Why is Chinese provincial output diverging?

In a recent paper Pedroni and Yao (2006) present strong evidence suggesting that Chinese provincial per-capita output is diverging, a result that goes against the Chinese government’s goal of a balanced wealth-creation across provinces. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the reasoning behind this finding. Our main result is that the divergence does exist, even when new data and more advanced methods of analysis are used. We also find that it has both an idiosyncratic and a common component. Hence, the increased per-capita output inequalities observed at the provincial level is due to both province-specific disparities and to disparities between groups of provinces.     

Is Swedish research in economic history internationally integrated?

Abstract

This paper presents empirical evidence of the international integration of Swedish economic historians. Contrary to the claims of a recent national evaluation of the discipline, the Swedish shares of international publications and conference presentations are robustly below available cross-country and cross-discipline benchmarks. Also considering levels of research inputs, the relative underperformance of the Swedish field is alarming. Four main explanations to this situation are forwarded: 1) being among the largest economic history communities in the world, Sweden has become self-sufficient and almost independent of the international arena; 2) the dominating research language is Swedish; 3) the dominating publication format is the monograph (in Swedish); and 4) Swedish economic historians are reluctant to use modern economic theories and statistical analysis to complement the traditionally dominant qualitative research methods.     

Recent Danish research in economic history — a survey

Abstract

Academic disciplines which straddle the traditional subject-boundaries have frequently to contend on the one hand with the great difficulty that the scientific environment is frail — e.g. university posts are few, library facilities poor and there is normally no serious research journal in the national language. On the other hand the very differences of academic working methods on each side of the traditional subject-boundaries can frequently give rise to fruitful controversies over theoretical and methodological problems, which can produce scholarly innovations at a pace which does not always necessarily characterise the established disciplines with their more copious resources. In what follows we shall test whether these two circumstances can be said to apply to the Danish border-discipline between economics and history. After a review of the institutional framework (in section 2) and an interim balance sheet of the discipline in section 3 the profile presented by the research subjects in the last couple of decades is sketched in section 4. Section 5 then raises the question of the interaction between social science theory and historical method, i.e. in large measure the question of the subject's real interdisciplinary raison d'être in Denmark. The article closes with a survey of some of the current problems for research in the subject.     

On the use of palynological data in economic history: New methods and an application to agricultural output in Central Europe, 0–2000 AD

In this paper we introduce a new source of data to economic history: palynological data or, in other words, information about pollen grains which are preserved in the bottom sediments of various water basins. We discuss how this data is collected and how it should be interpreted; develop new methods for aggregating this information into regional trends in agricultural output; construct an extensive dataset with a large number of pollen sites from Central Europe; and use our methods to study the economic history of Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Lower Saxony since the first century AD.     

Does a name change attract better students? Evidence from Chinese universities

A number of Chinese universities have changed their names in recent years, providing an opportunity for an empirical analysis of whether a name change could attract students with higher admission scores. Using panel data from 522 universities in China (2005 to 2015), this paper examines the effect of a university's name change on student admission scores. The results indicate that, in general, a name change did not significantly improve the admission score of the university. However, after examining four types of name changes it was found that different name change methods had different effects. Specifically, renaming an institution from a college to a university and incorporating the name of a large regional area lead to a significant improvement in the admission scores; in contrast, choosing a more “fashionable” name and eliminating references to historical industrial affiliations have no significant effect, and may even have a negative impact.     

Publish or perish? A tale of academic publications in Chinese universities

This study examines academic resource (mis)allocation in China by focusing on the correlation between publication in leading economics journals in China and researchers' subsequent academic performance. Our findings demonstrate that researchers with a track record of publication in the most exclusive academic outlets publish more papers in high quality journals, with an average 12.4% increase, as they move up the career ladder, obtain more external grants, and acquire more executive powers. As the observable channels fail to explain most of the publication persistence, the increase in the research productivity along a researcher's career trajectory is attributed to other mechanisms that are suggestive of resource misallocation, including a reputation effect gained from initial visibility in leading academic outlets and non-academic channels facilitated by better access to social resources, among other mechanisms. Our findings depict some intriguing observations regarding the ecosystem of a prominent subject in Chinese academia and reveal tentative evidence on how structural changes, such as fostering a more open and international research environment, could benefit early career researchers.     

