The impacts of environmental pollution and brain drain on income inequality

This paper establishes a two-sector general equilibrium model of a small open economy to examine the impact of environmental pollution on income inequality via brain drain. The results of the equilibrium modelling show that environmental pollution in the source country can widen the income gap between skilled and unskilled workers and that brain drain caused by environmental pollution will amplify this effect; furthermore, improving the environmental quality in the recipient country will widen the skilled-unskilled income gap in the source country. Our empirical results show that deteriorating the environmental quality in the source country increases income inequality and that brain drain caused by environmental quality will amplify the effect. Our sample is divided into four sub-samples: stage of national development, level of national income, status of environmental pollution and situation of brain drain. We find that environmental pollution has different effects on income inequality via brain drain in these sub-samples. Comparing the heterogeneous components of environmental quality, we find that brain drain caused by diminished ecosystem vitality and by air quality affecting human health will widen income inequality but that other factors related to environmental quality have no significant impacts on the effect of brain drain on income inequality. The results of a robustness test support these conclusions.     

我国家电企业转型升级研究-以慈溪市为例

转型升级已成为现阶段我国家电企业发展过程中面临的重大问题。回顾企业转型升级的现有研究,总结出企业的转型升级是产品价值链的提升。基于文献述评法,对慈溪市家电企业的转型升级现状进行分析。针对慈溪市家电企业在转型升级过程中出现的品牌、生产方式、技术创新、供应链方式及管理机制问题,提出相应的对策建议,从而推动家电企业实现可持续发展的目标。     

新常态与传统行业转型升级中国不能丢了实体经济

近几年国际形势的变化对服装制造业的冲击很大,尤其是成本大幅度的上涨,企业的生存环境越发困难,沿海的很多企业在向内地或东南亚迁移,市场环境逼迫企业寻找更低的劳动力市场。对于这一现状,中国国际经济交流中心副理事长兼秘书长、前商务部副部长魏建国在近日举办的第一届北杭州湾创新转型论坛大声疾呼：中国不能丢了实体经济。     

Servicification of investment and structural transformation: The case of China

Structural transformation is a key feature of economic development. Traditional literature attributes it to changes in the sectoral composition of consumption. Different from it, we argue that “servicification” of investment goods, induced by investment-composition technological change, becomes an increasingly important reason for structural transformation, particularly for the rise of the services economy. Our study of the input output tables finds that the share of service inputs in investment goods has grown significantly in many countries since the 1980s, especially for investment-intensive economies such as China. To assess if the investment channel is quantitatively significant, we build a standard model with three broad sectors, but instead add an investment production function employing factors from all three sectors. Moreover, we incorporate investment-composition technological change by allowing the productivities of the three sectoral inputs to evolve over time. We calibrate the model to the Chinese economy from 1981 to 2014 and perform counter-factual experiments accordingly. We find that investment-composition technological change accounts for 33.1% decline in employment share of agriculture, 36.0% increase in employment share of manufacturing and 31.5% increase in employment share of services over the period. The magnitude of this effect on the share of services keeps growing, particularly after 2000. Our findings are not unique for China, but also apply to other economies experiencing the “servicification” of investment.     

An empirical study of structural factors and regional growth in China

Based on data of 31 Chinese provinces over the period 1980–2004, the study in this paper presents new evidence on the effects of structural shocks and structural transformation on growth and convergence among the Chinese regions. The division of overall regional growth in labour productivity into three components – growth due to structural shocks, growth due to structural transformation and a ‘residual’ indicating growth due to region-specific changes – provides us with a better framework than the traditional one-sector Solow growth model for attributing growth and convergence to various different sources. Among other findings, the study has shown that during 1990–1999, structural shocks worked to widen the gap between rich regions and poor regions in China, while structural transformation worked to narrow the gap.     

Factor reallocation and structural transformation implications of grain subsidies in China

Since agriculture has contributed significantly to China’s economic growth miracle, it is important to understand the contributions and determinants of agriculture related to different agricultural policies in structural transformation in China. However, as one of the most important agricultural policies in China, the effects of the grain subsidy policy on factor reallocation, economic growth, as well as agricultural and non-agricultural production have not been investigated systematically and comprehensively. The absence of using an economy-wide model to estimate the impacts of the grain subsidy policy in China leaves a vacuum in the policy-advising space. This research develops a dynamic single-country, multi-regional computable general equilibrium model of the Chinese economy to evaluate the historical impacts of the grain subsidy policy. Our results reveal that grain subsidies impede the efficiency of factor reallocation and economic structural transformation in China. However, grain subsidies promote grain production growth and temporarily reduce rural-urban income disparity. In order to achieve the long-term sustainable increase in rural income and to mitigate the rural-urban income gap, China needs to further develop its labor-intensive industries (e.g., services) to accommodate the large number of rural labor transfers. Moreover, the large-scale agricultural production and technology improvement in agriculture are the effective measures to ensure food security in China.     

