Exports,capabilities, and industrial policy in India

An extensive literature argues that India’s manufacturing sector has underperformed, and that the country has failed to industrialize; in particular, it has failed to take advantage of its labor–abundant comparative advantage. India’s manufacturing sector is smaller as a share of GDP than that of East Asian countries, even after controlling for GDP per capita. Hence, its contribution to overall GDP growth is modest. Without greater participation of the secondary sector, the argument goes, the country will not be able to develop and become a modern economy. Standard arguments blame the “license-permit raj”, the small-scale industrial policy, and the labor laws. All these were part of the industrial policy regime instituted after independence. This regime favored the heavy-machinery subsector. We argue that despite its shortcomings and misallocations, the bias towards machinery, metals, chemicals, and other capital- and skilled labor-intensive products allowed Indian manufacturing to accumulate a wide range of capabilities. We show that India’s manufacturing sector is more diversified and sophisticated than one would expect given the country’s income per capita. This positions India well to continue expanding its exports of other sophisticated products. India’s failure, however, lies in not being able to diversify into labor-intensive sectors and generate the type of structural transformation seen in China.     

Sources of inequality in selected MENA countries

The paper deals with income inequality in the selected MENA countries focusing on the dynamics of domestic wage differentiations. The main aim is to identify the sources of inequalities. GDP per capita, share of manufacturing sector, urban share of population, gender participation in the labor force, education and openness may be possible factors. The paper analyzes pay inequalities using a panel regression model where the Theil index is used as the dependent variable. The results show that GDP per capita and female labor force participation have positive (increasing) effects, and openness has a negative (decreasing) effect on pay inequalities in these countries.     

Measuring the degree of market power in the Greek manufacturing industry

This paper investigates the competitive conditions in the Greek manufacturing industry, estimates the net and the total welfare losses due to the possible existence of market power and investigates factors affecting the market power at sectoral level and over time. The bootstrap method is applied to assign measures of accuracy to the statistical estimates. The empirical results imply the presence of imperfect competition in the Greek manufacturing industry and the existence of welfare losses. Furthermore, the findings indicate that labor intensity, the sector size and the openness influence the market power at the sectoral level and labor intensity, while the number of firms and the openness affect the market power over time.     

Disentangling the Poverty Effects of Sectoral Output,Prices, and Policies in India

This paper attempts to disentangle the poverty effects of key policy variables that directly affect the poor (namely the government‐led channel of development spending and financing) in both agricultural and non‐agricultural sectors after accounting for the effect of respective sectoral per capita income and prices, using data from India over five decades. The paper emphasizes the sectoral composition of income and prices as mechanisms influencing the level of poverty and establishes empirically that it is the rise in non‐agricultural per capita income that reduces rural poverty via the channel of internal migration, after having controlled for the variation in key components of fiscal spending and monetary/financial policy via the availability of credit. Uneven sectoral growth pattern explains why urban poverty becomes a spill‐over of persistent rural poverty when the agricultural sector shrinks. While checking for robustness, there is evidence that the rise in non‐agricultural income alone may not reduce rural poverty, when measured in terms of rural infant mortality rate as a non‐income indicator of well‐being.     

SMEs,Growth, and Poverty: Cross-Country Evidence

This paper explores the relationship between the relative size of the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector, economic growth, and poverty alleviation using a new database on the share of SME labor in the total manufacturing labor force. Using a sample of 45 countries, we find a strong, positive association between the importance of SMEs and GDP per capita growth. The data do not, however, confidently support the conclusions that SMEs exert a causal impact on growth. Furthermore, we find no evidence that SMEs alleviate poverty or decrease income inequality.     

Must improved labor standards hurt accumulation in the targeted sector? Stylized analysis of a developing economy

This paper analyzes a stylized small open economy that consists of two tradable output-producing sectors: a manufacturing sector and a (mainly tourism-related) services sector. Assuming sectoral differences based on stylized facts, we explore the impact of higher labor standards in the manufacturing sector on the long-term prospects of the economy using comparative dynamic exercises to analyze changes in relative prices, foreign capital flows, and the sectoral distribution of investment and output. We find, in particular, that imposing higher standards across the manufacturing sector could, under certain conditions, shift the structure of the domestic economy in favor of that sector. This result is driven by changes in relative profitability in the presence of learning-by-exporting.     

Industrial development in Malaysia and Singapore: Empirical analysis with multiple‐cone Heckscher–Ohlin Model

This paper employs the multiple‐cone Heckscher–Ohlin model to analyze industrial development in Malaysia and Singapore. In particular, we focus on industrial upgrading along with capital accumulation as a key determinant for the cross‐country difference in production technology and income. By pooling two countries’ data on factor endowment and sectoral output in manufacturing from 1990 to 2008, we estimate the common industrial development paths of the two‐cone Heckscher–Ohlin model, the Rybczynski linear relationship between capital–labor ratio and sectoral output per capita. Our results demonstrate that, after controlling for quality of workers (by educational attainment), the two countries resided in different cones during our sample period, implying that Singapore succeeded in accumulating capital steadily with the support of foreign investment and upgrading its industry mix to make it more capital‐intensive. The separation of cones is also consistent with the observed gap in gross domestic product per capita between the two countries. Furthermore, we implement a factor‐augmenting productivity test to see the gaps in efficiency of capital and human‐capital‐augmented labor and confirm no significant difference between the two countries.     

