Does the Internet increase labor productivity? Evidence from a cross-country dynamic panel

The Internet has various economic functions and is a fundamental part of most economic activities and transactions. In this paper we apply a Dynamic Panel Data approach to study the impact of the Internet on labor productivity using data from 108 countries for the period 1995–2010. The results of the study show that the Internet has positive and statistically significant effects on labor productivity. Assuming other factors stay constant, increasing the number of Internet users by one percent increases GDP per employed person by $8.16–14.6. Educational expenditures as a percentage of GNI, per capita health expenditures, trade and gross capital formation as a percentage of GDP also have positive and statistically significant effects on labor productivity.     

我国产业结构变迁中的生产率增长效应分析

分阶段考察产业结构变迁效应对生产率增长的贡献。首先利用传统的份额—转换法对劳动生产率增长进行分解,考察劳动要素转移对生产率增长的贡献;接着引入资本要素对全要素生产率增长进行分解,充分考察资本要素以及劳动要素转移对生产率增长的影响,又进一步考察在Verdoorn效应下产业结构变迁对全要素生产率增长的影响。结论表明劳动转移和资本转移存在明显的阶段特征,劳动转移一直存在＂结构红利＂现象,资本转移效应在近些年才开始出现＂结构红利＂现象;与结构效应相比,产业内部增长效应是生产率增长的主要源泉。     

Productivity growth,external shocks,and capital inflows in Chile: A general equilibrium analysis

This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to analyze the growth path of the Chilean economy during 1977–1981. During that period a comprehensive package of reforms liberalized international trade and removed restrictive labor legislation. As a result of the reforms, there were large changes in relative prices and in the structure of production and demand, and the economy enjoyed unprecedented growth with declining inflation. But large macroeconomic imbalance become evident toward the end of the period and in 1982 Chile experienced an abrupt and severe recession. Taking the real exchange rate as an exogenous policy variable, and using the observed levels of employment growth and foreign capital inflows, this paper compares model-generated growth paths with those of the economy. First, the benchmark simulation path is used to estimate the magnitude and pattern of growth and productivity change during the 1971–1981 period. Next, counter-factual simulations are used to assess how Chile's economic performance would have differed if (a) external events had been different; and (b) foreign capital inflows had been different. The analysis suggests that the macroeconomic imbalances that led to the crisis in 1982 were exacerbated by the large capital inflows and real exchange rate appreciation that resulted from the use of the exchange rate as a stabilization device.     

技术进步偏向性及其要素收入分配效应

技术进步偏向性取决于技术进步收益率、要素稀缺性和要素相对生产率的增长率。通常技术进步偏向性使资本和技能型劳动生产率增长更快,资本和技能报酬更高并导致收入分配结构失衡。技术进步资本偏向性及其偏向程度加深,资本报酬更高且在收入分配过程中更具掠夺性,导致劳动收入占比下降并恶化劳动力市场地位。而技术进步技能偏向性使劳动力市场需求分化并出现技能溢价。若任凭市场经济自由发展,技术进步偏向性不断强化,技能型劳动需求增长、劳动收入占比下降和工资不平等现象持续存在,最终将阻碍一国经济可持续增长。     

A Study of an Industrialization Strategy for China’s Upper-Middle Income Stage

When the high-income East Asian economies entered the upper-middle income stage, their long-term growth was sustained by their real manufacturing output share and total factor productivity (TFP). This is a typical pattern that is highly consistent with classical development economics, which sees manufacturing as the engine of economic growth. When China became a middle-income country, its share of real manufacturing output and TFP both fell over the same period, exhibiting a theoretical and empirical tendency toward “premature deindustrialization” that increases the risk of being caught in the middle-income trap. Accelerating China’s development as a manufacturing power, advancing high-tech manufacturing and improving the quality and efficiency of traditional industries are realistic options for the country’s industrial development strategy.     

