世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

Is public expenditure productive

Offering a unifying theoretical perspective not readily available in any other text, this innovative guide to econometrics uses simple geometrical arguments to develop students' intuitive understanding of basic and advanced topics, emphasizing throughout the practical applications of modern theory and nonlinear techniques of estimation. One theme of the text is the use of artificial regressions for estimation, reference, and specification testing of nonlinear models, including diagnostic tests for parameter constancy, serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, and other types of mis-specification. Explaining how estimates can be obtained and tests can be carried out, the authors go beyond a mere algebraic description to one that can be easily translated into the commands of a standard econometric software package. Covering an unprecedented range of problems with a consistent emphasis on those that arise in applied work, this accessible and coherent guide to the most vital topics in econometrics today is indispensable for advanced students of econometrics and students of statistics interested in regression and related topics. It will also suit practising econometricians who want to update their skills. Flexibly designed to accommodate a variety of course levels, it offers both complete coverage of the basic material and separate chapters on areas of specialized interest.

Estimation and Inference in Econometrics

The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

Uncertainty appears to jump up after major shocks like the Cuban Missile crisis, the assassination of JFK, the OPEC I oil-price shock and the 9/11 terrorist attack This paper offers a structural framework to analyze the impact of these uncertainty shocks I build a model with a time varying second moment, which is numerically solved and estimated using firm level data The parameterized model is then used to simulate a macro uncertainty shock, which produces a rapid drop and rebound in aggregate output and employment This occurs because higher uncertainty causes firms to temporarily pause their investment and hiring Productivity growth also falls because this pause in activity freezes reallocation across units In the medium term the increased volatility from the shock induces an overshoot in output, employment and productivity Thus, second moment shocks generate short sharp recessions and recoveries This simulated impact of an uncertainty shock is compared to VAR estimations on actual data, showing a good match in both magnitude and timing The paper also jointly estimates labor and capital convex and non-convex adjustment costs Ignoring capital adjustment costs is shown to lead to substantial bias while ignoring labor adjustment costs does not

The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks

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Productivity Dynamics in Manufacturing Plants

Published macroeconomic data traditionally exclude most intangible investment from measured GDP. This situation is beginning to change, but our estimates suggest that as much as $800 billion is still excluded from U.S. published data (as of 2003), and that this leads to the exclusion of more than $3 trillion of business intangible capital stock. To assess the importance of this omission, we add intangible capital to the standard sources-of-growth framework used by the BLS, and find that the inclusion of our list of intangible assets makes a significant difference in the observed patterns of U.S. economic growth. The rate of change of output per worker increases more rapidly when intangibles are counted as capital, and capital deepening becomes the unambiguously dominant source of growth in labor productivity. The role of multifactor productivity is correspondingly diminished, and labor's income share is found to have decreased significantly over the last 50 years.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1475-4991.2009.00343.x

Intangible capital and u.s. economic growth

Business outlays on intangible assets are usually expensed in economic and financial accounts Following Hulten (1979), this paper develops an intertemporal framework for measuring capital in which consumer utility maximization governs the expenditures that are current consumption versus those that are capital investment This framework suggests that any business outlay that is intended to increase future rather than current consumption should be treated as capital investment Applying this principle to newly developed estimates of business spending on intangibles, we find that, by about the mid-1990s, business investment in intangible capital was as large as business investment in traditional, tangible capital Relative to official measures, our framework portrays the US economy as having had higher gross private saving and, under plausible assumptions, fractionally higher average annual rates of change in real output and labor productivity from 1995 to 2002

/pdf/measuring-capital-and-technology-an-expanded-framework-4qwdrcawa1.pdf

Measuring Capital and Technology: An Expanded Framework

accumulation of capital in an earlier paper, and the adjustment is found nearly to double the importance of technical progress as a source of growth.3 The present paper studies the interaction of productivity change and intermediate input.4 The expansion in the production of intermediate goods occurring because of increased factor efficiency makes it important to distinguish between productivity change originating in a sector and the impact of productivity change on the sector. Productivity change in the first sense refers to the shift in the sectoral technology and is measured by the conventional productivity residual. Productivity change in the second sense measures the equilibrium response to the shifting sectoral technologies, and includes (a) the induced reallocation of factor input between sectors, and (b) the induced expansion in intermediate input, which serves to magnify the effect of technical change. In assessing the importance of productivity change as a source of growth, it is the second sense which is relevant, since it is the impact of productivity change which affects the evolution of the sector, and not the change in factor efficiency occurring within that sector. The distinction between the two aspects of productivity change is analogous to the distinction between nominal and effective tax incidence. An ad-valorem excise tax imposed at a given statutory rate may be regarded as shifting the commodity supply curve upward; the distributional impact of the tax depends on the equilibrium adjustment to this shift. The well-known Harberger (1962) model of tax incidence was, in fact, specifically intended to take these adjustments into account. In an essentially parallel vein, this paper develops the distinction between nominal and effective rates of technical change from the point of view of productivity analysis. Effective rates of productivity change are defined in this paper using the reduced form of an N-sector growth model, where the rate of change of total factor supply, and the rate of change of technological efficiency are assumed to be given exogenously. The growth rates of the endogenous variables-prices and quantities-are expressed as linear combinations 511

Growth Accounting with Intermediate Inputs

Economists have long recognized that total factor productivity is an important factor in the process of economic growth. However, just how important it is has been a matter of ongoing controversy. Part of this controversy is about methods and assumptions. Total factor productivity growth is estimated as a residual, using index number techniques. It is thus a measure of our ignorance,' with ample scope for measurement error. Another source of controversy arises from sins of omission, rather than commission. A New Economy critique of productivity points to unmeasured gains in product quality, while an environmental critique points to the unmeasured costs of growth. This essay is offered as an attempt to address these issues. Its first objective is to explain the origins of the growth accounting and productivity methods now under scrutiny. It is a biography of an idea, is intended to show what results can be expected from the productivity framework and what cannot. The ultimate objective is to demonstrate the considerable utility of the idea, as a counter-weight to the criticism, often erroneous, to which it has been subjected. Despite its flaws, the residual has provided a simple and internally consistent intellectual framework for organizing data on economic growth, and has provided the theory to guide a considerable body of economic measurement.

Charles R. Hulten

Papers

Productivity Dynamics in Manufacturing Plants

Intangible capital and u.s. economic growth

Measuring Capital and Technology: An Expanded Framework

Growth Accounting with Intermediate Inputs

Total Factor Productivity: A Short Biography