fiscal decentralisation the knowledge economy and school teachers wages in urban china abstractwe examine how fiscal decentralisation and progress towards the development of a knowledge intensive economy has affected teachers wages in china utilising panel data from 2001 to 2013 we find that fiscal decentralisation has a negative impact on teachers wages and that this effect is magnified through a deepening of the knowledge economy while the knowledge economy itself has no effect on teachers wages the findings suggest that incentives being offered to local administrators need to be revisited if china is convinced of the need to increase teacher quality in ways suited to the knowledge economy which it wishes to construct

the impact of regulation on technical change input based regulation restricts a firm s input choices to a subset of those that characterize the production technology the averch johnson hereafter a j 1962 hypothesis states that rate of return regulation affects a firm s input demands for producing its selected output level given that firms can select the level of innovations in inputs through research and development rate regulation can also impact a firm s selection of innovations among inputs regulation s influence on the choice of innovations also impacts the rate at which technical change occurs in an industry the a j hypothesis has been examined extensively in the literature the impact of regulation on technical change has received less attention in the literature and is the focus of this paper the subject matter is of some importance in that regulation via the a j hypothesis leads to higher production costs regulation s impact on a firm s selection of innovations can magnify or dampen the rate at which technical change occurs a magnification dampening of the rate of technical change leads to lower higher production costs in addition to regulation s impact on input demands regulation s impact on the rate of technical change can lead to small or large changes in prices for consumers regulators can use the information on regulation and technical change to evaluate the effectiveness of policies aimed at enhancing technical change by how much do the policies affect production costs and how much would consumer prices change due to the policies regulators can also use the information to predict the impact deregulation would have on consumer prices both regulators and consumers can attempt to determine the amount by which consumer prices would change under deregulation smith 1974 and okuguchi 1975 examined the impact of regulation on a firm s choice of innovations they showed theoretically that regulation can alter a firm s choice of innovations

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

dynamic efficiency estimation the shadow cost approach is developed in the context of the dynamic duality model of intertemporal decision making to formulate theoretical and econometric models of dynamic efficiency the dynamic efficiency model is applied to a panel of 72 u s major investor owned electric utilities using fossil fuel fired steam electric power generation over the period 1986 1999 the major results show that most electric utilities underutilized fuel relative to the aggregated labor and the maintenance input and overutilized capital in production states adopting a deregulation plan improve the performance of utilities in terms of the technical efficiency of variable inputs

urban biased policies and rising income inequality in china since the start of economic reforms in 1978 china has experienced the largest increase in income inequality of all countries for which comparable data are available according to the world bank 1997 china s gini coefficient increased from 28 2 in 1981 to 38 8 in 1995 based on official survey data another study that used internationally standard definitions for incomes estimated china s gini ratio at 38 2 in 1988 and 45 2 in 1995 a level that already surpassed many developing economies in asia azizur khan and carl riskin 1998 are these income inequality changes the consequence of institutional reforms that replaced egalitarian rewards with work incentives employment contracts and labor mobility this paper uses household survey data collected by china s state statistical bureau ssb to investigate the sources and causes of this rising inequality by analyzing gini ratios and generalized entropy measures i decompose the overall inequality into three sectoral components i inequality within rural areas ii inequality within urban areas and iii sectoral disparity the data indicate that increases in rural urban income differentials have been the driving factor behind the rising overall inequality in china i argue that urbanbiased policies and institutions including labor mobility restrictions welfare systems and financial policies of inflation subsidies and investment credits to the urban sector are responsible for the long term rural urban divide and the recent increases in disparity

a study of the impact of sectoral shifts on aggregate unemployment in canada the recent trend in macro economic literature has been to explain cycles in aggregate output and employment in terms of unexpected nominal shocks only in these models the natural rate of unemployment is constant this paper diverges from this approach and following a recent paper by david lilien 1982 considers the impact of real as well as nominal variables the main findings are 1 a significant part of the fluctuations in the canadian unemployment over the 1957 83 period was caused by real shocks to the economy and 2 most of the transmission of the business cycle from the united states to canada is effected through real variables as well une etude de limpact de deplacements sectoriels sur le niveau de ch6mage agrege au canada dans la litterature macroeconomique recente on a eu tendance a expliquer les cycles dans le niveau de la production et de l emploi a peu pres strictement en termes de chocs nominaux non anticipes dans ces modeles le taux de ch6mage naturel est constant ce memoire prend des distances par rapport a cette approche et suit pluto t la direction suggeree par un memoire recent de david lilien qui considere l impact des variables reelles tout autant que celui des variables nominales les resultats principaux sont 1 une portion significative des fluctuations dans le niveau du chomage canadien entre 1957 et 1983 a et causee par des chocs reels subis par l economie 2 le gros de h1 transmission du cycle economique des etats unis vers le canada se fait par le truchement des variables reelles

