The economic effects of health care systems on national economies: an input-output analysis of Slovenia

This paper estimates the size of the economic impact generated by the Slovenian health care sector on the national economy in the 2009–2014 period. The study separately calculates output, income, employment, value-added and import multipliers for the Slovenian health care sector based on input-output analysis covering 49 sectors. Initially, values of simple output multipliers for all years are estimated. When the re-circulation of final demand through households is added to the direct and indirect economic effects, the values of total output multipliers considerably exceeds 2. The results suggest that an additional million EUR of final demand in the health care sector will, based on different scenarios, increase the total employment by 20 to 30 units. Moreover, the type II employment multipliers imply that under the best-case scenario one employee in the health care sector creates an additional 0.7 unit of employment in remaining structures of the observed economy. Stability evaluation of the derived multipliers suggests that the domestic health care sector may reduce volatilities in production, income and employment and consequently act as an important shock absorber in the economy.     

LE SYSTEME ACTUEL DE COMPTABILITE NATIONALE ET LA PLANIFICATION

The present system of national accounting (revised SNA and existing national systems) is a good framework for physical projections of goods and services produced by enterprises. It is less well suited to planning in value terms, because data on income are poor and the system is badly adapted to analysis at the level of decision-making centers of the relationships of production, prices, income, and investment; the picture which it gives of the non-market economy is inadequate; and it yields a static view of successive states of the economy, the last accented by the scarcity of structural information. The usefulness of the accounts for the formation of economic policy varies greatly according to the problems considered. Important for general aspects of economic policy in the relatively short term, they are limited in terms of fine decisions on public intervention in the market economy, and for the relatively detailed study of economic policy in the public sector itself. These shortcomings, although in part remediable, raise questions concerning the scope, object, flexibility, and spacial and temporal coverage of national accounting. Finally, the newly emerging needs of planning, especially those arising from the extension of the dialogue between social groups, the attempts at planning in value terms, and the increasing interest in the non-market economy, suggest a need for some deconsolidation of the system. To answer these demands, a more flexible system is needed. Such a system might comprise two stages. One, a statistical framework and presentation of data, would remain close to business and public accounting. The other, a more abstract and elaborate framework for macro-economic analysis, would correspond in large part to the present system. This system would include, around the central nucleus, a number of satellite accounts, consistent with the nucleus but articulated with it by very flexible and diverse rules. It could be extended to new fields where quantification without valuation is possible.     

Bond financed fiscal policy and the problem of instrument instability

Previous analyses of bond financed government expenditure policies have indicated stability problems but have considered only a once-for-all and sustained increase in government spending. In this paper we examine the bond financing of temporary government expenditure changes, which form part of an ongoing policy designed to “balance the budget over the business cycle.” We find that an endogenous fiscal policy can keep national output near its target value but that the effects on the national debt and the size of the public sector are likely not to be transitory. There is a strong tendency toward instrument instability, in that control of the economy forces the level of government spending to forever diverge from its equilibrium value.     

USE OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS FOR A SHORT-TERM ECONOMETRIC MODEL: 1954–1966

A quarterly macro-econometric model of Japan's postwar economy has been constructed for the period 1954–1965 FY on the basis of standardized quarterly national income accounts. The model is designed for facilitating short-term economic forecasting and formulating adequate fiscal and monetary policy. Longer-term factors such as labor mobility, technical progress, etc., were also considered in the model.
The model consists of fifty-three equations related to most of the macroeconomic variables in both money and real terms, and the equations were estimated in principle by the limited information maximum likelihood method. Principal exogenous variables related to policy instruments are government expenditures including transfers, parameters of tax functions, interest rate, and prices and fares controlled by the government, etc. In formulating the model, non-linear specifications were used whenever found necessary.
Results of our testing on its predictive capability indicated fairly satisfactory performances for our observation period and also for 1966 FY. Multipliers related to fiscal and monetary policy were also obtained, indicating the dynamic characteristics of the Japanese economy, in particular, represented by dynamic business fixed investment, as compared with corresponding multipliers of the U.S. models.
Although the model is exploratory and to serve as a core for a more disaggregated "Master Model," the usefulness of the model for our purposes and the workability of our quarterly national accounts data for model-building have been recognized. The quarterly data, however, still remain to be improved especially in regard to consistency between income and expenditure and integration with flow-of-funds accounts.     

