江苏省县域经济发展差异与极化比较

以县域为研究基本单元,选取了人均GDP、人均工业总产值、农民人均纯收入和职工平均工资等四个指标,运用差异系数与极化指数等相差数理模型,对1994年以来江苏省县域经济发展差异与极化的演化过程与格局进行了定量比较,结果发现：江苏省县域经济发展差异与极化伴随着＂缩小—扩大—再缩小＂演化过程,总体上呈现出生产水平差异与极化增强、生活水平差异与极化减弱的特征,且生产水平的差异与极化远大于生活水平的差异与极化;在空间上,主要表现为苏南、苏中与苏北三大地区之间的差异与极化,且三大地区之间的极化呈增强趋势。     

Inflation,technological-knowledge bias,and wages

A detailed examination of wage data points to a wage polarization trend vis-à-vis the distribution of qualifications. Theoretically terms, this points to the need for modeling focused on the relevance of the direction of technological knowledge. To this end, we branched production into routine and non-routine tasks. In this way, the results produced positive relationships between the relative supply of skilled workers and the skill premium and between automation and wage polarization.     

中美产品特征对产业升级作用机制的比较研究

基于产品空间理论视角，选取1962-2013年中美出口贸易数据，从微观产品特征视角对比分析了中美两国产品特征对产业升级的作用机制。研究表明：产品特征在产业升级与发展过程中发挥双重作用机制，即产业升级与发展不仅取决于现有产品积累的要素禀赋，还受到产品本身技术复杂性的影响。在产业升级与发展过程中，中国主要依赖产品密度（DEN），即依赖于既有产品积累的要素禀赋实现渐进式发展，很难实现跨越式发展，而美国在产业升级与发展过程中，产品密度（DEN）与产品技术复杂性（PCI）同时发挥了积极的双重作用并促进新竞争优势形成。进一步研究表明，密度（DEN）和产品复杂度指数（PCI）在不同产业升级过程中的作用机制存在差异。通过对比研究中国改革开放前后两个阶段发现，随着生产要素禀赋积累以及产品技术复杂性提高，产业升级的支撑作用增强，抑制作用减弱，但是引领作用不足。     

Who Exports Better Quality Products to Smaller or More Distant Markets?

The role of across‐firm differences in product quality and firms' competitiveness in determining the spatial patterns of within‐product export unit values across destinations is examined in this paper. Using product level export data, it is shown that the average export unit value of a product shipped from the USA or Korea increases with distance and decreases with destination market's size. However, within‐product average unit values for products exported from China and India decrease with distance and increase with market size. To interpret these different spatial patterns of unit values across exporting countries, model of quality heterogeneity is developed in which firms differ in their workers' skill level and higher‐skilled workers show greater productivity in performing tasks that improve product quality. The model predicts that in relatively skill‐abundant countries, exporting firms specialize in high‐quality products using relatively cheap skilled labor, whereas, in relatively skill‐scarce countries, firms that produce lower‐quality products are more competitive.     

Product sophistication and spillovers from foreign direct investment

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries is often associated with higher economic growth due to knowledge and technology spillovers to local firms. One way that FDI speeds up growth is by facilitating the manufacturing of more sophisticated products by local firms. So far, there is a lack of firm‐level evidence how the presence of multinational firms affects the product sophistication of firms in a developing country. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap. We compile an extensive firm–product‐level data set of Indian manufacturing firms, which we complement with information on product sophistication and spillovers from FDI. We then explore different channels through which spillovers from multinationals to local Indian firms foster the manufacturing of sophisticated products. We find evidence that spillovers through supplier linkages strongly increase the manufacturing of sophisticated products in India.     

Does complexity explain the structure of trade?

This paper analyzes whether complexity, measured by the number of skilled tasks that are performed in production, explains countries’ commodity trade structure. We modify the Romalis ( 2004 ) model to incorporate advantage differences in complexity across commodities together with differences in the number of mistakes made by workers in the production process in developed and developing countries as a source of comparative advantage. Our model predicts that the share of developed countries in world trade increases with products’ complexity. Empirical tests confirm this prediction. Moreover, we find that complexity complements the explanation provided by skill‐intensity on countries’ commodity trade structure.     