How does female labor force participation impact on housing values?

Female labor force participation (FLFP) and household wealth are two main topics of interests to economists for long time. The objective of this study is to investigate the response of housing values, household wealth, to female labor force participation using panel level data in the U.S. states. We develop static and dynamic estimation models using state-level data in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013. The results show the FLFP rate and per capita income have a strong positive effect on housing values, while the number of units per capita has a negative effect on housing values in the state. We find that a 10% increase in FLFP will result in an increase of about 12.5% on housing values. Additionally, increasing per capita income by 10% on average will cause housing values to rise by 9%, however, a 10% rise in the number of units per capita will decrease housing values by 30%. The results assist economists and policy makers in assessing policies to optimize decisions in labor market and housing market.     

Monopolistic Competition and Different Wage Setting Systems

In this paper, we present a disequilibrium unemployment model without labor market frictions and monopolistic competition in the goods market within an infinite horizon model of growth. We consider different wage setting systems and compare wages, the unemployment rate, and income per capita in the long‐run at firm, sector, and national (centralized) levels. The aim of this paper is to determine under which conditions, the inverted‐U hypothesis between unemployment and the degree of centralization of wage bargaining, reported by Calmfors and Driffill [Economic Policy, 6, 14–61, 1988], is confirmed. Our analysis shows that a high degree of market power normally produces the inverted‐U shape for unemployment. Moreover, we also illustrate that this inverted‐U shape can be reversed when the ability of trade unions to internalize the provision of social services is great enough at sector level.     

REASSESSING THE IMPACT OF BARRIERS TO CAPITAL ACCUMULATION ON INTERNATIONAL INCOME DIFFERENCES*

Can barriers to capital accumulation account for large differences in GDP per capita? We reconsider the claim that these barriers have an amplified effect on income levels in a model where both modern and traditional sector technologies are active. We show that this claim is not correct. We do find, however, that the removal of barriers to capital accumulation can cause large changes in the employment shares of labor. Thus the model can account for an important stylized fact of the development process, with labor moving from the traditional to the modern sector as income levels rise.     

Air Pollution and ‘Dirty’ Industries: How and Why Does the Composition of Manufacturing Output Change with Economic Development?

This paper examines the impact on air pollution ofchanges in the composition of manufacturing output indeveloped and developing countries. Pollutionemissions from manufacturing output are estimated ina manner which holds constant the effect of technologyand regulations allowing the impact of compositional changes alone on pollution to beestimated. The paper has three main findings; (1) theinverted-U estimated between per capita income and thepollution intensity of GDP arises due to both thecomposition of manufacturing becoming cleaner and theshare of manufacturing output in GDP falling.Compositional changes alone are not responsible forthe inverted-U between per capita income and percapita emissions; (2) changes to the composition ofmanufacturing output are consistent with the pollutionhaven hypothesis, however there is clear evidence thatrising per capita incomes are associated with afalling income elasticity of demand for `dirty'products. This fact may explain the compositionalchanges that occur with development; (3) in additionto the income elasticity effect, the analysis suggeststhat land prices and to a lesser extent the prices oflabour and capital, determine the proportion of dirtyindustry within a country's manufacturing sector.     

Labor reallocation in China: 1978–2011

This paper develops a three-sector model to analysis the mechanism of cross sectoral labor reallocation in China over the period of 1978–2011. The model incorporates factors of sectoral differences in productivity, non-homothetic preference characteristics of consumers, and institutional barriers of labor mobility. Moreover, the model considers changes in the scale of the public sector as an important driving force. We find that there are two effects of changes in the scale of the public sector in declining public sector output on labor reallocation. First, enterprises will increase the share of capital input to labor, resulting in relative expansion of non-agricultural production. Second, residents' income will also increase, together with the relative increase in demand towards non-agricultural goods due to non-homothetic preference characteristics of consumers. Therefore the non-agricultural production will further expand.     

我国三大经济圈制造业结构变动趋向分析——对环渤海、长三角和珠三角的一项实证研究

基于1988—1997年和2000—2011年这两个时段环渤海、长三角和珠三角三大经济圈各省市分行业面板数据,从结构变化的资本集约度角度考察制造业结构变动的趋向。实证结果表明,1988—1997年时段,经济圈中除广东省外,绝大多数省市制造业劳动力要素是从劳动密集型产业向资本密集型产业转移的,而2000—2011年时段,不少省市的制造业结构呈劳动密集型化变动特征。而且,三大经济圈制造业结构向资本密集型调整在区域上由北向南递减,而向劳动密集型调整则由南向北递减。进一步的研究显示,三大经济圈制造业结构趋向于劳动密集型化的现象背后,存在制造业向技术密集型产业调整的明显趋势。另外,对制造业人均累积资本进行分解后发现,制造业结构变化本身并不是制造业人均累积资本变化的决定性因素;2000年以后三大经济圈制造业人均累积资本的提升差异较大,且劳动力要素在部门间的流动已开始抑制整体制造业人均累积资本的增加。     

