Three Essays on Economic Structure and Resource Allocation

Three Essays on Economic Structure and Resource Allocation PDF Author: Chun Kei Tsang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
This thesis aims at studying the issues of economic structure and resource allocation in development. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to economic development and gives an overview of this thesis. Chapter 2 reviews some theories and models about economic structure and structural change and points out that resource allocation is a critical factor in changing the economic structure. Five characteristics of economic structure and structural change are summarized. Essay 1 in Chapter 3 investigates the relationship between competitiveness and economic growth. Adopting the Global Competitiveness Index to represent competitiveness, we empirically show that there is a two-way causal relationship between competitiveness and economic growth. We further identify that the relationship between competitiveness and economic growth change in different development stages. Specifically, better competitiveness can enhance economic growth but not vice versa in developing countries. We therefore relate such a difference to the ability to transform resources into competitiveness. This is fundamentally a question about resource allocation. Finally, we link structural change with economic growth and show that enhancing competitiveness is equivalent to improving the capacity to change the economic structure. Essay 2 in Chapter 4 studies the impacts of sub-optimal resource allocation on economic growth by applying a new model to the case of the effectiveness of official development assistance (ODA). This new model analyzes economic growth through structural change by the difference between the observed and optimal levels of competitiveness. Regarding the positive and negative impacts of foreign aid on the receiving country in the literature, we show that the net impact of ODA depends on the value of bias caused by inefficient allocation of resources and the adoption of a biased value system. As a result, both positive and negative views of ODA in the literature are somewhat correct. In principle, ODA does work in the sense of helping needy countries providing they can allocate such additional resources efficiently. The cruel truth is that most receivers of ODA are unable to transform these resources to productive uses and even lower their economic growth. The development aid country donors or global institutions may therefore have to review their existing policy for granting aid.Essay 3 in Chapter 5 introduces a new framework to study two important structural issues in China: regional fragmentation and ownership distortion. We extend the output-oriented structural efficiency measure to include subgroups to evaluate potential gains of improving resource allocation within and among subgroups. The new framework is then applied to China’s industrial sector. Applying our new method for policymaking, the empirical results advocate prioritizing ownership reform over regional reform in China. Specifically, by improving resource allocation among different ownerships, outputs of the whole industrial sector can be increased by 21% of the observed level. In contrast, the potential gains of reallocating resources between western and non-western regions are less than 1%. Such a conclusion cannot be drawn from other existing models of efficiency analysis. Finally, Chapter 6 concludes the whole thesis.

Three Essays on Economic Structure and Resource Allocation

Three Essays on Economic Structure and Resource Allocation PDF Author: Chun Kei Tsang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Get Book Here

Book Description
This thesis aims at studying the issues of economic structure and resource allocation in development. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to economic development and gives an overview of this thesis. Chapter 2 reviews some theories and models about economic structure and structural change and points out that resource allocation is a critical factor in changing the economic structure. Five characteristics of economic structure and structural change are summarized. Essay 1 in Chapter 3 investigates the relationship between competitiveness and economic growth. Adopting the Global Competitiveness Index to represent competitiveness, we empirically show that there is a two-way causal relationship between competitiveness and economic growth. We further identify that the relationship between competitiveness and economic growth change in different development stages. Specifically, better competitiveness can enhance economic growth but not vice versa in developing countries. We therefore relate such a difference to the ability to transform resources into competitiveness. This is fundamentally a question about resource allocation. Finally, we link structural change with economic growth and show that enhancing competitiveness is equivalent to improving the capacity to change the economic structure. Essay 2 in Chapter 4 studies the impacts of sub-optimal resource allocation on economic growth by applying a new model to the case of the effectiveness of official development assistance (ODA). This new model analyzes economic growth through structural change by the difference between the observed and optimal levels of competitiveness. Regarding the positive and negative impacts of foreign aid on the receiving country in the literature, we show that the net impact of ODA depends on the value of bias caused by inefficient allocation of resources and the adoption of a biased value system. As a result, both positive and negative views of ODA in the literature are somewhat correct. In principle, ODA does work in the sense of helping needy countries providing they can allocate such additional resources efficiently. The cruel truth is that most receivers of ODA are unable to transform these resources to productive uses and even lower their economic growth. The development aid country donors or global institutions may therefore have to review their existing policy for granting aid.Essay 3 in Chapter 5 introduces a new framework to study two important structural issues in China: regional fragmentation and ownership distortion. We extend the output-oriented structural efficiency measure to include subgroups to evaluate potential gains of improving resource allocation within and among subgroups. The new framework is then applied to China’s industrial sector. Applying our new method for policymaking, the empirical results advocate prioritizing ownership reform over regional reform in China. Specifically, by improving resource allocation among different ownerships, outputs of the whole industrial sector can be increased by 21% of the observed level. In contrast, the potential gains of reallocating resources between western and non-western regions are less than 1%. Such a conclusion cannot be drawn from other existing models of efficiency analysis. Finally, Chapter 6 concludes the whole thesis.