On the impacts of carbon tax and technological progress on China

Using a dynamic national computable general equilibrium model, we investigate the impact of carbon tax and energy efficiency improvement on the economy and environment of China. The Chinese social account matrix is presented based upon the latest input–output table (2012 IO table) and other data. The business as usual (BAU) scenario is designed according to several forecasts about China by 2030, followed by six policy scenarios, including different levels of carbon tax and technological progress as well as their combinations. The results show that carbon tax will frustrate the overall economic growth slightly. The CO₂ emission will be 13.81% lower in 2030 compared to BAU case if the carbon tax scheme is carried out at a rate of 200 RMB/ton of CO₂. Technological progress will stimulate the economic growth, enrich the household and government income, increase total investment and make most sectors prosperous with the exception of energy industries.     

Integrating sustainable chain management with triple bottom line accounting

Triple Bottom Line accounting is widely advanced as a way in which firms can realise broader societal objectives in addition to increasing shareholder value. In our analysis of the Australian economy, we integrate financial input–output tables that describe the interdependencies between economic sectors, with national social and environmental accounts to construct numerate ‘triple bottom line’ accounts for 135 discrete sectors. The accounts are portrayed against the numeraire of ‘one dollar of GDP’. Thus, for a sector of the economy, financial aspects of performance can be expressed for example as dollars of export earnings per dollar of GDP. Social aspects such as employment can be portrayed as minutes of employment generated per dollar. Greenhouse issues can be portrayed as kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted per dollar.Since these indicators of ‘triple bottom line’ performance are referenced against financial units and are consistent with the system of national accounts, they can be applied to financial accounts of a firm, a service or a product, and allow a robust triple bottom line account to be developed across a range of scales. The critical advantage of this approach is that it includes both the direct or immediate effects as well as the indirect or diffuse effects associated with a large and distant chain of supply paths. The incorporation of most indirect or upstream effects therefore expands the range of issues and effects within the analytical boundary, and also includes imports and exports. Both products and firms can then be assessed properly in sustainable chain management (SCM) terms. Thus, a firm that uses a key intermediate input that requires a large amount of water for example cannot hide the environmental implications since they are revealed in the analysis of the full production chain. This revelation can also underpin progress when firms acknowledge both the direct and indirect effects, and improve their selection of key inputs on a wider range of criteria, rather than on price alone.Our analysis is well developed at the economic sector level for Australia and is also being applied to number of government institutions, firms, and individual products. Before the full benefits of numerate triple bottom line accounting can be applied to the equity issues of globalisation, trade interdependencies between groups of typical countries will have to be analysed using these whole economy approaches. This will allow country-specific intensities to be applied to important items in the international production chain.     

Oil and economic development: Libya in the post-Gaddafi era

Libya experienced traumatic political and economic upheaval during 2011 arising from an eight-month-long civil war that cost thousands of lives, resulted in major economic dysfunction, destroyed part of the country's infrastructure, almost halted oil production, the country's major source of revenue generation and exports, as well as destroyed part of the sector's support infrastructure. While the civil war resulted in the ending of 42 years under Muammar Gaddafi rule, the economic legacy as represented by the costs of reconstruction efforts is enormous. While the freeing up of tens of billions of dollars of frozen assets may be the key to the country's short-term rehabilitation, longer-term reconstruction, growth and stability will fundamentally depend upon rehabilitating the country's oil sector. Interestingly, this rehabilitation will also have a wider global impact.This paper uses a deterministic dynamic macroeconomic model to analyse the effects upon key macroeconomic variables of a recovery in Libyan oil production to levels that existed prior to the revolution. Model simulation results indicate that additional oil revenue brings about: an increase in government revenue, increased government spending in the domestic economy, increased foreign asset stocks and increased output and wages in the non-oil sector. However, increased oil revenue may also produce adverse consequences, particularly upon the non-oil trade balance, arising from a loss of competitiveness of non-oil tradable goods induced by an appreciation of the real exchange rate and increased imports stimulated by increased real income. Model simulation results also suggest that investment-stimulating policy measures by the government produce the most substantive longer-term benefits for the economy.     

