Distribution Dynamics of CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> Emissions

This paper uses nonparametric methods to examine the convergence in CO₂ emissions per capita on a sample of 100 countries for the period 1966–1996. Industrial countries show a convergence pattern. However, there is little evidence of convergence for the whole sample.     

Joseph A. Schumpeter’s contributions in the area of fiscal sociology: a first approximation

Fiscal sociology deals with the ramifications of the fiscal activities of the state into areas which are not their primary target. These effects may occur in sectors not directly affected such as related markets, but they may also occur outside the economic sphere proper, such as in politics, culture, religion, or society at large. Schumpeter contributed to the research project of fiscal sociology throughout his life. In this first approximation, his contribution is discussed in terms of his appreciation of three important scholars who all made landmark contributions to fiscal sociology: Franz Oppenheimer, Werner Sombart, and Gustav (von) Schmoller.JEL Classification: B15, H39     

Double Dividend with Involuntary Unemployment: Efficiency and Intergenerational Equity

This paper analyzes the double dividend and distributional issues within an overlapping generations model framework with involuntary unemployment. We characterize the necessary conditions needed to obtain a double dividend, when the revenue of the environmental tax is recycled by a variation of the labor tax rate. We show that an employment dividend may occur without any efficiency dividend and that the young generation is not always harmed by the fiscal reform, even without any intergenerational transfers. Therefore, three dividends (environmental, efficiency and intergenerational equity) can occur simultaneously.     

中国改革时期省际生产率增长变化的实证分析(1979-2001年)

中国经济的发展是否正在背离比较优势的原则?今后中国是否要加快经济增长模式的转变?该文试图通过对省际全要素生产率(TFP)及其组成部分的测算,从技术效率和技术进步这两个不同的方面来考察中国改革开放以来的TFP增长性质和近几年来的变化趋势,以便为相关政策讨论提供一些实证依据.我们的研究结果表明,中国经济增长在1978-1995年期间经历了一个TFP高增长期(为4.6%);而在1996-2001年期间出现低增长期(为0.6%),其变化的具体特征为:技术进步速度减慢、技术效率有所下降.     

Pricing-to-market tests in instrumental regressions: Case of the transportation equipment industry

Pricing-to-market (PTM) theory suggests that exporting monopolistic firms adjust their destination-specific mark-ups in the face of exchange rate shocks. A large proportion of the existing evidence for PTM comes from Wald tests applied to OLS- and IV-estimated parameters of single-equation models. Such tests can seriously over-reject in the presence of endogeneity and weak instruments so that some of the available results supporting PTM could be spurious. In this paper we revisit the PTM evidence for Japanese and German exporting firms in the transportation equipment industry. Using the model of Marston (1990), we apply exogeneity and LR-LIML-based tests for which the error probability is controlled irrespective of the quality of the available instruments. Our results show right-hand-side endogeneity in almost all of the examined PTM equations. In addition, we find that statistical decisions often differ depending on whether they are based on the traditional Wald test or on our proposed test.The authors would like to thank Philippe Barla, Jean-Thomas Bernard, Christos Constantatos, Larry Schembri, seminar participants at the Bank of Canada, and two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to Richard Marston for providing data. Finally, a special thanks to Marjorie Santos for excellent research assistance. All remaining errors are our own and should not be attributed to the Bank of Canada.First version received: May 2002/Final version received: December 2002     

Art as an investment: Short and long-term comovements in major painting markets

This paper examines the short and long-term price linkages among major art and equity markets over the period 1976–2001. The art markets examined are Contemporary Masters, French Impressionists, Modern European, 19^th Century European, Old Masters, Surrealists, 20^th Century English and Modern US paintings. A global equity index (with dividends and capitalisation changes) is also included. Multivariate cointegration procedures, Granger non-causality tests, level VAR and generalised variance decomposition analyses based on error-correction and vector autoregressive models are conducted to analyse short and long-run relationships among these markets. The results indicate that there is a stationary long-run relationship and significant short and long run causal linkages between the various painting markets and between the equity market and painting markets. However, in terms of the percentage of variance explained most painting markets are relatively isolated, and other painting markets are generally more important than the equity market in explaining the variance that is not caused by innovations in the market itself. This suggests that opportunities for portfolio diversification in art works alone and in conjunction with equity markets exist, though in common with the literature in this area the study finds that the returns on paintings are much lower and the risks much higher than in conventional financial markets.The authors would like to thank delegates to the 14th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, University of New South Wales, seminar participants at the Queensland University of Technology and Massey University, Masaki Katsuura, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The financial assistance of a Queensland University of Technology, Faculty of Business Research Initiative Grant is also gratefully acknowledged.     

