Age structure,education, and the transmission of technical change

This paper presents a model of optimal economic growth with exogenous technical change that is embodied in people. That is, newly invented techniques can be used only if the production unit engages labour that has been trained to produce according to this new technique. The model illustrates the negative impact of slower population growth on the rate of technology adaptation. When the growth rate of population is high, the introduction of technological innovations into the production process is primarily achieved through the constant influx of recently educated young people. When the relative share of this influx is reduced, increased education becomes necessary in order to prevent the gap between technology in theory and technology in practice from becoming too large.I would like to thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments     

The old age security hypothesis and optimal population growth

The old age security approach is used to study the relationship between the rate of growth of the population and capital accumulation, within a Samuelson-Diamond overlapping generations framework. It is shown that a decentralized economy will fail, in general, to achieve the Pareto optimal path. However, a pay-as-you-go social security scheme in which the old get transfers which are proportional to the number of their children may restore optimality. On the other hand, child support systems or subsidies to capital can guarantee the optimal capital: labor ratio, but not the optimal population growth rate, while a lump sum social security system can guarantee the optimal population growth rate, but not the optimal capital: labor ratio. Finally, in a monetary economy any policy aimed at correcting the interest rate will restore full optimality.An earlier version of this paper was written during a visit to the University of California, San Diego. The paper benefited from the comments of two referees.     

基于卢卡斯模型的人力资本外溢效应研究——对重庆的实证检验

人力资本作为经济内生增长的重要因素，一方面直接参与到经济生产过程。对经济增长有直接作用．另一方面，还通过影响其他生产要素的生产率，对经济增长有间接作用。本文基于卢卡斯的人力资本外溢效应模型．实证检验了1990—2011年重庆人力资本的外溢效应。研究结果显示．样本期间重庆人力资本外溢效应的产出弹性十分显著，但由于人力资本自身的增长过于缓慢，其对经济增长的实际推动作用偏小：重庆经济增长主要依靠物质资本的推动，经济增长表现出典型的粗放型特征。为此，论文从人力资本开发、教育投入和劳动市场开拓等方面．提出了加强人力资本投资和积累以促进经济增长的对策建议．     

Education funding and regional convergence

The aim of this paper is to discuss the process of regional convergence within the framework of an overlapping generations model in which the engine of growth is the accumulation of human capital. In particular, we consider different education funding systems and compare their performance in terms of growth rates and pace of convergence between two heterogeneous regions. The analysis suggests that the choice of a particular education system incorporates a possible trade-off between long run growth rate and short run convergence. In such choice, the initial capital stock and the extent of regional human capital discrepancy appear as central variables. Received: 27 January 1999/Accepted: 16 April 1999     

人口转变的储蓄效应和增长效应--论中国增长可持续性的人口因素

人口转变是挑战中国经济持续增长的一个重要因素.在这个过程中,个人的生命周期和代际更替之间的相互叠加,通过劳动供给、储蓄和科技进步等渠道对长期经济增长施加影响.本文分析表明,人口转变使得中国从20世纪60年代中期开始享受人口红利,并一直持续到2015年前后.为了迎接人口老龄化冲击,中国需要通过扩大就业、加快人力资本积累和建立适合于中国国情的可持续的养老保障模式三条途径来充分挖掘未来潜在的人口红利,推动中国经济持续增长.     

生育率最优路径、劳动力供给转型与经济增长

通过内生化劳动力和人力资本,以Q-Q理论为基础,根据生育率在劳动力供给和人力资本积累中的联动关系以及劳动力供给转型规律,利用动态最优控制原理,解释了殖民解放以来发展中国家先上升后下降的人口再生产过程及经济效应。结果表明:生育率的最优路径呈倒U型;整个路径存在两个鞍点均衡,只有当人力资本积累跨越某个门槛值时,第一个鞍点均衡才能过渡到另一个鞍点均衡;均衡的产出水平与劳动力折旧率成正比,与人力资本折旧率成反比。     

Mortality, fertility, education and capital accumulation in a simple OLG economy

We develop a simple OLG model to analytically show that aging leads to increased educational efforts through a general equilibrium effect. The mechanism is that scarcity of raw labor increases the return of human relative to physical capital. While a reduction in the birth rate is shown to unambiguously increase educational efforts, increases in the survival rate have ambiguous effects. Falling birth rates also increase capital per worker, but the effects of rising survival rates are again ambiguous. We conclude that our model is a useful laboratory to highlight potentially offsetting effects in models with endogenous education and overlapping generations.     

