公共投资就业效应的一个解释——基于CES生产函数的分析及其检验

本文在分析CES生产函数过程中引入劳动力市场,探讨了公共投资与就业的联系.本文认为,公共投资是通过劳动工资弹性来影响就业的.公共投资增加会引起劳动需求的工资弹性提高,而公共投资的溢出效应则会导致企业实际工资支出水平降低,两方面原因的共同作用引起就业的增长.在此分析基础上,本文用ARDL方法构建了一个多方程模型,并用中国的数据进行了检验.为提高分析的有效性,我们用SUR方法对模型做了系统估计,并进一步通过方程转化对变量的短期波动和长期均衡关系进行了探讨.实证研究发现,中国的公共投资增长在短期减少就业,但长期内对就业有显著的正效应.     

The Last Word on the Wage Curve?

Abstract.  Since 1990, there has been extensive international research on the responsiveness of wages of individuals to changing local labour market conditions. For many countries, an inverse relationship between wages and local unemployment rates has been found. In their book, The Wage Curve , Blanchflower and Oswald argued that the unemployment elasticity of pay is around −0.1 in most countries. In a 1995 literature survey, Card referred to this striking empirical regularity as being close to an 'empirical law of economics'. Nonetheless, reported elasticities do vary, even excluding outliers, between about −0.5 and +0.1. There is also considerable heterogeneity among wage curve studies in terms of data and model specification. This paper carries out meta‐analytic techniques on a sample of 208 elasticities derived from the literature to uncover the reasons for the differences in empirical results across studies. Several causes of variation are identified. There is also clear evidence of downward publication bias. In addition, many reported t ‐statistics are biased upwards due to the use of aggregate unemployment rates. A maximum likelihood method and a trimming procedure are used to correct for these biases. Both methods give similar results for our sample. An unbiased estimate of the wage curve elasticity at the means of study characteristics is about −0.07.     

Joint outputs and real wage rates

The magnification effect in standard international trade theory asserts that if the relative price of the labor-intensive commodity increases, the real wage will also increase, as will the wage/rental ratio. This result depends upon the assumption that both activities are nonjoint—each combining labor and capital to produce a single output, so that if activities are joint instead, the results are in jeopardy. It is shown that if the difference between the share of commodity one produced in the first activity and in the second activity exceeds the difference between the labor distributive shares in the first activity and the second, an increase in commodity 1's relative price raises the wage/rental ratio. The real wage unambiguously rises in this case if and only if the ratio of the commodity output shares in the two activities exceeds the ratio of labor shares.     

Prizes for basic research: Human capital,economic might and the shadow of history

We study the distribution of basic scientific research across countries and time, and explain the process that resulted in the United States becoming the undisputed leader in basic research. Our study is based on the records of scientific awards, and on the data of global economic trends. We investigate the degree to which scale/threshold effects account for the number of prizes won. We constructed a stylized model, predicting a non-linear relationship with lagged relative GDP as an important explanatory variable of a country’s share of prizes. Our empirical research findings find support for these predictions and the presence of a “winner-takes-all” effect.      

The Evidence on Product-Market Diversifying Acquisitions and Joint Ventures by U.S. Banks

We examine the acquisition and joint venture strategies of U.S. banks from 1980 to 1998 to diversify into non-banking sectors. We find that the market responds favorably to both types of expansions, with the gains being shared between acquiring banks and their targets and venture banks and their non-bank partners, respectively. Acquisitions expose acquiring banks to significant increases in nonsystematic, market, and total risk, while joint ventures result in significant decreases in the nonsystematic and total risk measures for participating banks. Our results suggest that product-market expansions, in general, provide U.S. banks with value-enhancing opportunities, and that joint ventures may improve both the return and risk characteristics of the partner banks.     

Rising real wages,mechanization and growing advantage of large farms: Evidence from Indonesia

This paper examines dynamic patterns of land use, capital investments and wages in agriculture using farm panel data from Indonesia. The empirical analysis shows that with an increase in real wages that prevailed in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in rural areas, relatively larger farmers increased the size of operational farm land by renting in land as well as used more hired-in machines through machine rental and/or service providers, which induces the substitution of labor by machines. Machines and land are complementary and, consistently, the inverse farm size-productivity relationship tends to be reversed among relatively large holders. The results support growing (diminishing) advantage of large (small) farms in the presence of rapidly rising real wages and have food security policy implications to many Asian countries where real wages are rapidly rising and small farms are predominant.     

Current issues and research trends on open-source software communities

Open source software (OSS) projects represent a new paradigm of software creation and development based on hundreds or even thousands of developers and users organised in the form of a virtual community. The success of an OSS project is closely linked to the successful organisation and development of the virtual community of support group. This paper reviews different fields and research topics related to the OSS communities such as collective intelligence, the structure of OSS communities, their success, communities as virtual organisations, motivation, shared knowledge, innovation and learning. The main challenges, results obtained, and the knowledge areas are detailed for each topic.     

Steady state adjusting trends using a data-driven local polynomial regression

Economic variables usually follow a dynamic trend pattern. However, it is difficult to estimate this trend precisely as numerous economically- and statistically-based estimation methods exist. This contribution proposes a data-driven nonparametric trend that is local polynomial, to improve arbitrary trend estimations of commonly used methods concerning the selection of the smoothing parameter and the dependence structure. An iterative plug-in (IPI) algorithm determines the bandwidth endogenously and allows a theory-based interpretation of the length of growth processes. This length of the bandwidth reflects the lengths of the steady state periods. Consequently, the bandwidth identifies the time period of stable economic conditions and can detect economic changes. To demonstrate the power of this estimation approach, an extensive simulation study is performed. Furthermore, examples using US and UK GDP data along with a guide for the optimal choice of algorithms for empirical applications are provided. This proposed method yields new insights for growth dynamics, cyclical movements and their dependence.     

Persistence,mean reversion and non-linearities in the US housing prices over 1830–2013

The objective of this study is to provide a direct estimate of the degree of persistence of measures of nominal and real house prices for the US economy, covering the longest possible annual sample of data, namely 1830–2013. The estimation of the degree of persistence accommodates for non-linear (deterministic) trends using Chebyshev polynomials in time. In general, the results show a high degree of persistence in the series along with a component of non-linear behaviour. In general, if we assume uncorrelated errors, non-linearities are observed in both nominal and real prices, but this hypothesis is rejected in favour of linear models for the log-transformation of the data. However, if autocorrelated errors are permitted, non-linearities are observed in all cases, and mean reversion is found in the case of logged prices, though given the wide confidence intervals, the unit root null hypothesis cannot be rejected in these cases.     

Search efficiency,wage dynamics and welfare

Advances in information technology have improved the job-search process in the labor market. We analyze the effects of this improvement by constructing a search-and-matching model with two sectors: a risky sector with firm-specific productivity shocks and a risk-free sector. The risky sector is characterized by a low level of commitment between employers and workers – either party can end the employment relationship. We show that a better job-search process generates more job matches in the risky sector, and this benefits workers by improving their outside options. The effect on employers is subtle: while it is easier to fill vacancies, workers become more expensive. At the same time, the ease of finding new workers makes it harder for employers to keep their wage promises to workers and increases wage volatility. Our paper contributes to the literature by offering a novel explanation for the observed rise in wage volatility.