Changes in poverty in Zimbabwe between 1990 and 1996: Worsening outcomes under adverse conditions

The article examines changes in poverty and sources of change in Zimbabwe between 1990 and 1996. Comparable national survey data are used for both periods. Findings indicate that levels of wellbeing and poverty worsened during the period, although there is some evidence that inequality is lower in the latter year. Rural poverty is more prevalent, severe and deeper than that in urban areas, but urban poverty grew dramatically during the period. Much of the growth of urban poverty is associated with economic restructuring and the failure of the urban economy to produce high-quality jobs. While the educational attainment of the urban population grew during the 1990s, secondary and higher levels of education were no longer a guarantee of escape from poverty in 1995/6. In rural areas, all land-use types exhibited an increase in poverty; these findings are robust to the welfare measure chosen.     

美国经济低迷何时休?

美国经济低迷何时休的答案主要取决于未来美国的增长速度和通胀水平。本文基于对美国经济概况、人口结构和核心竞争力分析,国际外部环境和美国在经济复苏过程中货币和财政等政策取向的评估,以及和日本失去的十年的比较,认为美国经济不会长期衰退和通缩,也难以长期低迷。简单匡算表明危机后美国可能需要三年左右时间修复银行和家庭的资产报表,恢复常态经济增长。固本靠增长,治标靠通胀。     

The Political Economy of Urban Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan African cities in the late 1990s face a daunting set of problems including rapid growth, increasing poverty, deteriorating infrastructure, and inadequate capacity for service provision. Even as a renewed debate is shaping up around issues of urban development, there is little attention given to the question of urban food security. Whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, urban food problems in Africa commanded political attention, the nature of urban food insecurity in the 1990s is such that it has tended to lose political importance. This is largely because in the 1970s, the problem was one of outright food shortages and rapid price changes that affected large portions of the urban population simultaneously. The impact of structural adjustment, continued rapid growth, and an increase in poverty make urban food insecurity in the 1990s primarily a problem of access by the urban poor. Under circumstances where the urban poor spend a very large portion of their total income on food, urban poverty rapidly translates into food insecurity. The lack of formal safety nets, and the shifting of responsibility for coping with food insecurity away from the state towards the individual and household level has tended to atomize and muffle any political response to this new urban food insecurity. This paper briefly reviews urban food insecurity and generates a set of empirical questions for an analysis of food and livelihood security in contemporary urban sub-Saharan Africa, and then examines historical and contemporary evidence from Kampala, Uganda, and Accra, Ghana, to suggest some tentative conclusions.     

人力资本存量、R&D投资与中国工业增长转型

工业是中国当前三大产业中的支柱产业,工业增长模式的体制转轨很大程度上反映了中国经济增长模式的转轨方向和现状。文章借助1990年-2007年的统计数据进行计算和实证检验发现：中国工业企业从上世纪90年代初以依靠人力资本存量和物质资本存量积累的增长模式转变为新世纪以来以R＆D投资带来的技术进步和工业劳动力投入为主要产出支撑的新模式,虽然这种增长转轨并未彻底完成,但已经证明集约化增长模式将逐步成为中国经济可持续发展的主要途径。     

International production networks and host country productivity: evidence from Malaysia

In the 1990s, Malaysia, along with other East Asian countries, achieved rapid economic growth rates. Research has yet to ascertain the extent to which this rapid economic growth was due to the development of global production networks. The main objective of the paper is to examine the impact of international production fragmentation on productivity growth. The paper hypothesises that international production fragmentation increases productivity growth through trade and foreign direct investment, and that productivity growth increases due to skill‐intensive industries producing within an international production network.     

China＇s Pattern of Growth： Moving to Sustainability and Reducing Inequality

I. Introduction China’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth has averaged 9.4 percent per annum since1978. As a result of this impressive growth, millions of people were lifted out of poverty. Economic reforms implemented over the last 25 years have certainly been instrumental in the remarkable growth performance, leading to higher productivity growth than in the pre- reform period. Nevertheless, it is widely agreed that China’s growth during this period has been resource intensive, drawing…     

