THE MICRO‐DYNAMICS OF CATCH‐UP IN INDONESIAN PAPER MANUFACTURING

In this study we analyze the micro‐dynamics of catch‐up in Indonesian paper manufacturing, using a two‐country plant‐level dataset for the period 1975–97. We apply data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure to what extent Indonesian paper mills are catching up with Finnish mills in terms of technical efficiency. Three questions are addressed: What is the distribution of Indonesian plant technical efficiency vis‐à‐vis the technological frontier? What is the role of entry, exit, and survival in Indonesia for catch‐up in the paper industry as a whole? In what ways do catching‐up plants in Indonesia differ from non‐catching‐up plants? We find that on average the Indonesian paper industry moved closer to the technological frontier during the 1990s. However, catch‐up has been a highly localized process in which only a few large establishments have achieved near best‐practice performance, while most other plants have stayed behind.     

Beyond Flying Geese: The Expansion of East Asia's Electronics Trade

The flying geese (FG) hypothesis, which asserts the sequential catching‐up processes of the latecomers, holds well in the past. Yet a simultaneous boom within the electronics industry across East Asia casts doubt on the applicability of the hypothesis. By using the RCA and NET indices, the paper finds that the FG pattern shows in the electronics industry as a whole, but not always so at the disaggregated level. This suggests that the FG formation may not appear in other industries, if they are involved in international production fragmentation or have differentiated products, and if certain latecomers have become new leaders.     

HUMAN CAPITAL AND CONVERGENCE: A PRODUCTION‐FRONTIER APPROACH*

Using nonparametric, production‐frontier methods, we decompose labor productivity growth into components attributable to technological change (shifts in the world production frontier), technological catch‐up (movements toward or away from the frontier), and physical and human capital accumulation (movements along the frontier). We find that (1) technological change is decidedly nonneutral, (2) productivity growth is driven primarily by physical and human capital accumulation, (3) the increased international dispersion of productivity is explained primarily by physical capital accumulation, and (4) international polarization (the shift from a unimodal to a bimodal distribution) is brought about primarily by efficiency changes (technological catch‐up).     

Technological leadership and sectorial employment growth: A spatial econometric analysis for U.S. counties

This paper studies the determinants of technological catch‐up considering spatial and sectoral aggregation of industries. We investigate how geographical and technological proximity to the technology leader impact regional employment growth. We model technological progress by means of a hierarchical process of catch‐up to the technology leader. We also incorporate measures for knowledge spillover effects to test the roles of competition, specialisation, and diversity at the industry level. Empirical results using data at the county level for different economic sectors (2‐dig NAICS) for the United States indicate that human capital plays a crucial role in promoting sectoral employment growth. The association between technological/geographical distance to the technology leader and employment growth varies across sectors.     

The driving forces behind China’s growth1

The main objective of this article is to disentangle the determinants of the Chinese economic growth that occurred from 1965 to 2000. We have explored, first, the time series properties of the growth rates of gross domestic product and labour productivity with an extended battery of unit‐root tests. Then, in a multivariate setting, we use the VAR model methodology to provide evidence that physical and human capital accumulation, R&D expenditure, openness and competitiveness are the main drivers of output, labour productivity and total factor productivity growth in the long run. Additionally, we also show that although China has not yet converged to its long‐run equilibrium, it is in the process of catching up. These results are more consistent with some versions of the endogenous growth models than with Solow‐type models of growth, since they support active strategies of economic policy to stimulate economic growth and catching up with more advanced economies.     

Total factor productivity and the convergence hypothesis in the Italian regions

This article is aimed at testing the catching up hypothesis for the Italian regions. The use of Malmquist productivity indices allows to decompose productivity growth into technological progress and technical efficiency change, interpreted respectively as innovation and catching up measurements. The analysis leads to a conclusion that regional economies diverge at a decreasing rate.     

Economic Development,International Trade,and Income Distribution

This paper applies the inframarginal analysis, which is a combination of marginal and total cost-benefit analysis, to investigate the relationship between division of labor, the extent of the market, productivity and inequality of income distribution. The model with transaction costs and exogenous and endogenous comparative advantages shows that as trading efficiency is improved the general equilibrium discontinuously jumps from autarky to partial division of labor with a dual structure, then to the complete division of labor where dual structure disappears. In this process different groups of individuals with different trading efficiency become involved in a certain level of division of labor at different stages of development. As the leading group becomes involved in a higher level of division of labor leaving others behind, a dual structure emerges and inequality increases. As latecomers catch up dual structure disappears and inequality declines. When the leader goes to an even higher level of specialization, dual structure occurs and inequality increases again. Inequality decreases again as the latecomers catch up. Hence, the equilibrium degree of inequality fluctuates in this development process. The relationship between inequality and productivity is neither monotonically positive nor monotonically negative. It might not be an inverted U-curve. The key driving force of economic development and trade is improvement in trading efficiency. Received January 8, 2002; revised version May 2, 2002 Published online: December 5, 2002     

Productivity Catch‐up Between Chinese and Taiwanese Electronics Firms

This paper aims to depict the patterns of China's productivity catch‐up with Taiwan in the electronics industry over the period 2001–2007. Specifically, we investigate the roles that ownership structure and innovation efforts play in the dynamics of the productivity gap. The firm‐level evidence suggests that the labour productivity gap between Chinese and Taiwanese electronics firms has narrowed during the past decade. Second, the narrowing of the labour productivity gap has occurred in foreign‐owned enterprises rather than in local firms. Examining the determinants of productivity catch‐up show that R&D significantly contributes to Chinese electronics firms' catching up with their Taiwanese counterparts.     