Analysis of China＇s Unequal Income Distribution from the Perspective of Functional Income Distribution

中国收入分配的不平等在很大程度上表现为功能性收入分配的不平等，即随着经济的发展，工资性收入占国民收入的比例越来越小，而现阶段中国二元经济结构下的无限劳动力供给则是其主要原因。在一个具有凯恩斯主义特征的非均衡动态模型框架下，我们的分析表明，劳动力的无限供给，不仅使工资无法对劳动力市场的供求状况进行反应，而且使劳动生产率和物价变化对工资的影响也不敏感。这意味着，当存在着劳动生产率的提高或由经济增长所带动的物价上涨时，工资的提高不够显著，从而由经济增长或劳动生产率的提高所带来的利益大部分转化为利润而非工资。基于此，要彻底扭转中国收入分配恶化趋势，根本途径仍然是保持经济的高速增长，加快工业化和城市化进程，从而使农村剩余劳动力能够尽快被吸收。     

Public attitudes toward policies related to labor migrants in Israel

This paper focuses on determinants of public attitudes in Israel toward two policy questions. First, should immigration policy measures be more restrictive toward overseas labor migrants? Secondly, should overseas labor migrants be replaced with Palestinian workers? Based on an attitudinal survey administered to a representative sample of the Israeli population, the findings indicate that support for a restrictive immigration policy is quite prevalent among Israelis. However, the survey reveals only moderate consent for replacing overseas labor migrants with Palestinian commuters. Attitudes toward a restrictive immigration policy are explained by the perceived threat posed by overseas labor migrants to social and economic interests. This threat is explained by the respondents’ socio-economic characteristics. Attitudes toward the replacement policy are partially explained by the sense of threat to the Jewish character of the state posed by overseas migrants, but are also attributed to several personal characteristics. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

U.S. Labor supply and demand in the long run

In this paper we model U.S. labor supply and demand over the next 25 years. Despite the anticipated aging of the population, moderate population growth will provide growing supplies of labor well into the 21st century. Improvements in labor quality due to greater education and experience will also continue for some time, but will eventually disappear. Productivity growth for the U.S. economy will be below long-term historical averages, but labor-using technical change will be a stimulus to the growth of labor demand. Year-to-year changes in economic activity will be primarily the consequence of capital accumulation. However, the driving forces of economic growth over the long term will be demography and technology.     

Ethno-religious identities and persisting penalties in the UK labor market

Most studies of minority group penalties in the UK labor market have focused on groups classified by their self-assessed ethnicity only, without taking into account major divisions within such groups, notably by religion. Using a large sample taken from the quarterly Labor Force Survey, this paper analyze levels of both unemployment and obtaining posts within the salariat for fourteen separate ethno-religious groups. Estimates of both gross and net penalties are derived, the latter taking the individuals’ human capital resources into account. They show that most non-White groups face an employment penalty, but Muslim groups – both men and women – experienced the greatest penalties. These penalties are exacerbated when searching for any job turns into searching for a managerial or a professional job suggesting that inequality is preserved through mechanisms of color and cultural racism which intensifies as minority workers seek jobs at the more lucrative end of the labor market – which, if persistent, could have long-term implications for the cohesion of the UK's multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society.     

Explaining a productive decade

This paper analyzes the sources of U.S. productivity growth in recent years using both aggregate and industry-level data. We confirm the central role for information technology (IT) in the productivity revival during 1995–2000 and show that IT played a significant, though smaller, role after 2000. Productivity growth after 2000 appears to have been boosted by industry restructuring and cost cutting in response to profit pressures, an unlikely source of future strength. In addition, the incorporation of intangible capital into the growth accounting framework takes some of the luster off the performance of labor productivity since 2000 and makes the gain during 1995–2000 look larger than in the official data. Finally, we examine the outlook for trend growth in labor productivity; our estimate, though subject to much uncertainty, is centered at a year, faster than the lackluster pace that prevailed before 1995 but somewhat slower than the 1995–2006 average.     

Did wages reflect growth in productivity?

The level of productivity doubled in the U.S. nonfarm business sector between 1970 and 2006. Wages, or more accurately total compensation per hour, increased at approximately the same annual rate during that period if nominal compensation is adjusted for inflation in the same way as the nominal output measure that is used to calculate productivity. Total employee compensation as a share of national income was 66% of national income in 1970 and 64% in 2006. This measure of the labor compensation share has been remarkably stable since the 1970s. It rose from an average of 62% in the decade of the 1960s to 66% in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s and then declined to 65% in the decade of the 1990s where it has again been from 2000 until the most recent quarter.     