the impacts of the clean air act on production cost and the substitution between inputs in the electric utility industry abstract the paper examines how having to comply with phase 1 of title iv of the 1990 clean air act affected production cost and the substitution between fuel and non fuel labor capital inputs phase 1 required firms to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions enacting procedures to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions using lower sulfur content coal or other fuel sources could lead to higher cost and impact the substitution between fuel and non fuel inputs using a 1992 2000 panel of 34 u s electric utilities empirical results indicate that the procedures electric utilities enacted to comply with phase 1 contributed to small increases in both marginal cost and total cost firms having to comply with phase 1 were more willing than firms not subject to phase 1 to substitute from fuel to non fuel labor capital inputs following an increase in the price of fuel utilities subject to phase 1 that had a fuel clause were more willing than phase 1 firms without a fuel clause to substitute from non fuel inputs to fuel when the price of the non fuel input increased

parametric analysis of cost inefficiency and the decomposition of productivity growth for regulated firms this paper examines the contributions of technical change scale economies regulation and efficiency on productivity growth in the interstate natural gas pipeline industry following bauer 1990 productivity growth for firms subject to regulation is decomposed into technical change scale economies regulation and efficiency components the data sample consists of 20 pipeline companies and covers the period 1977 to 1987 results indicate that scale economies cost inefficiency and regulation on average accounted for 64 16 and 4 of productivity growth respectively cost efficiency declined over the sample period most of which can be attributed to technical inefficiency

sectoral shifts and cyclical unemployment a substantial fraction of cyclical unemployment is better characterized as fluctuations of the frictional or natural rate than as deviations from some relatively stable natural rate shifts of employment demand between sectors of the economy necessitate continuous labor reallocation since it takes time for workers to find new jobs some unemployment is unavoidable this paper presents evidence that most of the unemployment fluctuations of the seventies unlike those in the sixties were induced by unusual structural shifts within the u s economy simple time series models of layoffs and unemployment are constructed that include a measure of structural shifts within the labor market these models are estimated and a derived natural rate series is constructed

the persistence of unemployment how important were regional extended unemployment insurance benefits this paper assesses the contribution of regionally extended unemployment insurance benefits to the persistence of the canadian unemployment rate during the 1980s we use administrative data associated with the operation of the ui program to produce counts of the number of ui claimants by benefit phase the data suggest that the change in the number of unemployed individuals above the level prevailing in 1981 is much larger than the change in the number of regionally extended benefit recipients we also examine the time series properties of the number of ui claimants by benefit phase and find that the number of regionally extended recipients is not unusually persistent indeed this series displays less persistence than the number of claimants in other benefit phases we recognize that the increase in potential benefit duration caused by regionally extended benefits may lengthen the time claimants spend in the initial and labour force extended benefit phases but we conclude that this indirect channel would have to be particularly strong to prevent one from concluding that the number of regionally extended benefit recipients was of relatively little importance in explaining the increased level and persistence of the canadian unemployment rate during the 1980s la persistance du chomage est ce que les prestations d assurance chomage pendant de plus longues periodes dans certaines re gions ai haut taux de ch6mage sont un facteur important ce m6moire 6value l importance de la politique de p6riodes allong6es de prestations d assurance ch6mage pour tenir compte de la conjoncture r6gionale sur la persistance du taux de ch6mage canadien dans les ann6es 80 les auteurs utilisent les donn6es administratives du programme d assurance ch6mage pour d6velopper des mesures du nombre de b6neficiaires selon la phase de prestation il semble que l augmentation du nombre des ch6meurs au dessus du niveau de 1981 est beaucoup plus grande que 1 augmentation dans le nombre des r6cipiendaires des prestations dites regionales les auteurs examinent aussi les propri6tes de la s6rie chronologique des r6cipiendaires de prestations d assurance ch6mage an earlier version of this paper was presented to the 1993 meetings of the canadian economics association we would like to thank pierre fortin craig riddell paul storer and two anonymous referees for useful comments although this work was supported by the business and labour market analysis group of statistics canada and the sshrcc it remains the sole responsibility of the authors canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xxviii no 3 august aout 1995 printed in canada imprim6 au canada 0008 4085 95 555 67 1 50 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 207 46 13 176 on mon 20 jun 2016 05 30 32 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms 556 miles corak and stephen r g jones selon la phase de prestation et constatent que le nombre des recipiendaires de ces prestations r6gionales n est pas persistant en fait cette s6rie chronologique montre moins de persistance que le nombre des ben6ficiaires dans les autres phases on reconnait que l accroissement dans la duree potentielle des prestations attribuable a la politique regionalisee peut accroitre le temps que les beneficiaires passent dans la phase initiale et la phase ult6rieure arrim6e a la conjoncture r6gionale mais les auteurs concluent que cet effet indirect devrait 6tre particulierement fort pour qu on ne soit pas amen6 a conclure que le nombre des b6neficiaires qui reqoivent des prestations pendant une periode plus longue n a eu qu une importance relativement faible dans l explication du niveau plus eleve et de la persistance du taux de chomage canadien dans les annees 80

