Economic Convergence in the African Continent: Closing the Gap

The paper attempts to analyse the conditional β‐convergence and its sources for 32 African countries over the period 1960‐2008. The augmented Solow model with both gross domestic product (GDP) per worker and per capita income is estimated using the dynamic system generalized methods of moments (GMM) technique with the panel data. This is the first study on the sources of conditional β‐convergence for African countries. According to the results of the augmented Solow model, income convergence rates are lower than those of GDP per worker. Moreover, total factor productivity convergence, human capital convergence and capital labour convergence are contributing towards the convergence of GDP per worker in Africa. This means that growth in the poorest African countries is being augmented by “catch‐up factor,” which is good news for them. However, convergence in terms of GDP per worker is not being fully translated into income per capita convergence. The demographic structure in the African continent with its record of persistent population growth has played an important role in lowering the income convergence of its countries.     

要素交易管制背景下产业资本对居民要素收入的侵蚀机理

基于不同程度的交易管制约束以及要素购买方决策均衡的相应变化,文章构建了要素收入份额模型,考察交易管制对收入分配的影响。模型研究表明,准入许可管制程度越高,产业资本的收入份额越大,居民持有资本收入份额越小,劳动收入份额相对降低;对居民要素交易机会的限制越大,要素保留价格越低,供给弹性越小,要素收入份额越小。     

Human capital,trade, and economic growth

Human Capital, Trade, and Economic Growth. — Human capital, because of its special role in innovative activity and technological progress, has formed the bedrock of the new theories of endogenous growth. However, it not only serves as an engine of growth but also as a productive input along with labor and physical capital. In this study, the authors find evidence of the importance of both roles of human capital. They also find that the relationship between growth and the external effects of human capital vary according to trade regime. When literacy rates are relatively high, open economies grow about 0.65 to 1.75 percentage points more than closed economies.     

Factor shares,inequality, and capital flows

I present an endogenous growth model where innovations are factor saving and model the choice of technologies in an Overlapping Generations framework. Markets are competitive and factor prices are determined by marginal productivity of factors; therefore, the income share of reproducible factors increases with the stage of development. Beyond the standard results of this type of model I find that (i) without bequests long‐run growth is not possible, (ii) if the economy presents long‐run growth then intrageneration inequality may last forever but if the economy does not present long‐run growth then in steady state, there is no intrageneration inequality, (iii) when the economy is open, the pattern of capital flows depends not only on the relative abundance of factors but also on the technologies and, for this reason, capital may not flow from rich to poor economies, and (iv) consistently, capital flows may not help to break poverty traps.     

Openness and growth in East Asia after the Asian crisis

Openness with respect to trade in goods, services and foreign direct investment has a positive marginal effect on growth. The fast-growing East Asian economies were early openers, and this contributed to their fast growth. However, East Asian countries are not relatively open today. This factor, together with the convergence effect of fast growth in the past, imply that their economies will slow down. Their growth prospects are further reduced by growing geographic discrimination against their goods and services in world markets, and the slow down of the Japanese economy.     

Economic growth in Asia: Determinants and prospects

Using a growth accounting framework, we find that developing Asia grew rapidly over the past three decades mainly due to robust growth in capital accumulation. The contributions of education and total factor productivity in the region's past economic growth remain relatively limited. We also make long-run growth projections for developing Asia by combining the growth accounting framework with growth regression approach. Our baseline projections based on the model of conditional convergence show that the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates of the 12 developing Asian economies covered by this paper will be consistently lower for the next two decades than their historical performance. However, policy reforms in education, property rights, and research and development can substantially raise GDP growth in the region and partly offset the slowdown in growth caused by the convergence phenomenon. Even under the baseline scenario, the region's share in the world economy will increase from the current 34 percent in 2009 to close to a half in 2030.     

Wages,Productivity and Labour's Declining Income Share in Post‐Apartheid South Africa

The Marikana incident in 2012, as well as the protracted strikes by platinum miners, metal and postal workers in 2014 suggest that not all is well in the South African labour market. Even though those in employment are better off than the unemployed poor, macroeconomic data indicate that labour's share in gross value added has declined significantly during the first two decades following the first democratic election in 1994. A falling share of labour in income also means, by definition, that average labour productivity growth outstrips real wages growth. Data for South Africa suggest that productivity has indeed increased faster than wages in South Africa. This article argues that financialisation and more aggressive returns‐oriented investment strategies applied by for instance large investment institutions translated into higher required rates of return on capital, which in turn caused an increased implementation of capital‐augmenting labour‐saving technology that reduces labour's share in income.     