黑龙江省经济增长与就业关系的国内外比较研究

改革开放以来,我国经济快速增长,就业出现了新形势,上世纪九十年代以来,开始有学者对我国经济增长与就业关系进行研究,结果证明"奥肯定律"在我国失灵,由此出现了"奥肯悖论"、反"奥肯定律"之说。黑龙江省经济增长与就业关系有不同于国际上及全国总体情况的特殊性和特定规律,对此进行研究可为黑龙江省经济增长战略,经济发展模式,就业政策的制定,解决就业问题的策略等提出参考意见。     

我国区域经济活跃度的数学模型及其应用

首先给出经济活跃度的概念、内涵及特征,统计分析山东、河南、浙江和福建四省1990—2013年能够反映经济活跃度的科技成果数量、居民消费水平等八个经济指标,利用时序全局主成分分析方法建立经济活跃度的数学模型,动态描绘其历史演变进程和发展趋势。结果表明：四省的经济活跃度时序图均呈增长趋势,但增长速度各异且其差距也逐年增加;2000年之前四省经济活跃度增长趋势缓慢,2000年之后均为快速增长,其发展动态轨迹与经济客观状况相吻合。     

安徽省科技投入与经济增长关系的计量分析

随着科学技术的快速发展,科技投入对经济增长的作用越来越明显。本文依据安徽省1992—2009年间科技投入与经济增长的有关数据变量,应用SPSS、Eviews等软件研究安徽省科技投入与经济增长两指标之间的互动关系,建立了反映两者长期协整关系的模型,并对两序列进行格兰杰因果检验。研究结果表明：安徽省科技投入与经济增长间存在长期稳定的均衡关系,且两者间存在单项因果关系。最后根据研究结果,提出一些建议。     

Multiple Forces Driving China＇s Economic Development： A New Analytic Framework

Based on economic growth theory and the World Bank's analytical framework relating to the quality of growth, the present paper constructs a framework that encompasses physical, international, human, natural and knowledge capital to synthetically interpret economic development. After defining the five types of capital and total capital, we analyze the dynamic changes of these types of capital in China and in other countries. The results show that since China's reform and opening up, knowledge, international, human and physical capital have grown rapidly, with speeds of growth higher than that of economic growth. As the five types of capital have all increased at varying paces, the savings level of total capital in China has quadrupled in 25 years and overtook that of the USA in the 1990s. The changes in the five types of capital and total capital reveal that there are progressively multiple driving forces behind China's rapid economic development. Implications for China's long-term economic development are thereby raised.     

制度变迁对上海地区经济增长的实证分析

本文简要评述了经济增长理论和制度在经济增长中的作用。从90年代以来中国上海地区的各项经济数据出发,定量分析和估计了90年代后制度变迁对上海经济增长的作用。文章验证了制度变迁对于中国经济某一地区经济增长的具体贡献,指出了制度变迁对于改革和经济增长的重要作用。     

Technical progress and the growth of the Japanese economy - past and future

This paper considers technical progress and the growth of theJapanese economy. Many economists are pessimistic about theeconomy's future because of the rapid ageing of the population.However, capital and total factor productivity (TFP) are muchmore important than labour in determining economic growth. Duringthe high-growth era of the 1950s and 1960s, TFP contributedalmost 4 percentage points to the 10 per cent annual growthrate. Since then, however, TFP growth has fallen significantly.During the 1970s, Japan's machinery industries became worldleaders and made possible the export-led growth of the period1975 85. I argue that the stagnation of the 1990s was causedby demand deficiency, and that demand creation by technicalprogress is the key to economic growth.     

Success Strategies in the Chinese Chemical Industry: A Survey and Case Study Investigations

Rapid economic growth and radical structural transformation pose a challenge to official statisticians as they seek to encompass new economic activities and phenomena. The accuracy of official statistics is liable to come into question. Urban unemployment in China is a good example. This paper estimates the urban unemployment rate using administrative statistics, population census data and a recent sample survey data set, and provides a critique showing in some detail how and why Chinese unemployment statistics are a minefield for the unwary and unemployment is so difficult to measure. Nevertheless, it is found that the urban unemployment rate rose rapidly over the 1990s and exceeded 11% in 1999 and 2000. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the findings for understanding unemployment, for policy, and for the collection of statistics.     

