Essays on Structural Transformation, Trade, and Economic Growth

Essays on Structural Transformation, Trade, and Economic Growth PDF Author: Zongye Huang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"This thesis intends to address questions that are related to structural transformation, trade, and economic growth. The following three essays sequentially investigate three interesting topics that involve these themes. The first essay investigates the structural transformation in the United States from 1950 to 2005. In particular, we emphasize the role of trade in this process. We develop and calibrate a three-sector model to evaluate the contributions of various factors. It shows that, in addition to traditional explanations, such as non-homothetic preference and sector-biased productivity progress, international trade is another major source of structural change and is able to explain about 35.5 percent of the overall labor share decrease in American manufacturing. A further decomposition exercise estimates that inter-sector trade makes a moderate contribution, while trade imbalances dominate the trade channel and account for the recent contraction of employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector. This result supports the argument that persistent trade deficits have a substantial impact on labor allocations.The second essay analyzes the connection between two key variables, the manufacturing employment share and the investment rate, during economic development. Empirical observations document that both of them exhibit a hump-shaped pattern as income increases. Following the recent research on agricultural technology adoption, I propose that the modernization of agriculture is the primary mechanism that forms these two hump-shaped patterns simultaneously, thus, unbalanced technology growth is unnecessary to derive such a hump-shaped pattern. This simple cause helps to explain the similarity of structural transformation processes across countries. The long-run equilibrium of our model is on a generalized balanced growth path as defined by Kongsamut, Rebelo, and Xie (2001). In the third essay, we explore the interaction between trade and growth. In particular, we assume that the information of advanced technology is embodied within high-quality capital goods, which are produced by developed economies. Thus, international technology diffusion goes through the channel of trading high-quality capital goods, which establishes a direct causal linkage from trade to growth. The capital import is subject to the balance of payments constraint and must be financed by exports. We develop a formal two-country model, characterize the steady states, and discuss their dynamic features. Our model could shed light on several stylized facts." --

Essays on Structural Transformation, Trade, and Economic Growth

Essays on Structural Transformation, Trade, and Economic Growth PDF Author: Zongye Huang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This thesis intends to address questions that are related to structural transformation, trade, and economic growth. The following three essays sequentially investigate three interesting topics that involve these themes. The first essay investigates the structural transformation in the United States from 1950 to 2005. In particular, we emphasize the role of trade in this process. We develop and calibrate a three-sector model to evaluate the contributions of various factors. It shows that, in addition to traditional explanations, such as non-homothetic preference and sector-biased productivity progress, international trade is another major source of structural change and is able to explain about 35.5 percent of the overall labor share decrease in American manufacturing. A further decomposition exercise estimates that inter-sector trade makes a moderate contribution, while trade imbalances dominate the trade channel and account for the recent contraction of employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector. This result supports the argument that persistent trade deficits have a substantial impact on labor allocations.The second essay analyzes the connection between two key variables, the manufacturing employment share and the investment rate, during economic development. Empirical observations document that both of them exhibit a hump-shaped pattern as income increases. Following the recent research on agricultural technology adoption, I propose that the modernization of agriculture is the primary mechanism that forms these two hump-shaped patterns simultaneously, thus, unbalanced technology growth is unnecessary to derive such a hump-shaped pattern. This simple cause helps to explain the similarity of structural transformation processes across countries. The long-run equilibrium of our model is on a generalized balanced growth path as defined by Kongsamut, Rebelo, and Xie (2001). In the third essay, we explore the interaction between trade and growth. In particular, we assume that the information of advanced technology is embodied within high-quality capital goods, which are produced by developed economies. Thus, international technology diffusion goes through the channel of trading high-quality capital goods, which establishes a direct causal linkage from trade to growth. The capital import is subject to the balance of payments constraint and must be financed by exports. We develop a formal two-country model, characterize the steady states, and discuss their dynamic features. Our model could shed light on several stylized facts." --