人口老龄化、人口增长与经济增长——来自中国省际面板数据的实证证据

利用一个包含人力资本的柯布-道格拉斯生产函数,从索洛增长理论入手,分析人口老龄化和人口增长率对经济增长的影响,理论模型的推理结果表明人口老龄化和人口增长对经济增长均产生不利影响。再根据理论模型的结果构造了人口老龄化和人口增长影响经济增长的实证模型,收集和使用中国1990～2008年的省级面板数据对理论模型的推理结果进行实证检验,证实了理论模型的推理结果。实证研究还表明:(1)初始的人均GDP对经济增长的影响为负,说明中国的区域经济发展出现了条件收敛的情形;(2)人力资本投资、储蓄率和劳动参与率对经济增长有着显著的正向促进作用。     

Time preference and capital mobility in an OLG model with land

This paper examines the pattern of capital mobility in a two-country overlapping generations world in which production uses three inputs: capital, labor and land. The steady-state welfare consequences of opening countries to financial capital or labor mobility are then compared. In particular, it is shown that capital mobility does not equalize standards of living across countries. To achieve this goal, one has to rely on labor mobility. Received: 8 January 1996 / Accepted: 6 June 1996     

西北地区人力资本在经济增长中作用的实证分析

本文利用总量生产函数模型,采用因素分解法分析了1990-2000年间西北五省区人力资本投入在经济增长中的贡献度,同时分析了物资资本、劳动力投入及技术进步因素的贡献作用。分析结果表明,物质资本是主要的经济增长贡献因素,人力资本和技术进步也在起到越来越大的作用。     

A model on the escape from the Malthusian trap

We consider a demoeconomic model where output is produced using physical capital, human capital and technology as inputs. Human capital depends on the number of people and the level of education in the economy. The dynamics of labour, physical capital, education and technology are endogenously determined such as to reflect the interdependence between economic and demographic factors. The longrun path of the economy and in particular the possibility to escape the Malthusian trap crucially depend on technological progress, which provides for economy wide increasing returns to scale. The build up of technology is positively related to the stock of human capital. Our model predicts that positive population growth is sufficient to escape the Malthusian trap. Received: 22 August 1996 / Accepted: 11 December 1997     

Fertility and the economy

I relate the demand for children to parental incomes and the cost of rearing children — especially to the value of the time spent on child care and to public policies that change the cost of children. This paper also links the demand for children to investments in their human capital and other dimensions of the so-called quality of children. Fertility is shown to depend too on child and adult mortality, uncertainty about the sex of children — if there is a preference for boys, girls, or for variety — uncertainty about how long it takes to produce a conception, and other variables.Since biological necessity dictates that succeeding generations overlap, it is not surprising that fertility in one generation influences the fertility of succeeding generations. The overlapping generations approach provides a useful framework for relating fertility choices to population growth and macroeconomic changes.The modern approach to fertility leads to very different interactions between population growth and economic growth than is implied either by Malthusian or the usual neo-classical growth models. In particular, it provides a framework for analyzing how societies escape a Malthusian-like stagnating equilibrium and embark on the journey toward becoming modern economies, where per capita incomes, human capital, and physical capital all continue to grow, fertility declines to rather low levels, and married women participate extensively in the labor force.This essay was prepared for the Nobel Jubilee Symposium, Lund, Sweden, December 5–7, 1991. I have had valuable comments from James Heckman, Robert Willis and my discussants at the symposium: Allesandro Cigno and Richard Easterlin, and useful assistance from Becky Kilburn. I am indebted to the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development award R37-HD22054 and National Science Foundation award SES-90-10748.     

中国人口迁移流动的人力资本替代效应及影响分析

人口迁移流动是改变人口数量和人力资本空间分布格局的重要因素,人口迁移流动造成的人口数量和人力资本空间分布变化是否一致及其对区域经济社会发展的影响是一个需要更加深入研究的问题。本文针对我国人口流动过程中形成的人口素质结构转变进行理论思考和实证研究,探讨其形成的经济原因和造成的经济影响。相关数据显示我国高等教育群体和中等教育及以下群体长期以来一直处于净流向相同的状态,而2013-2015年以来各省陆续出现净流向相反的现象,形成了人口数量和人口素质的替代效应。高等教育人才的净流入地区是经济发达省份、地理条件优越省份以及少数民族自治区,北京、天津、上海、浙江、江苏以及广东省等三大都市圈内的六个省市的高等教育净流入人才占跨省高等教育净流入总人口的绝大多数。人口替代对当地的经济影响表现为三点:第一,改变当地劳动力资源禀赋结构,使高等教育群体及中等教育群体人数的比较优势发生变化;第二,改变地区平均受教育年限,影响地区科技创新能力;第三,拉大地区劳动力收入差距。据此提出两点政策建议:首先,地方省市可以通过市场化的产业结构调整手段控制相应的流动人口群体规模,而不必依靠限制人口流动的政策以及硬性提出人口调控目标来管理流动人口规模。其次,地方政府要做好地区经济规划以及定位,充分认识现在的人口替代对于未来地区创新能力以及劳动力收入差距的影响。     