中国西部地区经济增长源泉——基于人力资本与能源消费的双重约束

文章以中国经济发展相对落后的西部地区为研究对象,运用DEA方法将考虑人力资本与能源消费的经济增长分解为人力资本、复合物质资本、效率改善和技术进步四部分,探寻其经济增长的源泉,并对西部大开发前后进行了比较研究。发现以人力资本、物质资本和能源消费为代表的要素投入和以技术进步、效率提高为代表的全要素生产率对经济增长的推动作用几乎相等;但在西部大开发以后,以技术进步、效率提高为代表的全要素生产率对经济增长的推动作用呈现逐年上升的良好趋势。采用绝对收敛方程考察了中国西部地区经济增长与四类因素的收敛效应,发现中国西部地区出现了显著地经济收敛,而这种结果是技术效率、技术进步和物质资本积累的共同结果。采用Tobit模型深入分析了能源投入和人力资本对经济增长约束的传导机制,结果表明,中国西部地区经济增长可持续发展的重要源泉和动力在于转变经济增长方式。     

Growth convergence reconsidered

Growth Rate Convergence Reconsidered. —While convergence properties lie at the heart of the endogenous-exogenous growth debate, the empirical literature on convergence to date remains ambiguous. Results appear to be particularly sensitive to the choice of income per capita or labor productivity as dependent variable. The paper shows that the dependence reflects a measurement error arising from the interdependence of human capital accumulation, labor force participation rates and development levels. Estimation of a corrected convergence equation yields results generally supporting convergence except in the manufacturing sector.     

Saving,productivity and national income: a discrete-time geometric framework

This paper proposes an alternative geometric framework for analysing the inter-relationship between domestic saving, productivity and income determination in discrete time. The framework provides a means of understanding how low saving economies like the United States sustained high growth rates in the 1990s whereas high saving Japan did not. It also illustrates how the causality between saving and economic activity runs both ways and that discrete changes in national output and income depend on both current and previous accumulation behaviour. The open economy analogue reveals how international capital movements can create external account imbalances that enhance income growth for both borrower and lender economies.     

New evidence about regional income divergence in China

There are many empirical studies trying to test if there is income convergence across the provinces of China. In this paper, we bring new information to the current literature by applying non-linear panel unit root test of Exponential Smooth Auto-Regressive Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ESTAR-ADF) unit root test developed by Cerrato et al. (2008) to the time series data for the period 1952–2003. The number of converging provinces decreases in the post-reform period when using panel ESTAR-ADF test. Furthermore, our results find evidence of increasing regional disparity that has been prevailing in China since the open door economic reforms of the late 1970s, which confirms the view of Pedroni and Yao (2006) that interprovincial inequalities have been widening since 1978.In addition, we also examine the determinants of conditional convergence in China. The results indicate that low inflation, transport and telecommunication infrastructure, and trade openness could stimulate economic growth in China. Human capital also play a significant role in growth, and it exhibits non-linearity between human capital and growth in the sense that at low levels of human capital the effect on growth is negative and became positive at middle levels.     

Economic Reform,Structural Changes,and Regional Economic Growth in China: Cross-Province Regressions

Through cross-province growth regressions this paper analyses the relationship between China's regional economic growth and economic reforms and structural changes since 1978. By applying the extreme bound analysis, the paper has demonstrated the statistical significance and robustness of the estimated coefficients of the following variables of interest: share of the state sector, share of foreign capital in capital formation, extra-budgetary funds to GNP ratio, and standard deviation of inflation. With these and such ‘always-included’ variables as GNP share of investment and initial level of illiteracy, regression models explain about 60% of cross-province variations in growth. The results suggest that continuing reductions in the state sector and attraction of foreign capital are two of the most important factors for rapid per capital income growth in China.     