Essays on International Trade and Economic Development

Essays on International Trade and Economic Development PDF Author: Zhimin Li
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
This dissertation consists of three chapters regarding international trade and economic development. In the first two chapters I explore how China’s economic rise to the global stage affects resource allocations inside and outside the country, and in the third chapter I present a new method to infer risk sharing regimes pertinent to studying consumption behavior in developing countries. The first chapter studies how the "China shock"--the remarkable growth in China's productivity and trade activities since its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO)--affects China's labor market and real exchange rate dynamics. I apply a dynamic trade and spatial equilibrium model to jointly explain two distinctive features of China's economic growth: the structural transformation, as characterized by the reallocation of labor from agriculture to manufacturing and services, and the sluggish appreciation of the real exchange rate, a puzzle from the perspective of a standard international economics model. The model highlights the role of the subsistence sector in shaping the patterns of the structural transformation and real exchange rate dynamics. Using inter-regional trade and migration data, I calibrate the model to decompose the ``China shock" into productivity shocks and trade shocks and show that the two features above arise naturally from the interaction between the labor market and observed shocks to productivity and trade costs. I find that while productivity growth is the primary source of the structural transformation, the accession to the WTO explains about 35% of the rise in the employment share and 20% of the increase in the real wage in the manufacturing sector. Welfare gains from the "WTO entry" are 27% on average and would be larger if complemented by relaxing labor restrictions further. By accounting for trade costs, the subsistence sector, and labor market frictions, the model generates dynamics for China's real exchange rate consistent with the data. The second chapter studies the effects of real estate investments by foreign Chinese on local economies in the United States. This chapter is co-authored with Leslie S. Shen and Calving Zhang. We document an unprecedented surge in housing purchases by foreign Chinese in the US over the past decade and analyzes their effects on US local economies. Using transaction-level data on housing purchases, we find that the share of purchases by foreign Chinese in the California real estate market increased more than tenfold during the period of 2007-2013 relative to earlier years. In particular, these purchases have been concentrated in zip codes that are historically populated by ethnic Chinese, making up for more than 10\% of the total real estate transactions in these neighborhoods in 2013. We exploit the cross-sectional variation in the concentration of Chinese population settlement across zip codes during the pre-sample period to instrument for the volume of housing purchases by foreign Chinese. Our results show that housing purchases by foreign Chinese significantly increased local housing prices as well as local employment. Our evidence highlights the role of foreign investments in local employment, especially in times of economic downturns. The third chapter proposes a novel approach to test alternative theories of risk sharing--full insurance, self-insurance, and private information--in a unified framework. Given the prevalence of informal insurance in developing countries to share consumption risks, studying risk sharing regimes is important. A distinguishing feature of the framework presented in this chapter is that it accounts for aggregate shocks and does not require data on interest rates, an important advantage for studying rural economies. Applying the approach to a longitudinal dataset from Tanzania, I reject models of full insurance and private information and find evidence of self-insurance. An incorrect inference on the insurance regime could underestimate the welfare loss from risk by as much as ten times.

Structural Change and Economic Growth

Structural Change and Economic Growth PDF Author: Luigi L. Pasinetti
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521236072
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This book presents an original theoretical treatment of the problems of maintaining full employment in a multisector economic system

The Oxford Handbook of Structural Transformation

The Oxford Handbook of Structural Transformation PDF Author: Célestin Monga
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192512684
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Structural Transformation addresses the economics of structural transformation around the world. It deals with major themes, which include history and context, critical issues and concepts, methodological foundations, main theoretical approaches, policy issues, some illuminating country experiences of structural transformation, and important debates on the respective roles of the market and the state in that process. The historical record provides a challenge for economists to understand the success of the rising economic powers (some of them initially considered unlikely candidates for prosperity) and the stagnation or decline of others. Five major questions emerge: · Why has so much divergence occurred among nations of the world since the Industrial Revolution, and particularly during the 20th century? · Why has the pattern changed recently with the emergence of a few developing economies (e.g. the multi-polar world), and can it be sustained? · What are the key drivers, strategies, and policies, to foster structural transformation in various different country contexts and in a constantly evolving global economy? · How could low- and middle-income countries avoid development traps and learn from past experiences whilst exploiting the new opportunities offered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution? · What is the role of various development stakeholders and other important players in facilitating sustained economic convergence among nations? This book addresses these questions, bringing the rigor, usefulness, and multi-disciplinary scope of the Oxford Handbook series to a critical topic in economics. The Oxford Handbook of Structural Transformation is an essential reference work and a stimulus to new research and creativity across all branches of the social sciences.

Openness for Prosperity

Openness for Prosperity PDF Author: Herbert Giersch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262071482
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Demonstrates the essential connection between theoretical academic research and the creation of economic policy, reflecting his belief that the study of economics should lead to improvement of the social order and of the quality of human life. Herbert Giersch is one of Germany's most prominent economists and an outstanding contributor to the debate on European economic policy. Openness for Prosperity brings together his major essays in macroeconomic policy, written or published over the past two and a half decades. In these twenty nontechnical essays, Giersch clearly demonstrates the essential connection between theoretical academic research and the creation of economic policy, reflecting his belief that the study of economics should lead to improvement of the social order and of the quality of human life. Some of the policy positions that Giersch favors are free trade, limits to government, and openness of economies to future possibilities.The chapters are arranged in two parts with the first focusing on economic growth and structural change and the second on issues of monetary policy, inflation, and exchange rates. The essays are arranged chronologically according to the dates of publication or writing to suggest how topics and emphases have changed over time.The first part, reflecting Giersch's support of Schumpeter's views, includes essays on aspects of growth, protectionism in foreign trade, the role of entrepreneurship in the 1980s, prospects and problems for European economic integration in the 1990s, the lessons to be learned from West Germany's transition to a market economy, and the author's vision of the European and world economies at the end of this century. In the second part, essays address such issues as flexible exchange rates, indexation, IMF surveillance over exchange rates, neglected aspects of inflation, the effect of central bank independence on monetary policy, and the relationship between real exchange rates and comparative economic growth.