Prices and industrial transformation

Abstract

One of the contradictions of neo-classical economic theory concerns its view of relative prices. On the one hand it is relative prices that determine the market's equilibrium position and decide what transactions will take place. On the other hand, the pattern of relative prices, or expressed differently the price structure, has been regarded as more or less immutable. Variations in relative prices have been considered short-term phenomena, after which, in time, an adaptation has taken place which has restored the initial situation. The same line of thought was also held by Wesley Mitchell, who in the dispersion of relative prices found a reflection of business cycles, but he maintained that the price system is “yet stable in the essential balance of its interrelations”.¹ F.C. Mills cited Mitchell as his authority in his comprehensive work The Behavior of Prices, and although he felt compelled to raise objections to the inference that relative prices varied rhythmically with the business cycle, he still considered that there was a limit to change in relative prices, i.e. the price structure had a fundamental stability.²     

Changes in the source of China's regional inequality

This paper examines whether the dominant sources of China's regional inequality have changed since the early 1980s. We adopt the decomposition method introduced by Tsui (1993) to facilitate comparisons with his results for 1982. The decomposition analysis shows that the dominant sources of overall regional inequality in output have shifted from the intraprovincial to interprovincial inequality, from the rural–urban to intrarural inequality, and also from the disparity within the coast to between the coast and the interior. In the case of consumption, however, the intraprovincial inequality, the rural–urban inequality, and the disparity within the coast are the major factors of the overall regional inequality.     

Automation and inequality in China

In transitional economies, low wages imply sub-OECD yet growing labor shares of value added. China's rapid development has, however, seen a declining low-skill labor share and rising inequality. Here, a stylized model with three households and separable TFP and factor bias suggests a third of the decline in the low-skill share since 1994 is due to structural change and the rest mainly to skill-biased technical change. Expected future twists away from low-skill labor toward capital yield further inequality, moderated if strong TFP growth and population stability continue. But if the bias accompanies TFP shortfalls, worker displacement and rising inequality are in prospect.     

Trade integration and regional inequality: a theoretical framework with empirical implications for China

In this paper we present a theoretical framework for studying integration and inequality in China, followed by some empirical discussions of the Chinese regions. Employing the inframarginal methodology, we set up a theoretical framework based on transaction efficiency and comparative advantage in order to explain integration and inequality in developing economies. Our analyses imply that, among other findings, increases in domestic transaction efficiencies tend to reduce welfare inequalities in a developing economy while increases in international transaction efficiencies tend to raise the overall welfare level of a developing economy. These and other related results of this paper may have important implications for developing countries (China) in their policy-making.     

The impacts of income gaps on migration decisions in China

Using survey data from China, this article examines the effects of income gaps on migration decisions and the sources of these gaps. The econometric results support the hypothesis that income gaps significantly influence migration decisions. When income gap reaches a certain level, the reaction of the migration probability to income gap is weaker for men than for women. The relative income of women is less sensitive to an increase in rural income but more sensitive to a decrease in urban income than that of men. Moreover, we find that the urban to rural income gap is larger for women than for men, which suggests that women receive larger monetary return from migration than men do. In decomposing income gaps, we find that the gap for men is largely determined by differences in the attributes of migrants and nonmigrants, whereas for women, the gap is mainly determined by differences in returns to attributes.     

基于跨境电子商务的食品贸易转型升级对策研究

作为一种新型贸易业态,跨境电子商务的快速发展给我国企业提供了通过融入全球价值链实现产业升级的良好机遇。跨境电子商务具有传统贸易无法比拟的优势,而食品本身以及食品企业的特性、食品线上贸易的合法化等因素使得跨境电子商务与食品贸易具有很高的契合度。然而支付安全、信用保障、品牌竞争力及消费者跨境维权等问题仍然制约着我国食品企业利用这一新兴平台的效率。我国食品企业应积极关注这一新业态的发展,加强自身品牌建设,利用跨境电子商务加强对供应链的控制力,最终实现食品贸易方式和全球价值链转型升级的目标。     

Coping with regional inequality in Sweden: structural change,migrations, and policy, 1860–2000

In many countries, regional income inequality has followed an inverted U‐shaped curve, growing during industrialization and market integration and declining thereafter. By contrast, Sweden's regional inequality dropped from 1860 to 1980 and did not exhibit this U‐shaped pattern. Accordingly, today's regional income inequality in Sweden is lower than in other European countries. We note that the prime mover behind the long‐run reduction in regional income differentials was structural change, whereas neoclassical and technological forces played a relatively less important role. However, this process of regional income convergence can be divided into three major periods. During the first period (1860–1940), the unrestricted action of market forces, particularly the expansion of markets and high rates of internal and international migration, led to the compression of regional income differentials. During the next period (1940–80), regional convergence was even more intense. In this period, institutional arrangements favoured the reduction of productivity differentials across industries and successive governments aided the reallocation of the workforce from declining to thriving regions and economic sectors. During the last period (1980–2000), when regional incomes diverged, internal migration and structural change slowed. Furthermore, the development of knowledge‐intensive service industries favoured economic growth in the main metropolitan areas.     

