土地价格市场化对中国工业部门要素投入与技术选择的影响

土地价格市场化是中国要素价格改革的重要组成部分。文章基于2007-2013年中国工业部门面板数据,实证检验了工业用地相对价格变动对中国工业部门要素投入调整和技术进步偏向的影响。研究发现：短期内,东部地区工业用地相对价格上升抑制了工业用地需求,并诱致了非土地要素对工业用地的替代,但在全国层面和中西部地区并没有显著观察到土地要素相对价格变动的短期诱致替代效应;长期内,工业用地价格上升诱致了能源与物质资本节约型和知识资本使用型技术的使用,土地节约型技术进步特征仅在东部地区得到了显著支持,在全国层面和中西部地区都不显著,这与中国政府主导型的工业用地价格市场化改革特征密切相关。未来中国应以土地价格市场化改革为契机,重视土地价格杠杆对工业部门要素结构优化和技术创新的激励效应,推动工业转型升级。     

中国产业结构升级 内生动力：需求还是供给

一国产业结构转型的内生动力包括需求和供给两个方面。本文构建了综合上述两类影响因素的产业结构转型模型。通过对模型的校准和模拟，本文发现需求方面的收入增长和供给方面的资本深化两个因素对我国结构转型的影响较大，而技术进步率差异的影响程度较小。因此，保持一定的投资速度，从而稳定增长，提高居民收入，深化资本劳动比是调整产业结构的重要力量。同时，为了在未来推动产业结构升级，需要进一步提高第一产业和第二产业的技术进步率。     

Directed Technical Change

For many problems in macroeconomics, development economics, labour economics, and international trade, whether technical change is biased towards particular factors is of central importance. This paper develops a simple framework to analyse the forces that shape these biases. There are two major forces affecting equilibrium bias: the price effect and the market size effect. While the former encourages innovations directed at scarce factors, the latter leads to technical change favouring abundant factors. The elasticity of substitution between different factors regulates how powerful these effects are, determining how technical change and factor prices respond to changes in relative supplies. If the elasticity of substitution is sufficiently large, the long run relative demand for a factor can slope up.
I apply this framework to develop possible explanations to the following questions: why technical change over the past 60 years was skill biased, and why the skill bias may have accelerated over the past 25 years? Why new technologies introduced during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were unskill biased? What is the effect of biased technical change on the income gap between rich and poor countries? Does international trade affect the skill bias of technical change? What are the implications of wage push for technical change? Why is technical change generally labour augmenting rather than capital augmenting?     

On using relative prices to measure capital-specific technological progress

Recently, Greenwood, Hercowitz and Krusell (GHK) have identified the relative price of (new) capital with capital-specific technological progress. In a two-sector growth model, however, the relative price of capital equals the ratio of the productivity processes in the two sectors. Restrictions from this model are used with data on wages and prices to construct measures of productivity growth and test the GHK identification, which is easily rejected by the data. This raises questions about various measures of the contribution that capital-specific technological progress might make to the economy. This identification also induces a negative correlation between the resulting measures of capital-specific and economy-wide technological change, which potentially explains why papers employing this identification find that capital-specific technological change accelerated in the mid-1970s. We impose structure on the productivity measures based on their long-run behavior and find evidence of a slowdown in productivity in the 1970s that is common to both sectors and an acceleration in the mid-1990s that is exclusive to the capital sector.     

Measurement and Allocation of Capital Inputs With Taxes: A Sensitivity Analysis for OECD Countries

Taxes affect the measurement of capital inputs. The paper provides an assessment of these impacts in a cross‐country framework where heterogeneity of corporate taxation across industries and asset types is accounted for. The results show that taxes change the relative prices of capital types, which, in turn, has implications on the estimated capital quality and reallocation effects in the traditional growth accounting framework. Omitting tax parameters is a source of mismeasurement, particularly when the rental price of capital assets is constructed using an external rate of return, leading to biased capital costs and profits rates. It is shown that differential taxation results in a deadweight loss in terms of misallocated capital inputs, predominantly due to composition effects within industries.     