Three Essays on the State of Economic Science

Three Essays on the State of Economic Science PDF Author: Tjalling Charles Koopmans
Publisher: A. M. Kelley
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description


Three Essays on Social Structure and Its Implications

Three Essays on Social Structure and Its Implications PDF Author: Pauline Morault
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This Ph.D. thesis emphasizes the importance of social structure to understand some economic, social and political outcomes. The first chapter is a political economy piece exploring the impact of the social structure of the elite on resource allocation, scapegoating strategies and violence in developing countries. It extends the framework of Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) by distinguishing between a political elite and an economic elite composed of a rich ethnic minority. It then explores how the degree of social integration between the two elites impacts equilibria in this economy. The second chapter studies how familial decision-making impact marriage patterns in societies where arranged marriages are the dominant form of matchmaking. It introduces families into the Becker-Shapley-Shubik (1971,1973) matching model and defines a concept of familial stability. It then compares individual-stable to family-stable matchings. It shows that family-stable matchings depend on the familial structure. The third chapter analyzes the structure of the family network resulting from arranged marriages. When parents arrange the marriages of their children with spouses from different families, this creates marital connections between families. The study considers a matching model in which parents first allocate an investment to their children and then arrange their marriages. It then explores how social norms, sex ratio and revenue dispersion impact network connectivity.

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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Essays in the Economics of Uncertainty

Essays in the Economics of Uncertainty PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Laffont
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674265554
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
These three elegant essays develop principles central to the understanding of the diverse ways in which imperfect information affects the distribution of resources, incentives, and the evaluation of economic policy. The first concerns the special role that information plays in the allocation process when it is possible to improve accuracy through private investment. The common practice of hiring "experts" whose information is presumably much better than their clients' is analyzed. Issues of cooperative behavior when potential group members possess diverse pieces of information are addressed. Emphasis is placed on the adaptation of the "core" concept from game theory to the resource allocation model with differential information. The second essay deals with the extent to which agents can influence the random events they face. This is known as moral hazard, and in its presence there is a potential inefficiency in the economic system. Two special models are studied: the role of moral hazard in a monetary economy, and the role of an outside adjudicatory agency that has the power to enforce fines and compensation. The final essay discusses the problem of certainty equivalence in economic policy. Conditions under which a full stochastic optimization can be calculated by solving a related, much simpler "certainty equivalence" problem are developed. The reduction in the complexity of calculation involved is very great compared with the potential loss of efficiency.

Systems of Economic Relationships

Systems of Economic Relationships PDF Author: John Lepper
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780958357609
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
"Rhizoids or technical/social/economic networks"--Pref.