中国高储蓄率问题探究——1992-2003年中国资金流量表的分析

本文以国家统计局公布的1992—2003年中国资金流量表为基础,从收入分配和部门储蓄倾向等两个方面对居民、企业和政府等国内三个部门的储蓄率进行了比较分析。我们发现,尽管居民部门的储蓄率最高,但是,自1992年以来,它实际上呈逐步下降趋势,其主要原因在于居民部门获得的劳动报酬、财产收入和再分配收入均有所下降;企业储蓄率呈现缓缓上升趋势,主要原因并不在于企业盈利能力的提高,而在于其主要支出——对居民部门的劳动报酬支出和利息支出长期被稳定在较低的水平上;政府储蓄率在经历了上个世纪的低位徘徊之后,于2000年以后急剧上升,其主要原因在于,通过初次分配和再分配,政府的可支配收入在国民收入的分配中占据了越来越大的份额,同时政府部门的储蓄倾向也在不断提高。本文的政策建议是:为了实现以提高国内消费率为核心的经济发展战略,我国的经济运行应全面转向以改善收入分配结构、提高居民收入为重点的轨道上。为达此目的,加速财政政策向公共财政转型,增加公共支出和对居民的福利支出,在提高劳动生产率的基础上提高企业对劳动者的支付水平,应成为今后我国宏观调控的长期任务。     

Mothers’ Milk and Measures of Economic Output

Thoughtful economists have long been aware of the limitations of national accounting and GDP in measuring economic activity and material well-being. Feminist economists criticize the failure to count women's unpaid and reproductive work in measures of economic production. This paper examines the treatment of human milk production in national accounting guidelines. Human milk is an important resource produced by women. Significant maternal and child health costs result from children's premature weaning onto formula or solid food. While human milk production meets the standard national accounting criteria for inclusion in GDP, current practice is to ignore its significant economic value and the substantial private and public health costs of commercial breastmilk substitutes. Economic output measures such as GDP thus are incomplete and biased estimates of national food production and overall economic output, and they distort policy priorities to the disadvantage of women and children.     

The Macroeconomic Loss due to Violence Against Women: The Case of Vietnam

Violence against women (VAW) is now acknowledged as a global problem with substantial economic costs. However, the current estimates of costs in the literature provide the aggregate loss of income, but not the macroeconomic loss in terms of output and demand insofar as they fail to consider the structural interlinkages of the economy. Focusing on Vietnam, this study proposes an approach based on the social accounting matrix (SAM) to estimate the macroeconomic loss due to violence. Using Vietnam’s 2011 SAM, the study estimates the income and multiplier loss due to VAW. From a policy point of view, the study argues that the macroeconomic loss due to VAW renders a permanent invisible leakage to the circular flow that can potentially destabilize, weaken, or neutralize the positive gains from government expenditure on welfare programs.     

Measuring national economic performance without using prices

Recent years have seen increasing awareness of the deficiencies of conventionally defined national income as a measure of a nation's overall economic performance. Alternative measures have been proposed involving either the modification of national income accounting conventions, or the abandonment of national income itself in favour of something such as the Genuine Progress Indicator, GPI. However, such alternatives, like national income itself, all involve the use of monetary valuation for aggregation. This paper proposes a new approach to the measurement of national economic performance, which follows naturally from ecological economics as the study of economic activity rooted in a proper appreciation of its material circumstances, and which does not involve using prices for aggregation. The paper gives some results for three variants of the new approach, and compares and discusses them. While this new approach does not purport to provide a single definitive assessment of the sustainability of current economic activity, which is an infeasible goal, it could provide useful inputs to relevant research activity, and to policy analysis and debate.     

Development Policy Implications for Growth and Regional Inequality in a Small Open Economy: The Indian Case

Inclusive economic development has become a pressing goal of government policy in India in the face of rising regional inequality. This paper examines the role of targeted development policy action in inducing economic growth and also in reducing regional income inequality during the last two decades (since the beginning of the 1990s)—a period marked by increasing trade openness. In our disaggregated analysis of the states, we find that while the government capital expenditure policy has had significant positive impact on output growth of the poorer states, it failed to break the trend of escalating regional inequality. The policy has been significantly more effective in enhancing manufacturing sector output in the poorer states compared with the richer states. On the trade front, while the poorer states gained somewhat in income growth from greater openness, the gains were not large enough to offset the increasing regional disparity.     

时变弹性生产函数与全要素生产率

由于缺乏资本价格等国民核算资料,收入份额法在我国的使用受到一定限制。传统Cobb-Douglas生产函数估计的资本和劳动力产出弹性,反映的只是整个研究时期的一个平均水平,适用于估计整个研究时期的平均贡献率,但用于估计逐期贡献率很可能是有偏的甚至是有误的。本文给出了一个改进生产率增长测算的新思路,系统地提出利用非参数模型、变系数模型、可变参数模型和面板数据模型替代收入份额法,估计不同时期资本和劳动力的时变产出弹性。实证结果表明时变弹性生产函数具有更好的统计性质。     

Sectoral Income

What is the income of each sector of an economy? E.g., in the case of a country endowed with petroleum resources, what is the income of its petroleum sector? Here we present a definition of sectoral income, which is compatible with an important line of theoretical literature on comprehensive national accounting. We do so first by splitting national income into individual income and then defining sectoral income by considering the contributions to individual income that the sectors give rise to.     