动态比较优势与政策干预

在产品价值链全球化过程中,各国生产技术、要素禀赋结构和产业发展环境等方面的差异造成了各国比较优势产品结构的不同,而比较优势产品处于低端的国家获得较少的贸易利益。为了提高对外贸易利益,以低端产品为比较优势的国家应不断提升比较优势产品附加值水平,转变比较优势结构。比较优势结构的变动内生于技术进步和要素禀赋结构的转变,所以应通过加强边干边学、技术创新和对技术扩散的吸收促进技术进步;通过促进资本积累转变要素禀赋结构,特别应注重教育与职业培训,提高人力资本水平和技术创新能力。同时,政府对当前并不具有比较优势但附加值较高的产业进行政策支持,则能够使动态比较优势结构发生逆转,有效促进比较优势产品向高端过渡。     

Interdependent preferences and segregating equilibria

This paper shows that models where preferences of individuals depend not only on their allocations, but also on the well being of other persons, can produce both large and testable effects. We study the allocation of workers with heterogeneous productivities to firms. We show that even small deviations from purely “selfish” preferences leads to widespread workplace skill segregation. That is, workers of different abilities tend to work in different firms, as long as they care somewhat more about the utilities of workers who are “close”. This result holds for a broad class and distribution of social preferences.     

Is a Policy of Free Movement of Workers Sustainable?

In this paper, we study the costs and benefits of the adoption of a policy of free movement of workers. For countries to agree on uncontrolled movements of workers, short‐run costs must be outweighed by the long‐term benefits of better labor‐market flexibility and income smoothing. We show that such a policy is less likely to be adopted when workers are more impatient and less risk‐averse, when production technologies display stronger decreasing returns, and when countries trade a significant share of their products.     

Economic transition, higher education and worker productivity in China

We investigate the role of education on worker productivity and firms' total factor productivity using a panel of firm-level data from China. We estimate the returns to education by calculating the marginal productivity of workers of different education levels based on estimates of the firm-level production function. We also estimate how the education level of workers and CEO contributes to firms' total factor productivity. Estimated marginal products are much higher than wages, and the gap is larger for highly educated workers. Our estimate shows that an additional year of schooling raises marginal product by 30.1%, and that CEO's education increases TFP for foreign-invested firms. Estimates vary substantially across ownership classes, the effect of schooling on productivity being highest in foreign-invested firms. We infer that market mechanisms contribute to a more efficient use of human capital within firms.     

Fragmentation and Welfare in Monopolistic Competition

We examine the welfare effect of fragmentation with a general‐equilibrium model of monopolistic competition. Using the efficiency property of monopolistic competition models, we develop a diagram that is used to show that fragmentation of production arises, i.e. firms in a country specialize in developing blueprints and out‐source the manufacturing of their products to the other country. Such fragmentation allows countries to benefit from trade due to two different sources: comparative advantage and product diversity. We show how these two sources result in gains from trade induced by this production fragmentation.     

How Does Imperfect Competition in the Labor Market Affect Unemployment Policies?

We consider a continuum of workers ranked according to their abilities to acquire education and two firms with different technologies that imperfectly compete in wages to attract these workers. The education cost to be borne by workers is higher in the high-technology firm. In equilibrium, we show that the unemployed workers are those with the lowest initial abilities. We then study different policies that subsidize either education cost or wages. We found that the first-best allocation can only be implemented by selective policies. We analyze second-best nonselective policies and show that, in terms of welfare, subsidizing education costs or wages is strictly equivalent.     

Greenfield FDI and skill upgrading: A polarized issue

Outbound FDI is often accused of increasing income inequality in developed countries by shifting labour demand from low‐skilled towards high‐skilled workers (wage polarization). In response, we employ data on greenfield FDI that, in contrast to M&As, may be more clearly linked to skill upgrading. Our data also delineate greenfield FDI by sector, function and destination, allowing us to control for different motives and skill intensities for 17 developed countries for 2003–2005. We find that greenfield FDI in support services, e.g., back and front office services, induces polarized skill upgrading, benefitting high‐skilled workers at the expense of medium‐skilled workers, thereby polarizing wages.     