Capital Inflows and House Prices: Aggregate and Regional Evidence from China

Rising house prices in China have been of concern for investors and policymakers. Prices have risen substantially in the last decade, especially in large urban cities, and some economists have expressed concerns about the affordability of residential housing for young adults. This phenomenon becomes a major concern for policymakers, in terms of managing policies to balance the residential needs of individuals and the transition to a market economy. Theoretically, house prices ought to be linked to economic factors such as disposable income, availability of land to build and credit policy. However, it appears that traditional economic theories fail to appropriately explain house prices in China. We provide an explanation from the perspective of capital inflows into China. In terms of per capita remittances, China receives the highest inflow of foreign capital, and this may have a significant impact on risk adjusted returns in the Chinese market. To investigate this relationship, we use the vector error correction model to assess the impact of capital inflows on house prices. We find that capital inflows have a significant positive effect on house prices. The study makes important contributions to understanding the relationship between house prices and foreign remittances after controlling for other economic factors. China is a large economy. Because the impact of economic development in China has not been consistent across the country, we address the regional differences in the house price changes to capital inflows. Using regional data, we show that capital inflows have an asymmetric effect on the housing market across different provinces and cities of China. This has important implications for the development of economic policies in China that aim to provide fair access to residential housing for everyone. These findings are also relevant to investors in the housing market, whether investing for a personal residential home or as part of their diversified investment portfolio. It will also be informative to see how a reversal of capital inflows associated with tighter financing conditions in advanced countries will affect house prices in China.     

Factor‐biased public infrastructure and wage inequality

This paper analyzes how factor‐biased public infrastructure affects the skilled–unskilled wage inequality. In the basic model with a full employment economy, we find that when the weighted dependence of skilled labor and capital in the urban skilled sector on public infrastructure is large enough relatively to that of unskilled labor and capital in the urban unskilled sector, the wage inequality will be expanded. We also discuss labor‐biased and capital‐biased public infrastructure in our framework, and find that the relative dependences of relevant labor or capital on public infrastructure are important determinants of wage inequality. In the extended models, we analyze separately the issue of wage inequality in the economy with unemployment and the totally open capital market, and find the results of the basic model almost still hold.     

Changes in Wages,Wage Inequality and the Return to Human Capital Skills in Kenya: 1977–2005

The conventional literature on wage inequality in Kenya has two drawbacks: first, by focusing on manufacturing sector wages, overlooking wages in other sectors, the results may be biased. Second, previous studies emphasize wage determination solely at the conditional mean rather than resort to wage determination across the entire earnings distribution. We remedy these weaknesses and add a new layer of research previously unexamined. Particularly, we consider wage changes during periods of wide GDP fluctuations from 1977 to 1986, 1986 to 1999, and 1999 to 2005 and explore if prices of measured human capital skills moved in tandem with changes in the dispersion of unmeasured human capital skills as is postulated by human capital theory. Our results support human capital theory: we find higher wages and higher residual wage dispersion during periods of rising GDP (1999–2005) but find lower wages and lower residual wage dispersion during periods of falling GDP (1977–86 and 1986–99).     

International trade,technological change and wage inequality in the UK economy

This paper examines the joint impact of international trade and technological change on UK wages across different skill groups. International trade is measured as changes in product prices and technological change as total factor productivity (TFP) growth. We take account of a multi-sector and multi-factor of production economy and use mandated wage methodology in order to create an well-balanced approach in terms of theoretical and empirical cohesion. We use data from the EU KLEMS database and analyse the impact of both product price changes and TFP changes of 11 UK manufacturing sectors on factor rewards of high-, medium- and low-skilled workers. Results show that real wages of skill groups are significantly driven by the sector bias of price change and TFP growth of several sectors of production. Furthermore, we estimate the share of the three different skill groups on added value for each year from 1970 to 2005. The shares indicate structural change in the UK economy. Results show a structural change owing to decreasing shares of low-skilled workers and increasing shares of medium-skilled and high-skilled workers over the years.     

