Gender Development, Institutions, and Level of Economic Development

Gender inequality and the lack of gender development are major problems in developing countries. Neoclassical economics has generally argued that economic development will greatly enhance gender development. However, more recent work has emphasized the role of institutions. In this paper, a distinction is made between malleable institutions and those that change only over long periods of time. Empirical estimations of the impacts of economic development, malleable institutions, and hard-to-change institutions on gender development are carried out. The results indicate that both economic development and reform of malleable institutions are important determinants of relative gender performance. However, non-malleable institutions and cultural practices limit the impact that reform and economic development can have on relative gender performance.     

参数异质性、经济趋同与中国区域经济发展

本文首次采用分量回归方法来研究中国城市间经济的趋同方式。已有文献研究大都采用条件均值回归的实证方法,无法从本质上揭示不同地区本身存在的异质性而导致的增长方式的差别,本文利用中国182个地级及以上城市的数据,先采用OLS方法,然后采用Koenker和Hallock(2001)发展的条件分量回归的方法,对城市之间的经济趋同方式进行了检验。结果表明,与OLS方法不同,我们发现参数异质性的证据,表明不同城市的经济增长方式存在差异。新古典经济增长模型认为存在条件收敛,但分量回归的结论不支持这个预测。我们发现条件收敛不是普遍现象,增长率分布处于低分位点的地区存在条件收敛特点,但对于增长率分布处于高分位点的地区而言,结论并不显著。这一结果对于制定区域经济协调发展的政策非常重要。     

Foreign Direct Investment,Sectoral Effects and Economic Growth in Africa

Abstract

Many small, frontier equity markets in regions such as Africa and Eastern Europe have opened in recent years. As in other larger emerging markets, important issues for investors are the extent of financial integration with exchanges in other countries and, if some reasonable degree of integration is found, whether such markets still provide diversification opportunities. Here, we will examine a frequently used metric of integration by testing for the existence of common trends, or cointegration, in these frontier markets. While common stochastic trends are found, results show that coefficients on cointegrating vectors are at times negative, and reaction to deviations from the long-run trend are often slow, thus indicating that frontier markets are a good source of diversification opportunities despite a degree of integration.     

学习、制度与经济绩效

本文分析了认知、信念体系与制度之间的互动关系，并探寻了它们影响经济绩效的方式。我们认为要更深刻地理解制度的产生、其运行的特征及其对经济政治结果的影响，应该从分析认知过程开始。我们分析了个人和集体学习的性质，认为问题并不在于行为体是完全理性还是有限理性的，而在于人们是如何进行推理和做出选择的，无论这种选择和推理是个体做出的还是集体做出的。接下来我们将学习过程同制度分析联系起来，提出了一种我们可以称之为“认知制度主义”的观点。同时我们认为要充分理解路径依赖现象，应该从对认知层面的分析开始，以制度层面的分析为主干，以经济层面的分析为终结。     

Institutions,Lobbying, and Economic Performance

We investigate whether the impact of institutions depends not just on their current state but also on how they came to be. In particular, we hypothesize that while economic freedom that emerges spontaneously may be growth promoting, economic freedom that emerges as a result of costly lobbying efforts may be less fruitful. In an extreme case, costly lobbying efforts may even negate the growth‐enhancing effect of economic freedom. To the extent that lobbying efforts constitute an opportunity cost of resources diverted away from investment and production, our hypothesis also implies that greater the opportunity cost of lobbying, the more efficient is the institutional environment. Panel data analysis reveals the expected positive relation between economic freedom and growth, and consistent with our hypothesis, the findings indicate that the impact of economic freedom on growth does indeed diminish as lobbying efforts increase. In addition, we find that lobbying is more harmful to growth at greater levels of economic freedom.     

制度供给与经济发展——兼论"浙江现象"中的政府因素

在我国这样的从计划经济向市场经济转型的国家,政府对经济发展有着不可替代的作用.这种作用不再是政府直接去干预经济,而是政府为市场经济的发展提供有效的制度供给.本文从政府因素的角度对"浙江现象"进行了解读.文章指出,浙江各级政府在转型过程中有效的制度供给,是推动浙江经济快速健康发展的重要因素.     

Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development

We estimate the respective contributions of institutions, geography, and trade in determining income levels around the world, using recently developed instrumental variables for institutions and trade. Our results indicate that the quality of institutions trumps everything else. Once institutions are controlled for, conventional measures of geography have at best weak direct effects on incomes, although they have a strong indirect effect by influencing the quality of institutions. Similarly, once institutions are controlled for, trade is almost always insignificant, and often enters the income equation with the wrong (i.e., negative) sign. We relate our results to recent literature, and where differences exist, trace their origins to choices on samples, specification, and instrumentation.     