劳动成本与进口中间产品质量 ——来自多国产品—行业层面的证据

本文在垄断竞争框架内，引入非位似需求函数与CES生产函数，构建了一个内生化的中间产品质量模型，以刻画劳动成本与进口中间产品质量之间的关系，并采用CEPII BACI 数据库1995—2009年38国hs92六位码数制造业中间产品进出口贸易数据与WIOD数据进行了实证检验。结果发现，劳动成本与进口中间产品质量之间的确存在“U型”非线性关系，且当前处于“U型”上升阶段，即面对高劳动成本，生产率高的企业倾向于进口高质量中间产品以匹配高素质劳动者，进而缓解劳动成本上涨压力。即使加入不同控制变量，控制不同固定效应，并考虑不同子样本情形，这一结果仍稳健。中印对比还显示，中国进口的中间产品质量较印度更低。这就意味着中国要最大限度地借助工资上升提高进口中间产品质量，还需不断提升劳动者素质，加大对外开放进程。     

关于两极分化的思考

我国正处在社会主义初级阶段。在当前条件下，鼓励非公有制经济的存在和发展，就应该承认由资本与劳动的对立所决定的在一定范围内的两极分化也是一种客观的存在。因此，应该按照历史唯物主义关于生产关系与生产力的相互关系的原理来理解和对待两极分化；应该采取措施，缓和两极分化带来的社会矛盾；应该明确，我们的最终目的是在消灭私有制的基础上彻底消除两极分化现象。     

Is technology acquisition enough to improve China's product quality? Evidence from firm-level panel data

As developing countries open themselves up to trade, many industrial firms in these countries are finding it difficult to compete internationally due to poor product quality and low product variety. Although China has been the largest producer of crude steel since 1996, China's steel firms have produced an overabundance of low-quality steel while domestic purchasers of steel have increasingly demanded higher quality steel products. Many have argued that for Chinese steel firms to improve product quality they must adopt more advanced technologies. Employing firm-level panel data of steel firms in China, we econometrically test the relative importance of two possible sets of factors affecting a firm's ability to utilize technology to improve product quality: technology acquisition factors and technology absorptive capacity factors. We find that technology complements such as in-house R&D and foreign knowledge must be combined with technology for Chinese firms to improve product quality.     

Product complexity and economic development

Development is a process of transforming a country's economic structure towards the production and export of more complex products. We use Hidalgo and Hausmann's (2009) method of reflections to compute measures of product and country complexity, and rank 5107 products and 124 countries. We find that: (i) the most complex products are in machinery, chemicals, and metals, while the least complex products are raw materials and commodities, wood, textiles, and agricultural products; (ii) the most complex economies in the world are Japan, Germany, and Sweden, and the least complex, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, and Nigeria; (iii) the major exporters of the more complex products are the high-income countries, while the major exporters of the less complex products are the low-income countries; and (iv) export shares of the more complex products increase with income, while export shares of the less complex products decrease with income.     

信息经济社会中的信息贫富分化及其应对

在信息经济社会发展的过程中,信息资源的分布不均衡及不同信息活动主体之间对信息资源占有的不同,产生现代信息贫富差距并有不断扩大的趋势.本文讨论了信息经济社会中信息贫富差距的表现、社会危害及我国的应对策略.面对信息经济社会发展进程中出现的信息贫富差距,一方面我们要努力缩短我国同发达国家之间的距离,另一方面要弥补我国不同地区、社会群体之间的信息贫富差距,尤其是要通过开展信息扶贫来实现信息减困.     

Different Impacts of Scientific and Technological Knowledge on Economic Growth: Contrasting Science and Technology Policy in East Asia and Latin America

This paper conducts country‐panel econometric analysis with a focus on the different roles of scientific and technological knowledge on economic growth and on the knowledge production functions. It finds that it is not scientific knowledge (academic articles) but technological knowledge (patents) that matters for economic growth, and that generating scientific knowledge does not automatically lead to the generation of technological knowledge. We find that technological knowledge is primarily determined by corporate research and development efforts, which used to be more lacking in Latin American countries, compared with East Asia. This finding sheds new light on the question of why Latin American and East Asian countries have shown such divergent economic performances.     

International trade,technological change and wage inequality in the UK economy

This paper examines the joint impact of international trade and technological change on UK wages across different skill groups. International trade is measured as changes in product prices and technological change as total factor productivity (TFP) growth. We take account of a multi-sector and multi-factor of production economy and use mandated wage methodology in order to create an well-balanced approach in terms of theoretical and empirical cohesion. We use data from the EU KLEMS database and analyse the impact of both product price changes and TFP changes of 11 UK manufacturing sectors on factor rewards of high-, medium- and low-skilled workers. Results show that real wages of skill groups are significantly driven by the sector bias of price change and TFP growth of several sectors of production. Furthermore, we estimate the share of the three different skill groups on added value for each year from 1970 to 2005. The shares indicate structural change in the UK economy. Results show a structural change owing to decreasing shares of low-skilled workers and increasing shares of medium-skilled and high-skilled workers over the years.