Railroad Impact in Backward Economies: Spain, 1850-1913

This article reassesses the economic impact of Spanish railroads in 1850-1913, which has been usually considered to be substantially higher than in the most developed countries on the basis of the social saving methodology. The application of growth accounting techniques shows, by contrast, that the direct contribution of railroads to economic growth was lower in Spain than in the UK, mainly due to the low importance that railroad transport had within Spanish GDP before 1913.

O Brasil pode repetir o milagre econômico?

This article analyze the necessary conditions for Brazilian income per capita to duplicate in a time span of fifteen years, as it happened in the 1970s. Growth accounting is used to identify the sources of growth of Asian countries (China, Hon Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) and Brazil during periods where income per capita has doubled in the past. The main restriction for the Brazilian economy to get back the growth performance of the 1970s is the low rate of investment. To increase this rate requires a substantial increase of the domestic savings rate.

Capital natural, capital humano y participación de los factores: una revisión de los métodos de medición del crecimiento económico

Este trabajo aporta tres elementos básicos para el análisis del crecimiento económico en Colombia: En primer lugar, para el cálculo de la participación de los factores en el producto, se separa el ingreso de capital físico del ingreso de capital natural y el ingreso del trabajo básico del ingreso de capital humano. Con esta metodología se comprueba que la participación de los factores reproducibles tiene una tendencia creciente como lo sugieren los modelos de innovaciones sesgadas. En segundo lugar, dada la no estacionariedad de la participación de los factores para poder hacer cálculos acerca de la productividad multifactorial se hace necesario encontrar la medida correcta de los factores. Se utiliza un método empírico para la identificación de estas medidas y se aplica a los datos colombianos. Por ´ultimo, utilizando los nuevos cálculos de participación de los factores, se desarrolla un ejercicio de contabilidad de crecimiento que permite identificar con mayor precisión el comportamiento de la productividad total de los factores.

If factor shares are not constant then we have a measurment problem. can we solve it?

Recent evidence show that factor shares, if properly measured, are far from constant. Moreover, the shares of natural resources and raw labor seem to be negatively correlated with income per capita while the share of human and physical capital is positively correlated with income per capita. Now, if factor shares are not constant then (i) growth accounting exercises rely on a false assumption and (ii) there is a measurement problem. The effect that change s in factor shares ha ve on output depend on the relative abundance of factors and, fo r this reason, it is necessary to have correct measures. We propose an empiri cal methodology to solve the measurement issue and estimate TFP growth.

A tractable means of correcting sector level TFP calculations in the face of biased technological change.

The measurement of the impact of technical change has received significant attention within the economics literature. One popular method of quantifying the impact of technical change is the use of growth accounting index numbers. However, in a recent article Nelson and Pack (1999) criticise the use of such index numbers in situations where technical change is likely to be biased in favour of one or other inputs. In particular they criticise the common approach of applying observed cost shares, as proxies for partial output elasticities, to weight the change in quantities which they claim is only valid under Hicks neutrality. Recent advances in the measurement of product and factor biases of technical change developed by Balcombe et al (2000) provide a relatively straight-forward means of correcting product and factor shares in the face of biased technical progress. This paper demonstrates the correction of both revenue and cost shares used in the construction of a TFP index for UK agriculture over the period 1953 to 2000 using both revenue and cost function share equations appended with stochastic latent variables to capture the bias effect. Technical progress is shown to be biased between both individual input and output groups. Output and input quantity aggregates are then constructed using both observed and corrected share weights and the resulting TFPs are compared. There does appear to be some significant bias in TFP if the effect of biased technical progress is not taken into account when constructing the weights

Sustainable miracles : protection and competition in the Brazilian oil industry

It is often suggested that competition improves productivity, however, the underlying support for this idea is surprisingly thin. This paper presents a case study examining the e ects of a change in the competitive environment on productivity at the Petrobras, Brazil's state-owned oil company. Petrobras had a legal monopoly on production, re ning, transportation and importation of oil in Brazil until it was removed in 1995. Even though Petrobras continues to have a de facto monopoly, the end of legal monopoly labor productivity growth rate more than doubled. A growth accounting of the industry shows that between 1977 and 1993 output growth rate (and productivity growth rate) is explained by the accumulation of capital, while Total Factor Productivity (TFP) decreased. Between 1994 and 2000 labor productivity growth rate is completely explained by the growth rate of TFP. The results suggest that the threat of competition alone is su cient to improve productivity. They also provide evidence that restricting competition help cause Brazil's depression of the 1980s.