求职过程的宏观-微观分析：多层次模型

本文针对中国大城市不断市场化过程中社会资本对求职过程的影响进行了研究。笔者从新制度主义的宏观与微观的联接理论出发,使用内生互动模型作为实证分析工具,揭示了市场制度的发育具有强化市场行动主体的偏好,即市场化程度、市场不确定性和市场规范性等三个市场化制度的重要特征的发育,均具有增加个体收入的效应,证明宏观制度的演进与诱导微观个体的制度偏好具有亲和性。本文同时证明了边燕杰提出的网络作用空间的“倒U模式”假设。     

Exchange rates and the Swiss economy

Safe haven capital inflows and other factors have caused the Swiss franc to appreciate and posed challenges for policymakers. We find that these exchange rate changes do not affect the volume of exports from Switzerland’s most advanced sectors, pharmaceuticals and watches, but do matter for exports of medium-high-technology products such as capital goods and machinery. We also report that appreciations do not affect stock prices and goods prices for the pharmaceutical and watch industries but cause both stock and goods prices to tumble for the capital goods and machinery sectors. We draw many policy lessons from these findings for Switzerland and for the rest of the world.     

The decomposition of regional wage differentials in Korea

This research note explains the wage differentials between the capital region and the non-capital region in Korea. It analyzes what proportions of the wage differential are due to differences in productivity-related labor characteristics and due to differences in how markets value the endowments of their workers. In a decomposition analysis, we find that approximately 26.9% of the wage differential is due to differences in productivity-related labor characteristics in the capital region. With respect to the endowments of the wage-determining characteristics, a substantial portion of the overall wage advantage of workers in the capital region can be explained by the higher average level of education. It is also found that the more detailed the occupational breakdown, the more of the wage differential that can be explained. These results suggest that the use of more detailed occupation classifications alleviates aggregation bias that may be a significant factor in coarser classification schemes.     

The Collective Transformation of Labor Relations and Improvement of the Government’s Labor Policy

China is currently undergoing a transition from individual to collective labor relations. The enactment of the Labor Contract Law marks the initial completion of adjustments to individual labor relations in terms of legal construction, as well as the starting point for the adjustment of collective labor relations. The construction and regulation of individual labor relations is not sufficient to resolve the conflict between labor and capital or to maintain industrial peace. In the shift toward collective labor relations there are two complementary forces and paths: the government-led top-down construction process, and the workers’ spontaneous bottom-up mobilization. The shift from disputes over rights to disputes over interests is an important characteristic of the transition toward collective labor relations. Chinese labor policy urgently needs to be reconstructed and refined. Its content should include the guiding role of labor relations theory and choice of adjustment models, sound collective labor law, recognition of the collective rights of workers, handling of the relationship of labor’s two forces, etc.     

Saving public pensions: Labor migration effects on pension systems in European countries

European countries have experienced population aging and consequent pressure on public pensions. Some European countries, therefore, have welcomed migrants, expecting that the inflow of people will ease the demographic and fiscal problems. It is important to ask if this policy approach has had the intended effects. This paper examines the effects of labor migration on public pension systems. Using error correction models (ECMs) with cross-country time-series data on European countries from 1981 to 2009, this analysis demonstrates that labor migration has deterred the reduction of public pension benefit levels and government expenditure on pension as well as the expansion of private pensions. This implies that labor migration eases the pressure on public pension systems. Migration contributory effects have been larger in countries with Bismarckian pension systems because those countries have experienced greater pressure on public pension systems than other countries.     

A model of the inflationary process in six major O.E.C.D. economies: Empirical results and policy implications

In contrast to most recent empirical work on inflation which has concentrated on the size and stability of coefficients in the wage equation, this paper provides a reexamination of the price equation. Evidence is presented on the structural determinants of inflation in six large industrial nations. It is demonstrated that price equations which include capital costs and excess demand among the regressors perform exceedingly well according to the usual statistical criteria. The results of this study indicate that the inflationary process possesses a high degree of uniformity among the larger industrial countries. This pertains not only with respect to the specific independent variables in price equations, but also with respect to the high degree of uniformity of the estimated coefficients. Additionally, the findings indicate that lower productivity growth and higher capital costs have contributed significantly to the inflationary process since 1974. Furthermore, since higher capital costs are one consequence of tighter monetary policies, the adoption of such policies in response to the two oil price shocks of the 1970s may have offset their intended deflationary effects on prices through the linkage of wage costs and aggregate demand.     

