation on individual health shows significant age and wealth differences, but no significant gender differences are observed. Meanwhile, local collective culture plays important roles. The findings have important implications for the government to improve public health policies and promote healthy aging.     

Thailand's investment-driven boom and crisis

Analyses of the Asian crisis of 1997 have focused excessivelyon the financial sector, especially the banks. The role of thereal sector in exposing the financial system to stress has beenunder-emphasized. This paper provides a real-sector explanationfor Thailand's crisis, demonstrating the role of the investmentboom of the preceding decade. We build a full macroeconomicmodel of the Thai economy and use it to demonstrate that theinvestment boom and its changing composition generated recordgrowth but also increased macroeconomic vulnerability. Thisvulnerability, combined with the trigger of an export slowdownin 1996, produced the crisis.     

Dutch disease economics and the Colombian export boom

Dutch disease models predict a primary export boom may result in deindustrialization due to an appreciating real exchange rate. This paper examines the effects on the Colombian economy of large increases in foreign exchange earnings from coffee and illegal drug exports. As predicted by Dutch disease models, the relative price of nontraded goods rose and the real exchange rate appreciated. Once the boom was over, both were slow to return to previous levels. Nontraded sectors are shown to have increased their growth rates during the boom years, while traded goods experienced slower growth. Non-coffee exports also grew more slowly. Econometric estimation shows that the real exchange rate was sensitive to the price of coffee and fiscal expansion, that sectoral production adjusts to the exchange rate and level of absorption as predicted, and that non-coffee exports respond to changes in the real exchange rate and foreign demand. The paper concludes with a discussion of economic policy in response to the export boom.     

International trade and income distribution: reconsidering the evidence

This article reassesses the link between international trade and income distribution. We argue that one way to assess the influence of international trade upon income distribution is to take account of each country’s specific trade patterns by measuring the changes in the factor content of trade. The econometric specification is based on changes in Gini indices (over non-overlapping 4-year intervals), computed exclusively from series drawn from the same source. Our results show that a change in the factor content of trade has a significant impact on income distribution. The sign and magnitude of this impact is conditional on the national income level. We find that an increase in the labor content of trade raises income inequality in poor countries, but reduces it in rich countries (the reverse is true for the capital content of trade). In particular, we show that in the 1980s and 1990s, international trade may have contributed significantly to widening income inequalities in developing countries.     

深港西部通道:通向经济繁荣的桥梁

<正>历史将永远铭记这激动人心的一刻:2007年7月1日,香港回归祖国十周年的喜庆日子。中午时分,中共中央总书记、国家主席、中央军委主席胡锦涛在香港特区     

Active citizen's income, unconditional income and participation under imperfect competition: a welfare analysis

Various types of basic income schemes are considered to compensatethe allocative inefficiencies induced by unemployment benefits.A dynamic general equilibrium model of a unionised economy isdeveloped in which participation to the formal labour marketis endogenous and the budget of the State has to balance. Itis shown that basic income schemes reduce the equilibrium unemploymentrate. Assuming that job-search is costly to monitor, the normativeanalysis suggests that only the active population should beeligible to the basic income. Introducing such an ‘activecitizen’s income’ can be a Pareto-improving reform.     

Rank, income and income inequality in urban China

While some workers in China attain senior professional level and senior cadre level status (Chuzhang and above), others attain middle rank including middle rank of professional and cadre (Kezhang). This aspect of the Chinese labour force has attracted surprisingly little attention in the literature, a fact which this paper aims to rectify. We define various segments of the urban population in work-active ages and use data from the Chinese Income Project (CHIP) covering eastern, central and western China for 1995 and 2002. For 2002, persons of high rank make up 3% and persons of middle rank make up 14% of persons in work-active ages.Factors that affect a person's likelihood of having high or middle rank are investigated by estimating a multinomial probit model. We find that education, age and gender strongly affect the probability of being employed as a worker of high rank. There is relatively little income inequality among workers of high rank as well as among workers of middle rank. Mean income and household wealth per capita of highly-ranked workers developed more favorably than for other segments of the population studied, and personal income is more polarized by segment in 2002 than in 1995. Workers of high rank, and to a lesser degree, workers of middle rank, are among the winners in economic terms while the increasingly large category of non-workers is the losers. Rates of return to education have increased but income function analysis indicates that this provides only a partial explanation for the increased favorable income situation for workers of high and middle ranks.     

农村居民收入结构解析与增收路径

农民增收困难,城乡收入差距扩大是我国面临的突出问题,并且成为制约经济发展的重要障碍。要提高农民收入,必须对农民收入来源进行解析,努力保持现有的增收优势,发掘、培育农民收入新的增长点,有针对性地提出增收路径。