Patents,foreign direct investment and economic growth in Australia, 1860–2010

We examine the long run relationship between innovation and economic development in Australia, using 150 years of data on patenting activity, and aggregate and sectoral economic indicators. Our initial results point to several important causal relationships, particularly the effects of patents on real GDP and of private capital formation on patents. We delve deeper at the sector level and find important causal relationships of patents with real foreign direct investment (FDI) since World War II. Australia's dependence on FDI for private capital formation served as an important stimulus for knowledge creation in key sectors including manufacturing, agriculture and mining.     

Whither China? Reform and economic integration among Chinese regions

This paper investigates the changing nature of economic integration in China. Specifically, we consider business-cycle synchronization (correlation of demand and supply shocks) among Chinese provinces during the period 1955–2011. We find that the symmetry of supply shocks has declined after the liberalization initiated in 1978. In contrast, the correlation of demand shocks has increased during the same period. We then seek to explain these correlations by relating them to factors that proxy for interprovincial trade and vulnerability of regions to idiosyncratic shocks. Interprovincial trade and similarity in factor endowments tend to make shocks more symmetric. Surprisingly, foreign trade and inward FDI have little effect on the symmetry of shocks.     

Monthly industrial output in China 1980–2012

Monthly economic indicators are used for a variety of purposes, from studying business cycles to determining economic policy and making informed business decisions. China's published monthly industrial output statistics could hardly be more confusing, with changes in variables, in coverage, in measurement, and in presentation. This paper reviews the available official data and proceeds to construct a monthly industrial output series in nominal terms and in real terms for the period 1980–2012, economy-wide and for the public sector.     

Understanding the inflation–output nexus for China

In this article we examine several hypotheses relating to output and inflation dynamics in China. The hypotheses tests are based on the exponential generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) model of Nelson [Nelson, D. (1991). Conditional heteroskedasticity in asset return: A new approach, Econometrica, 59, 347–370]. Our findings suggest that Chinese output–inflation behaviour is consistent with the hypothesis that increased inflation uncertainty lowers average inflation; the hypothesis that inflation volatility reduces economic growth and the hypothesis that higher output volatility increases economic growth. However, we find no support for the hypothesis that higher output volatility increases the average inflation rate.     

Growth Accounting for the Chinese Provinces 1990–2000: Incorporating Human Capital Accumulation

This paper examines the linkage between aggregate real output, capital, labour, education, and productivity within a growth accounting framework for 27 Chinese provinces between 1990 and 2000. The results suggest that human capital has had a significant role in facilitating economic growth of all of the provinces throughout the 1990s. Regional disparities in factor accumulation are also considered. The results suggest that uneven distribution of resources between the coastal and inland provinces increased the regional gap in economic growth throughout the 1990s.     

The balance-of-payments constraint on economic growth in a long-term perspective: Spain, 1850–2000

The balance of payments can act as a constraint on the rate of growth of output, since it puts a limit on the growth in the level of demand to which supply can adapt. In this paper, we examine this issue for the case of Spain, using time series data extending over the period 1850–2000. Overall, the external deficit does not seem to have worked as a constraint on the growth of the Spanish economy over the long run, unless some shorter and specific subperiods, such as 1940–1959 and 1959–1974. The Spanish economy seems to have used external deficits to smooth her level of aggregate consumption, which would be supported by the finding of sustainability of current account deficits along the period of analysis.     

Pre‐colonial culture,post‐colonial economic success? The Tswana and the African economic miracle

Cultural explanations of economic phenomena have recently enjoyed a renaissance among economists. This article provides further evidence for the salience of culture through an in‐depth case study of one of the fastest‐growing economies in the world during the last 50 years—Botswana. The unique culture that developed among the Tswana before and during the early days of colonialism, which shared many features with those of western nation‐states, appears to have contributed significantly to the factors widely seen as determinants of Botswana's post‐colonial economic success: state legitimacy, good governance and democracy, commercial traditions, well‐established property rights, and inter‐ethnic unity. Neighbouring Southern African cultures typically did not exhibit these traits.     

China's economic fluctuations and consumption smoothing: Is consumption more volatile than output in China?

This paper provides a fundamental study of China's consumption and output fluctuations. The most recent literature reports that, in the post-1978 period, detrended consumption is significantly more volatile than detrended output in China. This indicates the inability to impose consumption smoothing. However, in those previous studies, consumption of durables, which has some features of capital, as discussed in the real business cycle literature, was not separated from private consumption. This paper is the first to estimate consumer durables for China and their service values following the method introduced in Cooley and Prescott (1995). We adjust the consumption measure to make it consistent with the real business cycle literature, and find that consumption of durables is much more volatile than output, but non-durable consumption is less volatile than, and less correlated with, output that provides evidence that supports consumption smoothing in China.     