nonparametric measurement of productive efficiency in the presence of regulation abstract during the late 1970s and 1980s volatility in the demand for natural gas in the united states created havoc in the industry s transmission sector managers of firms were presented with the task of improving productive efficiency in an uncertain and regulated industry we measure the relative performance of 20 pipelines using data envelopment analysis dea to produce a regulation constrained minimum cost frontier with the results we construct a fisher productivity index fpi results show that despite productive efficiency decline for most years most firms experienced improvement in technical efficiency and technical progress in most years most of the productive efficiency decline was due to scale diseconomies

deriving natural rates of unemployment for sub national regions the case of canadian provinces in order to pursue informed stabilization policies it is vital for policy markers to have estimates of how much of the total unemployment rate can be classified as cyclical rather than natural unemployment this paper describes a method for generating regional natural rate estimates and applies this method to the case of canadian provinces results indicate that unemployment insurance generosity and relative minimum wages play an important role in determining natural unemployment rates in canadian provinces one of the enduring characteristics of the canadian labour market has been substantial and peresistent unemployment rate disparities across provinces the results of this study indicate that these disparities are primarily explained by differences in provincial values of structural variables such as unemployment generosity and by differences in provincial sensitivities to these structural variables a furher result is that variation in cyclical unemployment rates is substantially less in the traditio

unemployment in canada and the united states reduced form unemployment equations containing aggregate demand structural and frictional variables are estimated for canada and the united states post 1981 increases in unemployment rates are explained almost entirely by aggr egate demand variables although structural sectoral variables make i mportant contributions to changes in the gap between the two countrie s unemployment rates for both countries the results support the fo llowing monetarist propositions monetary variables are the prime determinants of the business cycle exogenous investment shocks are typically of minor importance and macro policy has tended to be dest abilizing

the short run relationship between sectoral shifts and u s labor market fluctuations monthly data for the aggregate u s economy are used to assess competing hypotheses concerning the relationship between sectoral employment shifts and fluctuations in the unemployment rate it is shown that sectoral shifts are caused by major work stoppages aggregate fluctuations unrelated to permanent sectoral shifts a reallocation timing effect and allocative shocks at the sectoral level larger employment shifts are associated with higher unemployment during slow growth periods and lower unemployment during above average growth periods models are presented which demonstrate that both aggregate and allocative shocks are causes of cyclical increases in unemployment

engineering and econometric interpretations of energy capital complementarity comment in a recent paper in this review ernst berndt and david wood provide a useful clarification of gross and net complementarity pointing out that energy and capital can be gross substitutes in a production subfunction and yet net complements in the aggregate production function using this theoretical proposition they attempt to reconcile the econometric findings of energy capital complementarity with other studies finding energy capital substitutability their reconciliation rests on the finding that those studies finding energy capital substitutability considered only capital k labor l and energy e by omitting materials m one obtains only a gross elasticity the net elasticity which allows for the additional substitution between the kle aggregate and m can indicate energy capital complementarity in fact klem studies generally find energy and capital complementarity the purpose of this comment is to question whether the net and the gross elasticity distinction provides such a reconciliation among the econometric results i agree that this explanation tends to reduce the disparity between the original berndt wood elasticity estimate and griffin gregory yet three independent sources of evidence suggest that the omission of m is not a sufficient explanation and probably not even a major explanation for the disparity of findings first the difference between the gross elasticity in a kle submodel and the net elasticity in a klem model depends critically on the elasticity of substitution between m and kle let us adopt the berndt wood notation and consider their mathematical example which demonstrates the possibility of gross capital energy substitutability as in the griffin gregory study with net capital energy complementarity

cost functions under production uncertainty we characterize the cost functions which would be consistent with expected utility maximization when production is uncertain it is not generally possible assuming risk aversion to use only expected output as the constraint in a cost minimization problem in some leading cases cost functions consistent with expected utility maximization are particularly useful because they are devoid of risk preferences

regulation efficiency and granger causality abstract this paper examines whether financial performance granger causes productive efficiency improvements in current period financial performance provide firms with funds to initiate changes that can enhance future period efficiency and profits returns to equity and the rate base are used as measures of financial performance data envelopment analysis is used to compute regulated farrell measures of cost technical and allocative efficiency the data sample is a panel of 20 us interstate natural gas pipeline companies from 1977 to 1987 results indicate that improvements in financial performance productive efficiency did not statistically contribute to enhancing productive efficiency financial performance