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia PDF Author: Richard A. Higgott
Publisher: London ; Boston : Routledge & Kegan Paul
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Essays on development theories and the economic policy of South East Asia - considers the evolution of regional level politics, government, economic relations, economic and social development and underdevelopment; criticizes the approaches of orientalist history, behaviourist political science (behavioural sciences) and development economics in South East Asian studies; refers to the present International Division of Labour; presents case studies of political development and economic development in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Trends of Economic Development in East Asia

Trends of Economic Development in East Asia PDF Author: Wolfgang Klenner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642739075
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
The economic success achieved in the last decade in East Asia has brought about a fundamental reorientation in the Western view of the region. In order to contribute to a better understanding of present events and future developments in the area, leading East Asia economists and men of experience in Asian business from Asia, America, and East and West Europe have written papers on their research or business fields for this volume. The individual articles deal with problems common to the East Asian region and the Pacific area as well as with specific economic problems of Japan, China and South Korea. The volume is divided into four parts: East Asia and the Pacific Basin includes articles on supra-national issues, for example on the international economic relations of Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea. Japan includes articles on Japanese industrial and business structure, technological policy, exports and other issues. China includes articles on structural change, economic reforms, fiscal policy, agriculture and other issues. Korea includes articles on economic and industrial policy, restructuring, protectionism and other issues. The occasion of the publication of this volume is the 70th birthday of Willy Kraus, who for many years has been actively concerned with the questions of development in the East Asian region.

Essays in Development Economics

Essays in Development Economics PDF Author: Tongtong Hao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Since the beginning of its economic reform in 1978, China's extraordinary economic growth has been accompanied by increased migration and rapid structural transformation - the reallocation of economic activity from agriculture to nonagriculture. This significant labor reallocation and migration stemmed from a series of institutional reforms and policies that significantly reduced labor market barriers. My thesis studies the impact of changes in labor market barriers during China's reform era. Chapter 1 constructs measures of sectoral reallocation and geographical relocation of labor at the provincial level for 1978-2015 resulting from a series of institutional reforms and policies that lowered labor market barriers. I find that the structural transformation process was uneven across provinces. Agriculture-to-nonagriculture worker reallocation began earlier and on a larger scale for coastal provinces. Since 1990, workers moving from inland agriculture to coastal nonagriculture became an important source of nonagricultural labor growth. Chapter 2 quantifies changes in barriers regarding sectoral reallocation and regional migration and studies their impact on China's economic growth over 1978-2015. I build a two-sector two-region general equilibrium model focusing on labor market barriers both between agricultural and nonagricultural sectors and across coastal and inland regions. I find that the 1982-2015 decline in labor market barriers contributed to an increase in output of 26.5% in 2015. Despite this, there remain considerable gains for future improvement. In particular, eliminating barriers from inland agriculture to coastal nonagriculture in 2015 could further increase output by 12%. Chapter 3 presents the joint work with Ruiqi Sun, Trevor Tombe, and Xiaodong Zhu. Expanding on Chapter 2, we explore the effect of changes in capital market and trade frictions in addition to labor market barriers on resource allocation. Employing a rich spatial general equilibrium model, we quantify the size and impact of migration barrier changes, capital barrier changes, and trade cost changes, to growth, regional income convergence, and structural change in China over 2000-2015. While each contributed meaningfully to growth, migration policy changes were central to China's structural change and regional income convergence.

Economic Structure and Performance

Economic Structure and Performance PDF Author: Moises Syrquin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description


Exploring Economic Growth

Exploring Economic Growth PDF Author: Sakari Heikkinen
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
The quest for economic growth has been one of the great global issues since the Second World War. Indeed, economic growth has also been one of the great themes of the discipline of economic history. The processes and causes of "modern economic growth," using the title of Simon Kuznets' famous book, have puzzled economic historians for at least the last half a century--and they still do, as this collection of essays shows. Over the past 50 years, historical national accounting has become a major tool of economic historians for analyzing the process of economic growth overall. The construction and application of historical national accounts has been one of the most dynamic branches of economic history. This volume contains a series of articles by members of the international network that has, in the past quarter of a century, continued and elaborated upon the research program that emerged as a result of the ground breaking research by Clark. Kuznets, Solow, and Swan. In the 1980s the network became rather well organized--for example, as a result of the stimulating influence of Angus Maddison and his colleagues at Groningen University--which resulted in series of workshops and conferences, as well as sessions at several international economic history congresses (Milan, 1994; Madrid, 1998; Buenos Aires, 2002). The aim of this volume is to evaluate the current state of the field, present new findings and analytical tools, and to reevaluate the research agenda of the network.