Measures of human capital and the mechanics of economic growth

We examine the mechanism by which human capital affects economic growth and convergence, using provincial level panel data from China. We specify alternative measures of human capital and apply them to an enhanced growth model, which we estimate parametrically, nonparametrically, and with a threshold model. Our results show that economic convergence is pronouncedly conditional on human capital across all measures. The positive “benefit of being backward” due to lower initial income is almost trumped by the negative impact of low levels of human capital in the poorest areas.     

The Effects of Remittances on Output per Worker in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Production Function Approach

This paper uses a production function to examine the channels through which remittances affect output per worker in 31 Sub‐Saharan African countries from 1980 to 2010. Lagged remittances increase physical capital per worker, average years of schooling and total factor productivity, but the effectiveness of remittances varies with the income level of the recipient nation. Although remittances have increased both physical capital and total factor productivity among the upper middle income nations, among the lower middle income, they have increased only the physical capital. Meanwhile a reduction in institutional risk has encouraged investment and efficiency, but its relationship to the effectiveness of remittances has been inconclusive.     

Imperfect Competition, Economic Miracle, and Manufacturing Productivity Growth: Empirical Evidence from Taiwan

Several recent studies on total factor productivity (TFP) concluded that the East Asian economies benefited little from TFP growth. This study claims that the failure by previous studies to consider the effect of net indirect taxes and market imperfections resulted in the underestimation of the share of the contribution of labor input to factor income, which consequently led to the overestimation of capital share and understatement of TFP growth. Therefore, this study has modified the conventional approach of calculating factor shares by taking account of net indirect taxes and market imperfections and used the modified approach to estimate TFP growth in 16 Taiwanese manufacturing industries during the period 1979–1999. The conclusion drawn by the study is that TFP growth was the driving force behind the success of Taiwan's manufacturing industries, although many of these industries experienced a sharp decline in TFP during the 1990s.     

Income shares and capital formation: patterns of recent developments

The development of the functional income distribution in the advanced capitalist economies of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S.A. has shown a marked shift towards the profit share during the 1980s. Starting from this observation the impact of changing income shares on capital formation is studied in a post-keynesian framework. Following a model proposed by Bhaduri/Marglin, different patterns of income distribution and capital accumulation are distinguished theoretically and are examined empirically for the manufacturing sectors of the investigated economies. It is concluded that the development of the profit share and the rate of capital accumulation on average over the business cycle implies that the conditions for co-operative “wage-led growth” have been established again during the cycle covering the 1980s, although these opportunities for co-operation have not been realized by supply-side politics.     

Dynamic Scoring in a Romer‐Style Economy

This article analyzes how changes in tax rates affect government revenue in a Romer‐style endogenous growth model. Lower tax rates on financial income (returns to physical capital and intellectual property) are partially self‐financing primarily because lower financial income taxes stimulate innovation and enhance labor productivity in the long run. In the baseline calibration, about half of a tax cut is self‐financing in the long run, substantially more than in the Ramsey model. The dynamics of the economy's response to a tax cut are very sluggish and, for some variables, nonmonotonic.     

Engels’ pause: Technical change, capital accumulation, and inequality in the british industrial revolution

The paper reviews the macroeconomic data describing the British economy from 1760 to 1913 and shows that it passed through a two stage evolution of inequality. In the first half of the 19th century, the real wage stagnated while output per worker expanded. The profit rate doubled and the share of profits in national income expanded at the expense of labour and land. After the middle of the 19th century, real wages began to grow in line with productivity, and the profit rate and factor shares stabilized. An integrated model of growth and distribution is developed to explain these trends. The model includes an aggregate production function that explains the distribution of income, while a savings function in which savings depended on property income governs accumulation. Simulations with the model show that technical progress was the prime mover behind the industrial revolution. Capital accumulation was a necessary complement. The surge in inequality was intrinsic to the growth process: technical change increased the demand for capital and raised the profit rate and capital’s share. The rise in profits, in turn, sustained the industrial revolution by financing the necessary capital accumulation. After the middle of the 19th century, accumulation had caught up with the requirements of technology and wages rose in line with productivity.     

博弈分析企业人力资本投资

随着人力资本在企业中作用的增强,人力资本投资成为企业保持竞争力的重要保障。本文运用博弈的分析方法分析了企业中人力资本与物质资本的关系、人力资本投资费用的分担、人力资本投资的风险与收益3个方面问题,并得出相关结论。