Asian financial crisis and East Asian economic cooperation: A Chinese view∗

The Asian financial crisis has devastated East Asia in many aspects. While social unrest was witnessed in some states, social problems have arisen in others because of the reforms undertaken. States undergoing reforms are learning their lessons at a very expensive price. These are lessons essential and vital to the cause of regional cooperation. From a theoretical perspective, without these lessons, the debates on the need and importance of regional cooperation would have gone on incessantly without any real progress. Although expensive, once the crisis‐hit states succeeds in instituting the reforms attached to the financial package from international financial institution, the future prospects for regional economic cooperation are not too unfavorable. While China can afford to maintain its current position on the crisis, the rest has an obligation to fulfill its responsibility so as to lay a solid foundation for regional cooperation to ripen.     

A case study in German economic imperialism: The colonial economic committee, 1896–1914

Abstract

The most thorough attempt so far made to estimate the population of Finland in the 17th century is that by the Swedish military historian, Major S. Sundquist. The purpose of his investigation was to discover the basis of enlistment in the army of the kingdom of Sweden under Gustavus II Adolphus. Sundquist obtained the number of farmsteads from the Crown terriers of the first decade of the 17th century and from lists drawn up in connexion with a levy raised to buy back the castle of Elfsborg lost to Denmark in the war of 1611–1613. His next step was to assess the average size of households. In source materials from the sheriffdoms (fögderier) of Porvoo (Borgå) and Kymi (Kymmene) an assessment term, näbb, was found. Sundquist interpreted this term as indicating the number of married couples living in a farm household in addition to the farmer and his wife. In the two sheriffdoms mentioned, the number of such additional couples was 1.14 per farmstead. Sundquist changed this ratio into the round figure of one which he applied to the whole country, thus assuming a national average of two married couples per farm. Assuming, furthermore, that the population structure was the same in the 17th century as in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the earliest official population statistics were drawn up, he assumed for each married couple the same number of widows and widowers, unmarried adults and children as appeared in these statistics. In this way he arrived at a ‘probable minimum’ of 350,000 persons; he also calculated a ‘proved minimum’ of 219,000 by assuming that the average number of married couples per farmstead was 2.14 in the sheriffdorns of Porvoo and Kymi but only 1.0 in the rest of Finland. ¹ S. Sundquist, Finlands folkmängd och bebyggelse i början av 1600-talet [Finland's population and colonization at the beginning of the 17th century], Meddelanden Iran generalstabens krigshistoriska avdelning II, Stockholm.      

Determinants of Real Chinese GDP 1978–2014

In 2014, the IMF reported that China became the largest economy in the world according to Purchasing Power Parity rates. This study aims to explain the Chinese economic miracle. It focuses on frequently suggested factors influencing China’s real gross domestic product (GDP), such as export promotion, exchange rate policy, and foreign direct investment (FDI). The paper employs the Bounds test of the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to test for cointegration. Once cointegration is established, Granger Causality is investigated using the vector autoregressive model and the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) method. Two different combinations of the real macroeconomic variables exports, exchange rate, imports, and FDI were employed to examine Granger causal relationships. All explanatory variables, except for the exchange rate, were found to have plausible relationships with GDP. The exchange rate and GDP relationship was unexpected; a Renminbi appreciation was associated with an increase in GDP. To investigate this paradox, a third ARDL model was estimated with exports as the dependent variable and the exchange rate, world GDP, and FDI as the independent variables. In this model, we found evidence of cointegration and a plausible relationship between real exports and the real exchange rate. Exchange rate devaluation increased exports and thus indirectly increased GDP. Such findings help to resolve the unexpected results. Nonetheless, according to the Granger causality tests the established statistical evidence is rather weak. We found that both the exchange rate and FDI are no longer strong drivers of economic growth in China.     

Welfare and economic growth in Kenya, 1914–76

In this paper we present estimates of per capita income, income distribution, and poverty in Kenya for the period between 1914 and 1976. The estimates indicate that per capita incomes mostly increased up to 1974; inequality increased most of the time until 1950, then fell and increased again until 1971 and then finally fell; poverty declined until 1964 but has since then increased slightly. A decomposition analysis shows that modern sector enrichment contributed more to growth than modern sector enlargement, and that traditional sector enrichment was of greater importance to the poor than modern sector enlargement.