Explaining time variation in geographic price dispersion

The pattern of price dispersion significantly varies over time and across locations. Using a detailed dataset with product-level retail prices, we examine the role of time-varying factors in shaping the time variation of price dispersion. We find that price dispersion variation in an integrated region is mainly driven by oil prices, while the variation in a segmented region is attributed to dispersion in real income. We also find that dispersion in value-added tax rates explains a significant portion of price dispersion fluctuations in both geographic dimensions. This paper offers new evindence on the trade-off that exists for the role of time-varying factors as contributors to price dispersion variation by highlighting their relative importance across different dimensions of economic geography.     

房价结构调整与经济结构转型

目前,我国住宅房地产价格明显偏离正常值。对房价结构的分析表明,房价结构中33.86%的资金流向了政府。经过房价结构这一隐秘机制的运行,本来属于居民消费领域的购房资金被转变为政府投资资本,导致经济结构中投资与消费之间的比例失衡。这与我国加快经济结构调整,增加消费在促进经济增长中的比重相悖。为应对上述情况,加快优化房价结构是促进经济结构转型的有力举措。     

The general equilibrium incidence of environmental taxes

We study the distributional effects of a pollution tax in general equilibrium, with general forms of substitution where pollution might be a relative complement or substitute for labor or for capital in production. We find closed form solutions for pollution, output prices, and factor prices. Various special cases help clarify the impact of differential factor intensities, substitution effects, and output effects. Intuitively, the pollution tax might place disproportionate burdens on capital if the polluting sector is capital intensive, or if labor is a better substitute for pollution than is capital; however, conditions are found where these intuitive results do not hold. We show exact conditions for the wage to rise relative to the capital return. Plausible values are then assigned to all the parameters, and we find that variations over the possible range of factor intensities have less impact than variations over the possible range of elasticities.     

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY WITH TWO REGIONS: CAPITAL ACCUMULATION AND ECONOMIC STRUCTURE*

This paper proposes a compact two-region economic model with endogenous capital accumulation. The system produces one industrial commodity and service. Each region consists of one industrial sector and one service sector. The model describes the interaction between capital accumulation, the regional distribution of capital and labour, the division of labour, the capital distribution within each region, land rents, regional service prices and commodity prices over time and space. Accepting some simplifying assumptions, we show a way to integrate economic geography. equilibrium theory and neo-classical growth theory. We analyse how differences in regional resources such as land and amenities and the preference structure of the population may affect the equilibrium structure of economic geography.     

The economic contribution of the “C” in ICT: Evidence from OECD countries

Numerous studies have documented the contribution of ICT to growth. Less has been done on the contribution of communications technology, the “C” in ICT. We construct an international dataset of fourteen OECD countries and present contributions to growth for each ICT asset (IT hardware, CT equipment and software) using alternative ICT deflators. Using each country’s deflator we find that the contribution of CT capital deepening to productivity growth is lower in the EU than the US. Thus we ask: is that lower contribution due to a lower rate of CT investment or differing sources and methods for measurement of price change? We find that: (a) there are still considerable disparities in measures of ICT price change across countries; (b) in terms of growth-accounting, price harmonisation has a greater impact on the measured contributions of IT hardware and software in the EU relative to the US, than that of CT equipment; over 1996–2013, harmonising investment prices explains just 15% of the gap in the EU CT contribution relative to the US, compared to 25% for IT hardware; (c) over 1996–2013, CT capital deepening accounted for 0.11% pa (6% as a share) of labour productivity growth (LPG) in the US, compared to 0.03% pa (2.5% of LPG) in the EU-13 when using national accounts deflators; and (d) using OECD harmonised deflators, the figure for the EU-13 is raised to 0.04% pa (4% of LPG).     