The upswing of regional income inequality in Spain (1860-1930)

This paper studies the evolution of Spanish regional inequality from 1860 to 1930. The results point to the coexistence of two basic forces behind changes in regional economic inequality: industrial specialization and labor productivity differentials. The initial expansion of industrialization, in a context of growing economic integration of regions, promoted the spatial concentration of manufacturing in certain regions, which also benefited from the greatest advances in terms of labor productivity. Since 1900, the diffusion of manufacturing production to a greater number of locations has generated the emulation of production structures and a process of catching-up in labor productivity and wages.     

The inequality of nutrition intake among adults in China

This paper constructs a multidimensional Theil Index to estimate and decompose the inequality of nutrition intake among the adult population in China. Using 1991–2009 China Health and Nutrition Surveys (CHNS), this paper features two major findings. First, we show that the nutrition inequality has remained small in contrast to the large and increasing inequality in population income. Second, using Theil decompositions and Oaxaca–Blinder (O-B) decompositions, we find that, unlike income inequality, nature factors (such as age and gender) and regional factors play a more important role than socioeconomic factors in nutrition inequality. This finding provides a plausible explanation to the different time trends of nutrition inequality and income inequality. Moreover, it suggests that policies that aim to reduce the socioeconomic disparities may not automatically transfer to closing the gap in nutrition intake, which in turn is a potentially important determinant of population health and the long-term economic development.     

Geography and educational inequality in China

Since the 1980s, educational reforms in China have decentralized administration and finance and privatized costs. These changes have emerged in the context of rapid economic growth and rising regional economic disparities. The reforms have mobilized new resources in support of education, but they have also exacerbated regional disparities in funding for schools. Analyses of trends in school finance and expenditures have emerged, but detailed studies of the shifting ties between geography and educational outcomes in the population have not.Using 2000 census data on year and location of birth and educational attainment, we begin to address this gap. We compare the links between birth province and educational outcomes across 5-year birth cohorts to illuminate trends in region-based inequalities. Results show that the percent of variation in years of schooling explained by birth province declined for cohorts born through the early 1960s, and then increased thereafter.Additional analyses use a dissimilarity index to characterize the strength of the link between geography and access to each level of schooling. This index indicates that the link between geography and access to primary school has greatly increased across cohorts, as the few without access to primary school are ever more concentrated in poor areas. The link between birth province and access to subsequent levels of schooling shows mixed trends through cohorts born in the early 1960s: stability for junior high school and a weakening trend for senior high school and college. Thereafter, the dissimilarity index increased, substantially for junior high school and slightly for senior high school and college.Results attest to the enduring significance of geography as an educational stratifier in China. More broadly, results suggest the importance of regional inequalities in conditioning the relationship between development and educational stratification.     

A regional perspective on inequality and growth in Portugal using panel cointegration analysis

This paper examines the relationship between inequality and economic growth for thirty Portuguese NUTS3 regions within a multivariate panel framework over the period 1995–2007, using panel cointegration techniques to test for the existence of a relationship between inequality and real GDP per capita. The results point to the existence of a relationship between the variables, where the effect of inequality, measured as the Gini index of the earnings distribution, on per capita output is negative. This negative influence seems to be determined by the behaviour of the bottom of the earnings distribution, most likely by dampening investment in human capital, with the results pointing to the coexistence of a positive impact of inequality at the top of the distribution, supporting the incentives argument for the inequality-growth nexus. Additionally, the results confirm the predicted positive relationship between human capital and output, lending support to both the exogenous and endogenous growth models predictions on the importance of human capital for production both as an input in the production of final goods and in the production of technology. Another interesting result concerns structural funds: we found a negative relation of this variable with regional output. We believe that EU structural funds were a source of Dutch disease for Portugal, which resulted mainly in a lack of external competitiveness of the Portuguese economy due to the excessive specialization in non-tradable goods made possible by the European funds.     

The redistributive role of government social security transfers on inequality in China

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the redistributive role of government social security transfers on inequality in China. We attempt to answer two questions. First, does inequality of after-transfer income narrow, compared to that of before-transfer income? Second, given the scale and distribution of existing government social security transfers, will a small percentage increase in the transfers narrow or widen the inequality of total income? By employing the methodologies of the Musgrave-Thin (MT) index and decomposition of the Gini coefficient of total income by its sources, we find a positive answer to the first question and a negative answer to the second question. Government social security transfers have a positive role on inequality in the sense that the Gini coefficient of after-transfer income is smaller than that of before-transfer income. However, government social security transfers have a negative role on inequality, as current inequality will go up if there is a universal increase in government social security transfers for all recipients. Of all the components of government social security transfers, formal sector pensions are most unequalizing, whereas dibao and rural pension benefits have equalizing effects on the income distribution in China.     

日本产业经济特征、转型及启示

本文从作为日本经济异常突出的现象的产业经济出发,探讨一下日本经济中存在的产业问题,及其今后面临的转型,在此基础上希望能得出一些有益的启示,特别是对于与之同处于亚洲地区且在文化和经济发展中有着许多类似特点的亚洲国家包括我们中国经济的一些有益的启示.