The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity

The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity PDF Author: National Bureau of Economic Research
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400879760
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 647

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Book Description
The papers here range from description and analysis of how our political economy allocates its inventive effort, to studies of the decision making process in specific industrial laboratories. Originally published in 1962. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment

Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment PDF Author: National Bureau of Economic Research
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780870142888
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
When a giant invades the peaceful kingdom of the Tatrajanni and takes the different-looking girl prisoner, it takes the combined efforts of the wise woman of the mountain, the Prince, and the girl herself to rid the kingdom of the intruder.

Three Essays on Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Indonesia

Three Essays on Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Indonesia PDF Author: Mary Isabel Ames
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description


Three Essays with Spatial Considerations in Natural Resource and Development Economics

Three Essays with Spatial Considerations in Natural Resource and Development Economics PDF Author: Jacob Hochard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781321892499
Category : Development economics
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Bioeconomic models routinely account for the joint-determinedness of ecological and economic systems. Ecological systems provide benefits, or ecosystem services, to humans and human actions influence the provisioning of those services. To analyze tradeoffs in management, these services are often combined in a welfare function. Simplifying assumptions, designed to preserve model tractability, are common. These assumptions, in some cases, limit the scope of the resulting policy recommendations. We show that analytical tractability can be preserved and policy recommendations improved when finer ecological detail is employed in the specification of ecosystem services. Using a game-theoretic approach, an application of this concept is made by modeling three foundations of the behavioral ecology of wolves: refuge-seeking behavior, optimal foraging group size and territoriality. These behavioral patterns allow us to predict the density of wolves within and across management jurisdictions, which enables us to specify visitor congestion effects on public land, frequency of wildlife viewing, harvest success rates, the number of recreation days within a harvest season and harvest season length. This approach makes a notable contribution by examining management tradeoffs not only between but also within competing consumptive and non-consumptive ecosystem services. Chapter 2: Market accessibility and economic growth: Insights from a new dimension of inequality We modify an endogenous growth model to allow for households' differential access to markets. Such local production spillovers highlight a new dimension of inequality arising through geographic remoteness and predicts divergent growth patterns among countries with poorly market-integrated households. The model is tested using an instrumental variables approach that takes advantage of the relationship between market accessibility and exogenous geographic features of the landscape as well as spatial data derived from a unique global dataset characterizing country-level market accessibility distributions. We find evidence that production spillovers diminish concavely across space before tapering off convexly in remote areas. This result suggests that the marginal household exhibiting production spillovers is located approximately five hours from the nearest market center. The policy implications are that governments could adopt pro-growth inequality-reducing policies using targeted infrastructural investments, relocation subsidies or income redistribution mechanisms. Based on our spillover threshold estimates, these policies would be access-equality enhancing for 5.1 billion people globally and access-equality reducing for 825 million people globally. We also present findings that growth divergence occurs among countries with geographically less pervasive markets. This outcome may explain why wealthier nations exhibit divergent growth paths relative to poorer nations. Chapter 3: Poverty and the spatial dependence of public infrastructure Despite mounting evidence that public infrastructure plays a critical role in poverty alleviation, this branch of empirical work remains focused on highly-localized household-level studies and remains disconnected from economy-wide studies of growth, poverty and distribution. Because public capital investments are often made by central governments, it is possible analyses quantifying local impacts of infrastructural projects are of insufficient scale to capture the consequences of inefficient public expenditures. We use time-varying and georeferenced poverty and public infrastructure data to determine the channels through which public infrastructure influences poverty dynamics. Results suggest that the direct poverty increasing effect of infrastructure-adjusted growth is approximately twice as large in magnitude as the direct poverty-decreasing effect of poverty-adjusted growth. We also find that infrastructure-adjusted growth increases poverty-adjusted growth. After accounting for this amplifying indirect effect of public infrastructure on poverty trends, the positive and negative effects of public infrastructure investment offset and poverty reduction is driven primarily by the poverty-adjusted growth rate. These results highlight that a successful poverty reduction policy will not only make investments in public transportation infrastructure but must also identify those populations in critical need. Our results are consistent with the notion that reckless investment in public capital could perpetuate instead of alleviate geographic poverty traps.