The economic development of Latin America in the twentieth century

Includes bibliography

Long run economic development in Latin America in a comparative perspective: proximate and ultimate causes

Includes bibliography

Istmo Centroamericano y República Dominicana: análisis del desempeño de las productividades individuales y total de los factores

Incluye Bibliografía

Structural change in four Latin American countries: An international perspective

Incluye bibliografía.

Industrialization Policies of Korea and Taiwan and Their Effects on Manufacturing Productivity

In this paper the total factor productivity (TFP) of the manufacturing sectors in Taiwan and the Republic of Korean was measured and compared using the growth accounting method. Through descriptive analysis, inefficiency in the Korean manufacturing sectors was revealed, especially for the period prior to 1986. Also for the period posterior to 1986, it was found that TFP tended to contribute more to the value-added growth in both countries. An econometric analysis with industrialization-related variables revealed a contrast in the structure of TFP growth between the two countries. Import penetration, capital intensity, and growth of real output were estimated to exert a positive productivity impact in Taiwan, reflecting Taiwan's flexibility and superiority in factor utilization compared with Korea. It was estimated that the export ratio did not have any major productivity impact in both countries, in contrast with the results reported by the World Bank (The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Contabilidade do crescimento pelo lado da demanda agregada: uma proposta de cálculo das contribuições ao crescimento pela demanda agregada para o Brasil de, 2000 a 2009, utilizando matrizes insumo-produto

The demand side growth accounting studies the demand aggregate component contributions in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Traditionally, international and national organizations that uses the traditional method for calculating such contributions. However, this method does not take into account the effect the induction of imports by the various components of aggregate demand on the calculation of these. As an alternative to this method are presented others studies that consider this effect, as the alternative method proposed by Lara (2013), the attribution method, proposed by Kranendonk and Verbruggen (2005) and Hoekstra and van der Helm (2010), and the method the sraffian supermultiplier, by Freitas and Dweck (2013). Was made a summary of these methods, demonstrating the similarities and differences between them. Also, in the aim to contribute to the study of the subject was developed the “method of distribution of imports” that aims to distribute imports for the various components of aggregate demand, through the information set forth in the input-output matrices and tables of resources and uses. Were accounted the contributions to the growth of macroeconomic aggregates for Brazil from 2001 to 2009 using the method of distribution, and realized comparison with the traditional method, understanding the reasons for the differences in contributions. Later was done comparisons with all the methods presented in this work, between the calculated contributions to the growth of the components of aggregate demand and the domestic and external sectors. Was verified that the methods that exist in the literature was not enough to deal with this question, and given the alternatives for contributions to the growth presented throughout this work, it is believed that the method of distribution provides the best estimates for the account of contributions by aggregate demand sector. In particular, the main advantage of this method to the others is the breakdown of the contribution of imports, separated by aggregate demand component, which allows the analysis of contribution of each component to GDP growth. Thus, this type of analysis helps to study the pattern of growth of the Brazilian economy, not just the theoretical point of view, but also empirical and basis for the decision to economic policies

Accounting for Big City Growth in Low Paid Occupations: Immigration and/or Service Class Consumption

Growth of 'global cities' in the 1980s was supposed to have involved an occupational polarisation, including growth of low paid service jobs. Though held to be untrue for European cities, at the time, some such growth did emerge in London a decade later than first reported for New York. The question is whether there was simply a delay before London conformed to the global city model, or whether another distinct cause was at work in both cases. This paper proposes that the critical factor in both cases was actually an upsurge of immigration from poor countries providing an elastic supply of cheap labour. This hypothesis and its counterpart based on growth in elite jobs are tested econometrically for the British case with regional data spanning 1975-2008, finding some support for both effects, but with immigration from poor countries as the crucial influence in late 1990s London. Keywords: regional labour markets; wages; employment; international migration; consumer demand JEL Codes: J21, J23, F22, R12

Labor's shares - aggregate and industry: accounting for both in a model of unbalanced growth with induced innovation

The relative stability of aggregate labor's share constitutes one of the great macroeconomic ratios. However, relative stability at the aggregate level masks the unbalanced nature of industry labor's shares – the Kuznets stylized facts underlie those of Kaldor. We present a two-sector – one labor-only and the other using both capital and labor – model of unbalanced economic development with induced innovation that can rationalize these phenomena as well as several other empirical regularities of actual economies. Specifically, the model features (i) one sector ("goods" production) becoming increasingly capital-intensive over time; (ii) an increasing relative price and share in total output of the labor-only sector ("services"); and (iii) diverging sectoral labor's shares despite (iii) an aggregate labor's share that converges from above to a value between 0 and unity. Furthermore, the model (iv) supports either a neoclassical steadystate or long-run endogenous growth, giving it the potential to account for a wide range of real world development experiences.

The television business: accounting problems of a growth industry.

Mode of access: Internet.