Policy distortions and aggregate productivity with heterogeneous establishments

We formulate a version of the growth model in which production is carried out by heterogeneous establishments and calibrate it to US data. In the context of this model we argue that differences in the allocation of resources across establishments that differ in productivity may be an important factor in accounting for cross-country differences in output per capita. In particular, we show that policies which create heterogeneity in the prices faced by individual producers can lead to sizeable decreases in output and measured total factor productivity (TFP) in the range of 30 to 50 percent. We show that these effects can result from policies that do not rely on aggregate capital accumulation or aggregate relative price differences. More generally, the model can be used to generate differences in capital accumulation, relative prices, and measured TFP.     

Skilled–unskilled wage inequality: A general equilibrium analysis

The paper develops a static three sector competitive general equilibrium model of a small open economy in which skilled labour is mobile between a traded good sector and a non-traded good sector and unskilled labour is specific to another traded good sector. The capital is perfectly mobile among all these three sectors. We examine the effects of change in different factor endowments and of globalization on skilled–unskilled wage inequality. We find that the effect of a change of a factor endowment on wage inequality depends on the factor intensity ranking between two skilled labours using sectors and on the relative strength of the marginal effects on demand for and supply of non-tradable good. We also find that a decrease in the price of the product produced by skilled (unskilled) labour using traded good sector lowers (raises) the skilled–unskilled wage inequality.     

Does crude oil move stock markets in Europe? A sector investigation

The aim of this article is to investigate the responses of European sector stock markets to oil price changes. We use linear and asymmetric models and study the association of oil and stock prices. Our findings suggest that the strength of this association varies greatly across sectors. Moreover, for some sectors we find strong evidence of asymmetry in the reaction of stock returns to changes in the price of oil.     

上市公司、资本虹吸与房价的地区差异

鉴于上市公司与房价地区差异的研究鲜见,文章首次从地区层面寻找上市公司影响房价的微观传导路径.研究发现,上市公司从一级市场上融资、内部人在二级市场上减持均会"虹吸"全国资金,增加当地货币资本,进而正向影响房价,即高融资或高减持地区成为"虹吸方";融资虹吸与减持虹吸对房价的影响存在差异,减持虹吸引起财富集聚,对房价的影响更多地由富裕阶层的购房需求所推动,而融资虹吸带来的财富影响比较分散.地区股票市值与房价呈现螺旋增长关系,在股市上涨期间替代效应占主导地位,两者的增长率负相关;而在下跌期间财富效应占主导地位,两者的增长率正相关.文章从企业层面阐释了房价地区差异的金融成因及路径,并试图厘清股票市场与房价的增长结构,为地区经济的协调发展提供了参考.     

Leave it in the ground? Oil sands development under carbon pricing

We evaluate the impact of internalizing the carbon emissions externality on new oil sands projects. Using data from recent oil sands projects and estimates of both the social costs of carbon and carbon prices consistent with meeting global climate change targets, we estimate the potential impact of action on climate change on the economic viability of oil sands investments. Our results indicate that oil sands are a marginal resource before they incur any carbon costs. Incorporating carbon costs, we find that the viability of oil sands depends on the coverage of carbon pricing across the life cycle emissions from oil sands and on the equilibrium incidence of carbon prices on producers. We show an important interaction between resource royalties and carbon charges that implies that the impact carbon pricing depends on not only the stringency and coverage of the carbon price but also its point of application of a carbon price. Finally, we explore the potential for technological change to mitigate the impacts of carbon pricing on oil sands investment viability.     

Product Downsizing and Hidden Price Increases: Evidence from Japan's Deflationary Period

In this paper, we empirically examine the extent to which product downsizing occurred during the deflationary period in Japan, as well as the effects of product downsizing on prices and quantities sold. Using scanner data on prices and quantities for all products sold at about 200 supermarkets over the last 10 years, we find that about one third of product replacements were accompanied by a size/weight reduction. We also find that a 1‐percentage point larger size/weight reduction is associated with a 0.45‐percentage point larger price decline, resulting in an effective price increase. Finally, we show that the quantities sold decline with product downsizing, and that the responsiveness of the quantity sold to size/weight changes is almost the same as the price elasticity, indicating that consumers are as sensitive to size/weight changes as they are to price changes. Our results suggest that the Japanese consumer price index may be downwardly biased rather than upwardly biased.