Closing the Technology Gap?

This paper focuses on the dimensions shaping the dynamics of technology. We present a model where the knowledge stock of a country grows over time as a function of three main factors: innovation intensity, technological infrastructures, and human capital. The latter two variables determine the absorptive capacity of a country as well as its innovative ability. We then carry out an empirical analysis that investigates the dynamics of technology in a large sample of economies in the last two‐decade period, and studies its relationships with income per capita growth. The results indicate that the cross‐country distributions of technological infrastructures and human capital have experienced a process of convergence, whereas the innovative intensity is characterized by increasing polarization between rich and poor economies. Thus, while the conditions for catching up have generally improved, the increasing innovation gap represents a major factor behind the observed differences in income per capita.     

Trade and Endogenous Formation of Regions in a Developing Country

The authors present a model of regional catching‐up and development without scale effects. Regional growth is driven by technological imitation which is determined by positive externalities from international trade, the regions’ geography, and regional institutions. For the two regions considered, factor endowments are immobile land and human capital which is perfectly mobile between the two regions. Endogenous formation of regions is analyzed by introducing a non‐symmetric decrease in international transaction costs, reflecting the different geography and institutions in the two regions. Using panel data from 354 South African magisterial districts over the period 1996 to 2000, we find that geography is important in explaining trade patterns. As predicted, regions that are larger in terms of economic size, with good foreign market access and know‐how of foreign markets, competitive transport costs and a good local institutional support framework will be more successful in exporting manufactured goods than other regions.     

Convergence in a Dynamic Heckscher–Ohlin Model with Land

Convergence among nations that share the same preferences and technologies is a key result of the closed‐economy neoclassical growth framework that has received substantial support in the data. However, Heckscher–Ohlin versions of the two‐sector neoclassical growth model predict that nations that differ in their capital–labor ratios may not converge to the same steady state, even if they are identical in all other aspects. This is a puzzling result that warns us about potential dangers of international trade. In this paper we show that when land, an input in fixed supply, is introduced into the model, international trade in goods no longer limits the capacity of poor nations to catch up with the advanced world.     

INTERNATIONAL TFP DYNAMICS AND HUMAN CAPITAL STOCKS: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS, 1960–2003

This paper adopts fixed‐effect panel methodologies to obtain TFP values for a sample of 76 countries from 1960 through 2003. Our results are robust to the use of different estimators (LSDV, Kiviet‐corrected LSDV, and GMM). They show that TFP dynamics are characterized by a process of conditional convergence where most countries do not catch up with the U.S., and where human capital plays an important role in technology adoption, as suggested by Nelson and Phelps in 1966. Such a role is robust to the inclusion of controls for the quality of institutions in a country. Further, our results imply a plausible link between stages of development and returns to different levels of education. Finally, we calculate the minimum human capital level necessary to generate catch‐up and find that virtually all countries are above that level—a result that again emphasizes the importance of human capital in technology diffusion.     

Tests of the “convergence hypothesis”: Some further results

The article presents new tests of the convergence hypothesis. It first analyzes the unconditional pattern of growth of human and physical capital (conventionally measured by an inventory method) and shows that these tests do support the hypothesis that domestic inputs of poor countries appear to be catching up with those of rich countries. On the other hand, when one analyzes the pattern of growth of physical capital and Solow residual, then one is led to reject the convergence theory. Building on this discrepancy, I demonstrate that the poor countries have failed to catch up with rich ones because the progress that they have achieved in educating their workers (which is evidenced in the convergence of domestic inputs) is not sufficient to compensate for their poor endowment in the knowledge on which the education of workers stands.     

Modelling the world economy at the 2050 horizon

Economic analysis is increasingly addressing long‐term issues (such as global warming) that require a dynamic baseline for the world economy. In this article, we develop a three‐factor (capital, energy, labour) macroeconometric (MaGE – Macroeconometrics of the Global Economy) model, and project growth for 147 countries to 2050. We improve on the literature by the following: (i) accounting for the energy constraint through dynamic modelling of energy productivity, (ii) modelling female participation rates consistent with education catch‐up, (iii) departing from the assumptions of either a closed economy or full capital mobility (by applying a Feldstein–Horioka type relationship between saving and investment rates), and (iv) offering a fully consistent treatment of the Balassa–Samuelson effect. These innovative features have a sizeable impact on projected GDP.     