Using data envelopment analysis approach to estimate the health production efficiencies in China

By using Data Envelopment Analysis approach, we treat the health production system in a certain province as a Decision Making Unit (DMU), identify its inputs and outputs, evaluate its technical efficiency in 1982, 1990 and 2000 respectively, and further analyze the relationship between efficiency scores and social-environmental variables. This paper has found several interesting findings. Firstly, provinces on frontier in different year are different, but provinces far from the frontier keep unchanged. The average efficiency of health production has made a significant progress from 1982 to 2000. Secondly, all provinces in China can be divided into six categories in terms of health production outcome and efficiency, and each category has specific approach of improving health production efficiency. Thirdly, significant differences in health production efficiencies have been found among the eastern, middle and western regions in China, and among the eastern and middle regions. At last, there is significant positive relationship between population density and health production efficiency but negative relationship (not very significant) between the proportions of public health expenditure in total expense and efficiency. Maybe it is the result of inappropriate tendency of public expenditure. The relationship between abilities to pay for health care services and efficiency in urban areas is opposite to that in rural areas. One possible reason is the totally different income and public services treatments between rural and urban residents. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust health policies and service provisions which are specifically designed to different population groups. __________ Translated from Jingji Yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2006, (7): 92–105     

科技文献中标点符号的正确用法

标点符号在科技工程界的书面语言中是十分重要的。为此，根据ＧＢ／Ｔ１５８３４－１９９５《标点符号用法》，结合工作经验，阐述了标点符号在科技文献中的正确用法     

Domestic financial market frictions,unrestricted international capital flows,and crises in small open economies

Summary. We present an example of a small open economy where small increases in the world interest rate may induce a sharp decline in output and a precipitous depreciation of the exchange rate. Due to a costly state verification problem in domestic credit markets, combined with unrestricted international capital flows, our economy generates two long-run equilibria, one with low GDP and a relatively depreciated real exchange rate (RER), and one with high GDP and a relatively appreciated RER. The first is always a saddle, while the second may be a sink or a source, depending on the level of the world interest rate. A crisis is identified with the economy switching from an equilibrium path approaching the high-output steady state to the saddlepath approaching the low-output steady state. In Mexicos recent history, periods of growth associated with appreciation of the RER have alternated with periods of sharp contraction and depreciation of the RER. Our economy displays such behavior in response to changes in the world interest rate.Received: 9 April 2002, Revised: 20 March 2003JEL Classification Numbers: E5, F4.G. Antinolfi, E. Huybens: We thank Steve Fazzari, Tim Kehoe, Todd Keister, Manuel Santos, Karl Shell and especially Bruce Smith for very helpful discussions. Jaime Calleja Alderete, Eduardo Camero Godínez, and Juan Vargas Hernández provided excellent research assistance. All remaining errors are ours. Huybens was an assistant professor in the Centro de Investigación Económica, ITAM, at the time this article was written, and part of this work was completed while Antinolfi was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The views expressed herein are those of the authors, and do not reflect those of the World Bank or the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Correspondence to: G. Antinolfi     

Sectoral and aggregate technology growth in Spain

In this paper we analyze technological change in the Spanish economy by constructing adjusted Solow residuals, where the adjustment attempts to correct for the bias associated with the potential presence of imperfect competition, increasing returns, variable input utilization and, especially, sectoral reallocation of inputs across sectors. We refer to this modified Solow residual as a technology index. Sectoral reallocations and variable input utilization are key determinants of the differences between the aggregate Solow residual and the technology index resulting from the aggregation of estimated sectoral technological growth. We show that starting in the mid nineties, there has been a deceleration in the aggregate growth rate of technology which is basically due to the behaviour of the manufacturing sectors. Finally, our results imply that aggregate technology growth is less volatile than aggregate productivity as measured by the Solow residual.