the higher educational transformation of china and its global implications higher educational transformation of china this paper discusses the major transformation of higher education that has been under way in china since 1999 and evaluates its potential global implications reflecting china s commitment to continued high growth this transformation focuses on major new resource commitments to tertiary education and significant changes in organisational form all of these changes have already had large impacts on china s higher educational system and are beginning to be felt by the global educational structure this focus on tertiary education differentiates the chinese case from other countries who earlier at similar stages of development instead stressed primary and secondary education

the beveridge curve and regional disparities in canada the beveridge curve establishes an inverse relationship between the unemployment rate and the vacancy rate it has been documented and discussed at length by blanchard and diamond 1989 for the united states the unemployment vacancy relationships of the canadian economy and its regions are considered this analysis reveals some important distinctions in the behaviour of the regional baveridge curves and some interesting similarities at the aggregate level the observations are not strikingly different from those of blanchard and diamond for the us economy

systematic effects of capital service price definition on perceptions of input substitution earlier attempts at reconciling disparate substitution elasticity estimates examined differences in separability hypotheses data bases and estimation techniques as well as methods employed to construct capital service prices although these studies showed that differences in elasticity estimates between two or three studies may be attributable to the aforementioned features of the econometric models they have been unable to demonstrate this link statistically and establish the existence of systematic relationships between features of the econometric models and the perception of production technologies generated by those models using sectoral data covering the entire production side of the u s economy we estimate 34 production models for alternative definitions of the capital service price we employ substitution elasticities calculated from these models as dependent variables in the statistical search for systematic relationships between features of the econometric models and perceptions of the sec

sectoral shifts and aggregate unemployment additional empirical evidence 1990 sectoral shifts and aggregate unemployment additional empirical evidence applied economics vol 22 no 3 pp 331 346

labor migration and returns to rural education in china this paper provides an answer to the following question why do empirical studies find low returns to schooling in rural china and yet the schooling rates are high i find that schooling played a significant role in raising the accessibility of urban formal employment to rural people in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the face of the government s restrictive policy on labor migration from rural to urban areas the large urban rural income difference provided a strong incentive for senior high school education the theory also explains the drop in the senior high school attendance in the mid 1980s

price inertia and policy ineffectiveness in the united states 1890 1980 this paper introduces a new approach to the empirical testing of the lucas sargent wallace lsw policy ineffectiveness proposition which compares the lsw hypothesis with an alternative that states that prices respond fully in the long run but only gradually in the short run to nominal aggregate demand disturbances the empirical equations estimated for a new set of quarterly data extending back to 1890 exhibit uniformly high responses of real output and low responses of price changes to anticipated changes in nominal gnp the paper compares and tests three alternative methods of introducing persistence effects into the lsw framework

sectoral shifts stock market dispersion and unemployment in canada considerable attention has been given in the last ten years to estimation of the importance of sectoral shifts in explaining short term fluctuations in unemployment recent studies have used us stock prices data to develop indexes of sectoral shocks less affected by cyclical influence than lilien s employment dispersion index two indexes of sectoral shifts for canada based on the sectoral dispersion of stock prices growth rates are calculated these indexes are then used in unemployment equations incorporating variables measuring aggregate demand shocks and structural changes in order to assess the importance of sectoral and cyclical shocks in the determination of the canadian unemployment rate the estimation leads to the conclusion that the major recessions of 1981 82 and 1990 91 have been caused by aggregate demand shocks however both types of shocks contributed to the 1974 75 recession while the mild recession of 1980 was accompanied by an important sectoral shock estimations also show that the mo

a numerical simulation analysis of hukou labour mobility restrictions in china abstract we use numerical simulation methods to analyze the hukou system of permanent registration in china which many believe has supported growing relative inequality over the last 20 years by restraining labour migration both between the countryside and urban areas and between regions and cities our aim is to inject economic modelling into the debate on sources of inequality in china which thus far has been largely statistical we first use a model with homogeneous labour in which wage inequality across various geographical divides in china is supported solely by quantity based migration restrictions urban rural areas rich poor regions eastern central and western non coastal zones eastern and central western development zones eastern central western zones more disaggregated 6 regional classifications and an all 31 provincial classification we calibrate this model to base case data and when we remove migration restrictions all wage and most income inequality disappears results from this model structure points to a significant role for hukou restrictions in supporting inequality in china we then present a further model extension in which urban house price rises retard rural urban migration the impacts of removing hukou restrictions on migration are smaller but are still significant finally we modify the model to capture labour productivity differences across regions calibrating the modified model to estimates of both national and regional gini coefficients removal of migration barriers is again inequality improving but less so