Tunisia after the 2011’s revolution: Economic deterioration should,and could have been avoided

The political instability and social unrest in Tunisia since 2011, generated a short-term foresight of the macroeconomic management which contributed to the deterioration of the country’s macroeconomic fundamentals. The objective of this paper is to provide the policy makers with quantitative arguments showing the importance to undertake the macroeconomic stabilization and the structural reforms that improve the total factor productivity, one of the main engines of a sustained economic growth. To that end, the paper employs a financial dynamic general equilibrium model calibrated using six flow-of-funds accounts representing the Tunisian economy in 2010. In a first stage, I reproduce the main macroeconomic variables observed for the Tunisian economy over 2011–2018. In a second stage, the model is used to compare the impacts of counterfactual policy scenarios on the Tunisian macroeconomic performance. The results show that the economy could perform much better, in relation to a battery of macroeconomic indicators (economic growth, unemployment, public external and domestic debts, current account, fiscal balance) under alternative economic policies. The most insightful results are obtained under the scenario of a total factor productivity’s growth progressing at its average level of 2001–2010. Indeed, this could generate an average yearly gain in terms of GDP growth of 3.45 percentage points and a reduction of the average unemployment rate by 7 percentage points over the same time horizon.     

人力资本、劳动力市场分割与收入分配

关于收入不平等的解释,学界有个人主义和结构主义两种理论取向。笔者整合两种理论解释,同时考虑人力资本和劳动力市场结构,以及两者之间的交互效应,提出一个影响收入分配的基本模型。用“中国综合社会调查”（CGSS2003）数据对这一模型的检验表明,人力资本是决定收入分配的主要因素,但市场部门对劳动力的分割所产生的影响也不可忽视;人力资本和市场部门之间存在交互作用,人力资本越多的劳动力越容易进入国有部门（垄断或非垄断）;同时,国有部门（垄断或非垄断）也能为内部劳动力提供更多提升人力资本的机会。     

Analysis of China's Unequal Income Distribution from the Perspective of Functional Income Distribution

中国收入分配的不平等在很大程度上表现为功能性收入分配的不平等,即随着经 济的发展,工资性收入占国民收入的比例越来越小,而现阶段中国二元经济结构下的 无限劳动力供给则是其主要原因。在一个具有凯恩斯主义特征的非均衡动态模型框架 下,我们的分析表明,劳动力的无限供给,不仅使工资无法对劳动力市场的供求状况 进行反应,而且使劳动生产率和物价变化对工资的影响也不敏感。这意味着,当存在 着劳动生产率的提高或由经济增长所带动的物价上涨时,工资的提高不够显著,从而 由经济增长或劳动生产率的提高所带来的利益大部分转化为利润而非工资。基于此, 要彻底扭转中国收入分配恶化趋势,根本途径仍然是保持经济的高速增长,加快工业 化和城市化进程,从而使农村剩余劳动力能够尽快被吸收。

关键词: 功能性收入?二元经济?劳动力供给

China's unequal income distribution is to a large extent expressed in unequal functional income distribution, that is, as China's economy develops, the share of wage income in national income falls. The unlimited supply of labor under China's current dual economic structure is the major reason for this. In a disequilibrium dynamic model framework with Keynesian features, empirical analysis shows that the unlimited supply of labor not only prevents wages from responding to supply and demand situation in the labor market, but also makes them insensitive to labor productivity and price changes. This suggests that when there is a rise in labor productivity or prices following economic growth, the rise in wages may not be sufficiently marked. The benefits derived from economic growth or labor productivity increases have been, to a very large extent, converted into profits and not wages. Therefore, if we are to reverse China's worsening income distribution, our fundamental path should remain the maintenance of high‐speed growth and the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization so that surplus rural labor can be absorbed as soon as possible.