Cyclical and structural influences on Irish unemployment

In the course of the 1990s the Irish unemployment rate movedfrom near the top to close to the bottom of the EU league table.This paper identifies the cyclical and structural factors thathave contributed to the transformation of the Irish labour market.A steady gain in competitiveness facilitated rapid growth inoutput and employment. The links between Irish and British unemploymentrates have weakened as rapid economic growth has reduced Irishunemployment to historically low levels. The role of structuralchanges, including the relative generosity of the social welfaresystem and the wage bargaining process, are discussed.     

Growth Accounting for the Chinese Provinces 1990–2000: Incorporating Human Capital Accumulation

This paper examines the linkage between aggregate real output, capital, labour, education, and productivity within a growth accounting framework for 27 Chinese provinces between 1990 and 2000. The results suggest that human capital has had a significant role in facilitating economic growth of all of the provinces throughout the 1990s. Regional disparities in factor accumulation are also considered. The results suggest that uneven distribution of resources between the coastal and inland provinces increased the regional gap in economic growth throughout the 1990s.     

Managing urban growth in Lusaka,Zambia∗

The question of urban management is a key issue for policy makers in Africa. The objec‐tive in this paper is to analyse recent trends in the management of urban growth in Lu‐saka, Zambia. The Zambian urbanization experience is of a transition from constrained to unconstrained patterns of urbanization and of the imperative to dismantle the heritage of colonial policies. Lusaka's management performance with regard to the pro‐vision of shelter and services as well as work opportunities for an expanding population is investigated. It is argued that the experience of Lusaka underscores the urban management dilemmas of transcending the burden of past policies.     

The economic history of Thailand: Old debates,recent advances,and future prospects

Despite slow development of Thai economic history scholarship, research output in the last three decades has shed new light and improved arguments on classic debates using novel primary sources and quantitative methods. This article traces the evolution of three Thai economic history debates from the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries: (1) factors behind Thailand's slow economic growth; (2) the reluctance of rural workers to move into urban employment; and (3) the Thai government's failure to invest in large-scale irrigation projects. The article concludes with a discussion of current challenges facing Thai economic history research and suggestions to move the discipline forward.     

收入分配、居民消费与经济发展方式转变

改革开放30年来我国经济持续地高速增长过程中呈现出收入差距不断扩大和居民消费需求不振等问题。文章通过构建模型实证检验了收入分配、居民消费与经济增长之间的关系,研究结果表明：尽管收入差距对农村居民消费的影响并不显著,但城镇居民收入分配差距对其消费有显著的负面影响,我国居民收入差距扩大显著地制约了我国消费需求的增长;居民消费对经济增长存在显著的积极影响,且对经济增长的效应强于投资,扩大居民消费有利于我国经济可持续发展。文章据此提出了针对性的政策建议。     

Rural–urban migration and urbanization in China: Evidence from time-series and cross-section analyses

Since 1978, China has experienced a rapid and unprecedented process of urbanization, created by the history's largest flow of rural–urban migration in the world. This article attempts (a) to assess the role of the cityward migration in China's urbanization in 1978–1999 and (b) to empirically investigate factors behind the migration boom with time-series and cross-section data. We find that (a) rural–urban migration made dominant contributions to Chinese urban population growth; (b) while moving together with the Chinese economy, the causal link runs from economic growth to migration, not vice versa; (c) interprovince migrants were encouraged by the rural–urban income gap and discouraged by their geographic distances to destinations; and (d) the amount of intraprovince migrants is positively related to rural–urban income gap and urban population in that province.     

预防性储蓄动机对消费的影响及其强度估计——基于1992—2012年城镇居民的实证研究

本文使用省（市）数据研究收入不确定性对我国城镇居民消费增长的影响,结果显示：（一）由于不确定性的存在,城镇居民消费增速只有确定性环境下消费增长的30．5％;（二）我国城镇居民尽管普遍存在着较强的预防性储蓄动机,但是各地区储蓄动机不平衡,其中西部最强,中部次之,东部最弱,且中部和东部差异较小,西部与中部和东部差异最大;（三）样本期间全国及分地区城镇居民相对谨慎系数呈下降一平稳一上升的走势。城镇居民消费增长慢于个人可支配收入的增长以及居民预防性储蓄动机强度的区域和时序差异提示我们：各地区的产业结构和经济发展水平的不同,也是影响各地区收入结构和储蓄动机的因素。本文的创新在于提出：全国性和区域性经济环境或经济政策差异,会造成不同地区的城镇居民预防性储蓄动机的强度发生相对变化。