Trade,Remittances, Institutions,and Economic Growth

This paper empirically investigates the role of trade, remittances, and institutions in economic development in a large sample of developing countries using recently developed instruments for all these variables. Both cross-country (over 30 years) and dynamic panel data (over 5-year periods) regressions of growth rates on instrumented trade, remittances, and institutions provide evidence of a significant impact of trade, institutions, and remittances on growth. While institutions foster growth, remittances hamper it. The effect of trade on growth is positive in cross-sectional regressions but ambiguous in dynamic panel data regressions. These results are indicative of a more important role for trade in explaining growth in the very long run compared with over shorter horizons.     

非公有制经济发展的法律保障与理论完善

随着改革开放30年进程的不断推进,我国非公有制经济的发展取得了巨大的成就。但同时也存在着一系列的挑战,如税法法律制度、金融制度、行政许可法、刑法保护、政府职能转变等制度和政策方面,还存在一些制约非公有制经济发展的障碍。要进一步推进非公有制经济的发展,就必须进一步的完善非公有制经济发展的法律保障。在新形势下不断完善非公有经济的理论,理清发展思路,是我国非公经济健康发展,特别是可持续发展的关键。     

Oil Discovery,Political Institutions and Economic Diversification

Diversification is touted as a desirable policy objective for oil‐rich nations because it reduces exposure to volatility. However, the empirical relationship between petroleum and diversification is not well understood. Here, we test the effect of giant oil discoveries on diversification using a panel dataset of 136 countries observed over the period from 1962 to 2012. We notice non‐oil sector export concentration 8 years after a discovery. However, we do not observe any effect on the structure of employment in non‐resource and manufacturing sectors. Democratic political institutions moderate the export and employment concentration effects of petroleum discovery.     

The Glass Ceiling Puzzle,Legal Institutions,and the Shadow Economy

ABSTRACT

Scholarly studies in economics, sociology, psychology, and management emphasize the low number of women in management as one of the main indicators of gender discrimination in the labor market. This study investigates the differences in the percentage of women in senior management across forty-five countries. The results of the regression analysis show that women are more represented in senior management in developing countries than in so-called “liberal Western democracies.” Women also participate more in senior management in countries in which prejudice and discrimination against women are greater. The study presents empirical evidence for two economic explanations for these puzzling results: the weak functioning of the legal system and the large size of the shadow economy.     

Heterogeneity in Ability and Inheritance,Disparities, and Development

This paper investigates the impact of income inequality on economic growth. A two-period overlapping generations model is developed where agents are heterogeneous in innate abilities and inheritance. In the first period, they receive their inheritance and their abilities are revealed. There are only two types of abilities: high and low. Individuals decide on their education level, and divide their inheritance between spending on education and saving. In the second period, individuals supply their labor and allocate the labor income and the return to their saving between consumption and bequests to their offsprings. Initial capital stock is owned entirely by the capitalists. In this context, a more equal distribution of income enhances economic growth if the economy is lower than a threshold capital-labor ratio, while income inequality has an insignificant effect above this threshold. The predictions of the model are tested empirically using the Hansen (1999) threshold estimation. The results, using a panel of 70 countries for the period 1971-1999, suggest that there is a statistically significant threshold income per capita, below which the coefficient on the relationship between inequality and economic growth is significantly negative and above which the estimate is not significant.     

我国经济可持续发展与法律制度的完善

保证我国经济可持续发展是法制建设的重要侨务,要充分认识完善有关法律制度的紧迫性,以加快市场经济的法制化进程。影响我国经济可持续发展主要有体制因素、人口因素、社会财富分配因素、加入“世贸”因素等。因而要完善相关的企业法律制度,如反垄断法律制度、计划生育法律制度、财税法律制度,立法制度等。     

制度、创新与欠优势地区的经济复兴

创新和经济地理这两个迄今不同学科之间日益增强的融合趋势具有潜在的理论影响。通过“知识区域”这一角度，本文考察了两门学科的融合对理论研究和政策制定的意义。并利用进化政治经济学的研究成果，揭示了交互式创新模式在区域发展中的重要作用。在此，作者通过对新的欧洲区域发展政策的考察，并结合威尔士地区创新实施规划的案例研究，分析了这种交互式创新模式的政策意义。最后，文章对这一发展战略的实施效果进行了批评性的评估。     

Religion and Economic Development in History: Institutions and the Role of Religious Networks

I argue that the role of religion on economic performance is mainly through the networks of small religious groups. These groups form social networks that enable individuals to conduct non-formal contract enforcement mechanisms. I analyze the effects of religions on societies, focusing mainly on the institutional aspects that affect the capabilities of creating social capital via networks which enhance cooperation and decrease transaction costs. Since the interaction between institutions and organizations is expected to shape the institutional evolution and economic performance of an economy, religions that have a communal form of organization rather than a vertical (hierarchical) structure, thus allowing many different denominational sub-communities within a society, can be more beneficiary for development and growth. Such institutions may not only provide allocative and production efficiency, but also adaptive efficiency that is a key to long-run growth. However, these effects may turn negative depending on these institutions’ role in causing group hostility and exclusion.