Convergence of labor productivity across the US states

Most studies of labor productivity convergence among US states base their analyses on state-level GDP per worker. Such aggregated analysis may hide important information about the role of sectors, and changes in the sectoral composition of these economies, in explaining economy-wide convergence results. Using highly disaggregated data for the period 1987–2015 from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, we examine sectoral unconditional convergence in labor productivity in the US states. Our results demonstrate a general slowing down in the rate of convergence of labor productivity in the latter years of this period. The sectoral analysis also indicates that manufacturing was the primary driver of convergence during the 1987–1997 period, which had the highest rate of convergence; the role of this sector, however, has diminished in recent years. Several factors—such as the decline in interstate migration, rising housing costs in major cities, agglomeration, and structural changes in the US economy that have reduced the role of manufacturing—may have contributed to the rise in the labor productivity differential among US states.     

Formal schooling and workforce participation in a rapidly developing economy: evidence from “compulsory” junior high school in Taiwan

Using 18 consecutive household surveys, this study explores the impact of Taiwan's extension of tuition-free education from 6 to 9 years upon schooling and labor market outcomes (participation, sector/class of activity, and work income). I estimate upward shifts relative to preexisting trends of more than 0.4 years of education for males and 0.25 years for females in the first six cohorts affected by “compulsory” junior high schooling. Utilizing inter-cohort variation within an instrumental variables (IV) strategy, I find larger effects of schooling on females' workforce participation and total earnings, even controlling for selection.     

Will East Germany Become a New Mezzogiorno?

Despite massive regional policy efforts, GDP per capita in Southern Italy has only briefly converged on Northern Italian levels in the 1960's. Failure of convergence since then is associated with a policy switch from investment toward income maintenance, with reduced wage sensitivity to regional labor market conditions and with increases in rent-seeking opportunities and corruption. East Germany's early experience of rapid wage and income, but not productivity, convergence raised fears that aMezzogiornoscenario could be repeated. Since then, however, investment and productivity have risen while wage setting has become more flexible. Given East Germany's greater “social capability” for growth, and provided that investment continues to be encouraged, the prospects for convergence are now more promising.J. Comp. Econom.,June 1997,24(3), pp. 241–264. Magdalen College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4AU, United Kingdom; University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom; and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London WC1H 0XG, United Kingdom.     

Lost Exceptionalism? Comparative Income and Productivity in Australia and the UK, 1861–1948*

Australia had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world in the late nineteenth century, although this exceptional position subsequently eroded over time. This paper compares national income and sectoral labour productivity in Australia and the UK between 1861 and 1948 to uncover the underlying sources of Australia's high income and the reasons for its subsequent relative decline. We find that the country's higher per capita income was due primarily to higher labour productivity, because labour force participation, although higher in Australia than in the USA, was lower than in the UK. Australia had a substantial labour productivity lead in agriculture throughout the period, due to the importance of high value-added, non-arable farming, and a smaller lead in industry before World War I. The early productivity lead in industry was largely based on the importance of mining, and disappeared as manufacturing became more important. There was little productivity difference in services. These results reaffirm the importance of Australia's successful exploitation of its natural resource endowments in explaining the country's high initial income.     

Conceptions of the dual economy

Due to the current labor market problems and to the increase in personal “free time,” the “other half” of the economy is attracting increased attention: the household economy, the informal sector, black labor, the shadow economy, etc. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the current terminology and conceptual diversity in this field, in order to clarify the notions and thus the theoretical approaches which are a prerequisite for further work at the present stage of research.     

Productivity and convergence across U.S. States and industries

We examine the sources of aggregate labor productivity movements and convergence in the U.S. states from 1963 to 1989. Productivity levels vary widely across sectors and across states, as do sectoral output and employment shares. The main finding is the diverse performance of sectors regarding convergence. Using both cross-section and time series methods, we find convergence in labor productivity for both manufacturing and mining. However, we find that convergence does not hold for all sectors over the period. Decomposing aggregate convergence into industry productivity gains and changing sectoral shares of output, we find the manufacturing sector to be responsible for the bulk of cross-state convergence.     

The Relative Price of Services

Prices of GDP relative to the exchange rate increase with income per capita, which is known as the Penn‐effect. This is generally attributed to services being cheaper relative to goods in poorer countries. In this paper we re‐examine the Penn‐effect based on a new set of PPPs for industry output. These are estimated in an augmented Geary–Khamis approach using prices for final goods, exports, and imports. The resulting multilateral PPPs cover 35 industries in 42 countries for the year 2005. We find large variation in relative prices of various services industries. In particular the Penn‐effect appears to be mostly due to the rapidly rising output prices of non‐market services. This seems related mainly to the high labor intensity of that sector.