Regional Income Disparity and the Size of the Public Sector

This paper explores the impact of income inequality between jurisdictions on government decision making affecting the size of the public sector. We model policy choices as the outcome of regional representatives' negotiations in the legislature. We show that the more unequal interregional income distribution is, the greater the underprovision of public goods. More specifically, greater interregional income disparity leads to a smaller public sector. A wealthier economy as a result may have a relatively smaller government size when income disparity increases.     

Dynamic and endogenous change of input–output structure with specific layers of technology

There are obvious gaps between long-term change in economic structure and its principal driving force—technological progress. History has shown the influence of technological progress on the economy and current insights in technological development can almost predict the technological waves of the next 50 years, but their potential impact on the economy has not yet been assessed. In this paper, we aim to simulate the evolution of economic structure as represented by input–output structure under specific technological change. A new version of a dynamic input–output model is developed in which both technological progress and deployment are endogenous. Investment in R&D drives the development of new technologies, installation of capital stock brings new technical processes into sector production, new and old technical processes within a sector exchange their relative weights in production as they are phased in or out, and sectors evolve or transform over time. Scenario analysis using this model applied to the Chinese electric power industry shows that the phasing-in of non-fossil energy technology will greatly change the structure of both the sector and the economy over the next 100 years.     

Production interdependencies and poverty reduction across ethnic groups in Malaysia

Production sectors are interdependent and the benefits of output growth for poverty reduction therefore spread over the economy. The role of such interdependencies is explicitly studied in this paper. A social accounting matrix for Malaysia that distinguishes between the major ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malays, Chinese, and Indians) is used to run the analyses. Interdependencies among production sectors are measured by splitting the total output effect into the initial, direct and indirect effects. The results show that sectors which have large (small) spillover effects are associated with lower (higher) poverty reduction. The best way to increase the income of poor workers in a sector, generally is to stimulate that sector rather than other sectors.     

Economic impacts of the Natural Forest Protection Program in Yunnan Province, China： an input-output analysis

The paper assesses the economic impacts of the natural forest protection program （NFPP） on the economy of Yunnan Province, China.in terms of gross output, value added,employment, and household income. An inputoutput model is developed to estimate NFPP＇s economic impacts by means of backward linkages in the forestry sector and logging and haudage sector. It is found than the NFPP has positive impacts on gross output, value added and houschold income in the initial year, but has significantly negative impacts on the regional economy in the following years as the investment decreases.     

The relationship between government accounts and national accounts, with special reference to the netherlands

National accounts are a macro-economic accounting system that is compiled on the basis of a globally harmonized accounting standard, that is SNA93/ESA95. To a large extent, the SNA93/ESA95 accounting principles are also suitable for government (micro-)accounting purposes, if only because the accounts drawn up according to this standard are comparable across (types of) units and over time. That facilitates performance monitoring and benchmarking. In addition, the ESA95 guidelines and procedures deal with innovative transactions and accounting, which increases the credibility of the accounts. Finally, accounts for government units are then directly comparable with the macroeconomic accounts, which facilitates the link between forecasts for the national economy and drawing up government budgets. This paper also describes the present conversion of government accounts to national accounts for the government sector in the Netherlands and the plans of the Dutch government to change from a cash-based to an accrual government accounting system.     

How to Achieve the Take-off into Sustained Growth: A Case Study for Slovenia

In this paper, we show that successful policy aimed at enhancing economic growth in the long run must be based on policies which improve human capital and technological progress. This is applied to Slovenia, a small open economy in the European Union and the Euro Area. In particular, we investigate how fiscal policies should be designed to support economic growth without violating the European Union Stability and Growth Pact. Using the SLOPOL10 model, an econometric model of the Slovenian economy, we analyse the effects of different fiscal policies in Slovenia over the next few years by means of simulations. The fiscal policy multipliers of the Slovenian economy are small and short-lived, which renders demand-side expansionary fiscal policies inappropriate as a means of achieving higher growth. However, if an increase in government expenditures directly related to technological progress is implemented (such as better funding for tertiary education or subsidies for firms’ investments in research and development), this can trigger a path of output which is permanently higher than that of the baseline simulation. Reducing income taxes and social security contributions has strong positive effects on employment. This result shows that the key to prosperity and sustained growth is investment in human capital and technology, also for a small open economy like Slovenia.