逆向外包与技能偏向性技术进步

经济新常态和新工业革命背景下,中国经济迫切需要通过技术创新,尤其是技能偏向性技术进步的创新来实现经济增长方式的转变和产业结构的升级。文章根据后金融危机时期中国企业加快海外并购等典型事实,基于李嘉图框架构建了包含逆向外包的一般均衡模型,从理论上论证了逆向外包作为一种后发国家集聚全球创新资源的新方式,能够弥补后发国家高技能劳动力的不足,诱导企业采用更加偏向技能劳动力的生产技术,进而对后发国家的技能偏向性技术进步产生促进作用。利用制造业16个细分行业2003－2011年样本数据的实证检验表明,本土制造业企业主导的逆向外包显著促进了制造业的技能偏向性技术进步,FD I和人力资本供给的增加加速了技能偏向性技术进步的形成和发展。文章的研究不仅丰富了现有的关于技能偏向性技术进步和逆向外包的全球化理论,对中国制造创新方式的转变和经济结构的调整也具有重要的启示。     

人力资本积累、收入分布演化与经济增长

本文建立了一个同时含有物质资本、人力资本积累及收入分布演化的内生增长模型,来研究人力资本积累、收入分布演化与经济增长的相互作用.我们发现,更高的初始收入差异将通过直接降低人力资本增长率与间接提高下一期的物质资本与人力资本比这两个渠道对经济增长率产生负面影响.另一方面,降低收入差异能获得更高的人力资本与经济增长率,这将使得低收入国家有可能追赶上高收入国家.     

International Knowledge Spillovers to Developing Countries: The Case of Indonesia

The successful industrialization and catch up of countries in the East Asian region gave rise to an important debate concerning the role played by technological learning and knowledge creation. This paper seeks to examine this issue for Indonesia, a second‐tier newly industrializing country. It focuses on the relative importance of learning from imported inputs vis‐à‐vis other factors influencing productivity in manufacturing. The concept of learning is operationalized drawing on the literature on technology spillovers on the one hand, and the literature on catch up à la Abramovitz, on the other. Our results indicate that knowledge spillovers have become significant contributors to labor productivity growth after the liberalization of the Indonesian economy.     

商业模式创新与技术创新匹配性对后发企业绩效的影响——来自年报文本分析的实证研究

以2014—2019年沪深A股成长期上市公司作为后发企业代表，借助Word2Vec的文本分析方法，基于公司年度财务数据度量后发企业商业模式创新水平，实证研究后发企业追赶过程中商业模式创新、技术创新以及二者匹配性与企业绩效间的作用机理。结果发现：商业模式创新对后发企业绩效具有显著正向影响；技术创新对后发企业绩效具有显著正向影响；商业模式创新和技术创新的平衡性与后发企业绩效正相关；商业模式创新和技术创新的组合性与后发企业绩效正相关。结果表明，对于后发企业而言，商业模式创新与技术创新为互补关系，而非互替关系，二者间的匹配性对后发企业绩效提升具有增强型交互作用。     

The optimality and overuse of labour in Estonian manufacturing enterprises*

Transition economies need labour market flexibility for successful restructuring and reallocation of the labour force, and for coping with the requirements of the European Monetary Union. In this paper we apply a novel approach to the issue of labour market flexibility in transition countries by studying the optimality and efficiency of labour usage in Estonian manufacturing enterprises. We employ a dynamic model in which both the long‐run optimal level of employment and the speed at which actual employment is adjusted to the optimal are modelled as functions of several variables. Firm‐level panel data of 1995–99 were used. The results showed that in the long run, employment responds most strongly to wages, followed by value added and capital stock. The speed of adjustment, labour use optimality and efficiency all show much greater variations over firms than over time. In the course of time, both labour‐saving technical change and an increase in the efficiency of labour usage occur. On average, there is shortage of labour compared to firms’ own optimal level, along with overuse of labour compared to best‐practice technology. Capital seems to be a binding constraint on the development of employment in the Estonian labour market.     

中国旅游增长收敛吗——基于1990～2008年入境旅游收敛性研究

旅游促进落后地区经济发展,为相对落后地区追赶发达地区贡献力量,国务院、旅游局等曾先后提出要＂促进区域旅游协调发展＂。这种区域旅游协调发展的思路有一定理论基础：从新古典经济学角度看,由于存在资本边际收益递减规律,落后地区会以较高的增长速度追赶发达地区,最后达到收敛的均衡状态;但是从空间经济学角度看,由于存在规模收益递增效应,会出现两极分化而不是收敛的结果。为检验我国旅游增长是哪一种结果,以我国1990～2008年入境旅游统计资料为依据,使用β无条件收敛和条件收敛检验了我国入境旅游收敛情况。结果表明,我国入境旅游以2%的速度无条件收敛,以8%的速度条件收敛。所以,我国入境旅游发展是资本边际收益递减规律起主导作用,即我国入境旅游增长存在收敛情况。此外,研究还发现：现实旅游资源、人力资本、感知距离等因素,能在不同程度上影响我国入境的旅游收敛情况。