Population aging, health care, and growth: a comment on the effects of capital accumulation

In a recent paper, Hashimoto and Tabata (J Popul Econ 23:571–593, 2010) present a theoretical model in which the increase in the rate of dependence due to aging of the population leads to a reallocation of labor from non-health to health production and, as a consequence, to a decline in economic growth. We argue that these results rely heavily on assumptions of a “small economy” and perfect capital mobility, which tie down the amount of capital. In this paper, we proceed by analyzing the case of an economy in which the availability of capital is endogenously determined by domestic savings. We find that the new “capital accumulation effect” is opposite to the previous “dependency rate effect,” leaving the effect on economic growth ambiguous. In particular, if the former prevailed, population aging would foster economic growth, a result that finds support in recent empirical work.     

Population aging, health care, and growth

This paper constructs a small open two-sector (health care and non-health care) overlapping generations model and investigates how changes in the demand for health care induced by population aging influence the economy’s employment structure and per capita income growth rate. We show that population aging induces a shift in labor from the non-health care sector to the health care sector and lowers the per capita income growth rate. This paper also investigates public policy for child care and demonstrates the existence of an intergenerational conflict between current and future generations concerning public policy on child care.     

Social security,social welfare and the aging population

This study examines the effects of pay-as-you-go social security programs in aging economies when the middle-aged both educate their dependent children and subsidize the retirement of the old. Using an overlapping generations framework in which agents are three-period lived but timing of death in the third period is uncertain, we analyze the effects of social security tax schemes, under various demographic assumptions, on capital accumulation, education expenditures, social welfare, and economic growth. We find that in many cases social security crowds out education, and reduces economic growth and social welfare. Received: 29 April 1998/Accepted: 3 March 1999     

中国人口转变、人口红利与经济增长的实证

我国人口年龄结构的变动使得劳动负担逐渐下降,这对于储蓄水平的上升和劳动力投入效率的提高具有显著的促进作用;我国劳动负担比与经济增长呈现出明显的负相关,劳动负担比每下降1个百分点,经济增长将提高1.06个百分点,在过去的30年里劳动负担降低累计带来的经济增长占总增长的27.23%。通过计量检验证明人口年龄结构变动所产生的促进经济增长的人口红利是存在的。由此我们推断,由于未来的人口年龄结构变动趋向人口老龄化,劳动负担逐步上升,这将会对未来的经济增长造成制约。利用未来10～20年时间较轻的劳动负担的机遇期,我们应当建立良好的教育、人力资本投资、社会保障等方面的制度以及制定积极的人口政策,调整当前生育政策、适时执行宏观经济政策(劳动就业政策)来应对已发生的、正在进行的人口变动,使我国的经济继续保持强有力的增长态势。     

Endogenous fertility and human capital in a Schumpeterian growth model

This study develops a scale-invariant Schumpeterian growth model with endogenous fertility and human capital accumulation. The model features two engines of long-run economic growth: R&D-based innovation and human capital accumulation. One novelty of this study is endogenous fertility, which negatively affects the growth rate of human capital. Given this growth-theoretic framework, we characterize the dynamics of the model and derive comparative statics of the equilibrium growth rates with respect to structural parameters. As for policy implications, we analyze how patent policy affects economic growth through technological progress, human capital accumulation, and endogenous fertility. In summary, we find that strengthening patent protection has (a) a positive effect on technological progress, (b) a negative effect on human capital accumulation through a higher rate of fertility, and (c) an ambiguous overall effect on economic growth.     

人力资本、人口变动与经济增长

本文在Lucas模型基础上,构建了一个人力资本、人口变动和经济增长模型,并分别利用1997～2004年全国30个省区市以及东部12个省、中部9个省、西部9个省的面板数据,使用固定效应模型对理论模型的预期结果进行了实证检验,发现人力资本、贸易开放度对经济增长具有显著正效应,而人口增长率、FD I与经济增长的关系则具有不确定性。这些结果可在一定程度上解释我国区域经济发展中存在的差距。特别值得指出的是,回归结果并不支持在东部发达地区率先尝试放松生育控制政策的观点。     

Education and income inequality: The role of a social protection system

In this paper we aim to understand the role a welfare state can play in stimulating risky but profitable activities like investment in education, and in reducing income inequality. We analyze how unemployment benefits may affect investment in education when the latter is characterized by uncertain returns. This is done in an overlapping generations model in which endogenous growth is introduced through human capital accumulation. We develop a numerical example of the model in order to reproduce some key differences between the European versus the North American economy; differences that, according to this model, result from the different degree of social protection characterizing both economies. Received: 02 June 1999/Accepted: 22 February 2000