capital utilization economies of scale and technical change in the growth of total factor productivity an explanation of south korean manufacturing growth abstract this paper presents a method of interpreting the growth of total factor productivity directly linking the productivity growth to key parameters of a specific cost function it shows that the productivity index can be decomposed into effects due to a technical change b non constant returns to scale and c change in capital utilization the decomposition framework was applied to data on south korean manufacturing during the 1961 1980 period in south korean manufacturing the total factor productivity was found to have grown at 3 per annum scale economies contributed about 38 of the growth of tfp the technical change 45 and the change in the capital utilization rate 17 the results of this study support of the view that for growing less developed economies the growth in capital utilization rate is a source of growth in total productivity that is too significant to be ignored

population increase economic growth educational inequality and income distribution some recent evidence abstract using a recent inter country sample impacts of population increase short run growth rate and educational level and inequality on income distribution are assessed as in almost all other studies high population increase is observed to be a disequalizer however unlike the position indicated in several earlier studies rapid short run economic growth seems to reduce income inequality while higher mean schooling level appears to be a mild equalizer contrary to the results reported by earlier researchers no adverse effect of educational inequality on income distribution is found

economic growth and productivity a case study of south korea the economic performance that south korea has achieved over the past quarter century is often likened to a miracle recently much interest has been expressed in the driving forces behind the korean economic transformation using the valueadded measure of output christiansen and cummings have shown that technology measured by tfp accounts for about 43 of korean economic growth between 1960 and 1973 this figure is considerably high compared with recent major studies on japanese and singaporean economic growth we found that the value added framework is not appropriate for the description of the structure of the korean economy and re examined the sources of korean economic growth using the gross output framework surprisingly it has been discovered that only 7 of real output growth in the manufacturing sector during the 1962 1981 period is attributable to technological progress these findings parallel those for the japanese and singapore economies

beyond implicit prices recovering theoretically consistent and transferable values for noise avoidance from a hedonic property price model using a two stage hedonic pricing methodology we estimate a system of structural demand equations for different sources of transport related noise in the first stage we identify market segments using model based clustering techniques and estimate separate hedonic price functions hpfs for each segment in so doing we show how a semiparametric spatial smoothing estimator outperforms other standard specifications of the hpf in the second stage we control for non linearity of the budget constraint and identify demand relationships using techniques that account for problems of endogeneity and censoring of the dependent variable our estimated demand functions provide welfare estimates for peace and quiet that we believe to be the first derived from property market data in a theoretically consistent manner

comparative productivity of korean manufacturing 1967 1987 this paper compares productivity levels in south korean manufacturing with those in the usa for 13 manufacturing branches the comparison is based on specific industry of origin purchasing power parities value added per hour worked in korean manufacturing rose from only 4 5 percent of the us level in 1967 to more than 18 percent in 1987 total factor productivity rose from only 9 percent in 1967 to 26 percent of the us level in 1987 at a more detailed level especially the leather metals and machinery industries have reached high productivity levels some of which approach levels in european manufacturing the considerable labour productivity gap between korea and the united states can partly be explained by capital intensity structural effects size effects and levels of education

the structure of production in south korea s manufacturing sector abstract this paper estimates a model of producer behavior for south korean manufacturing that simultaneously identifies substitution elasticities and scale economies a non homothetic translog function is employed which takes on various other functional forms i e cobb douglas homothetic homogeneous as special or limiting cases four significant conclusions are a there is potential scale economies in each subsector of south korean manufacturing b the substitutabilities between factor inputs are relatively low c factor demands are price elastic d the scale economies are correlated with the factor intensity

convergence scale and the relative productivity performance of canadian us manufacturing industries this research is a comparative investigation of productivity performance within the manufacturing sectors of canada and the united states labour and multifactor productivity levels and growth rates are measured and analysed for an exhaustive sample of two digit level manufacturing industries an aggregate analysis is conducted by grouping industries in accordance with their degree of capital intensity the findings generally suggest that productivity in canadian manufacturing industries initially converged upon but has more recently diverged from those level displayed by their us counterparts an empirical analysis focuses on the convergence hypothesis and scale effects in explaining differences in measured productivity growth rates

effort wages and the international division of labor this paper embeds variable effort into a traditional two sector heckscher ohlin model of international competition effort enters a production function as total factor productivity and on the assumption that effort does not affect capital depreciation the capital cost savings from high effort operations are passed on to workers the labor market thus offers a set of contracts with higher wages compensating for higher effort this has implications for growth openness minimum wages collective bargaining public support of education efficiency of state enterprises the distribution of wealth childbearing and much more

export performance and productivity growth the case of taiwan the hypothesis that rapid growth of exports accelerates economic growth has been widely discussed and tested the empirical evidence that supports the hypothesis includes studies by m michaely b balassa p heller and r porter w tyler g feder r kavoussi and r ram using macrodata and m nishimizu and s robinson using two digit industry level data feder found that exports contribute to economic growth because the export sector is not only more productive than the nonexport sector but also generates some external effects that enhance the productivity of the nonexport sector as exports expand both the resource reallocation effect and externality effect lead to an economy wide productivity increase nishimizu and robinson also found the existence of a significant correlation between productivity growth and export expansion on a theoretical level there are at least two interpretations of the correlation between productivity growth and export expansion one stresses scale economies the other stresses competitive forces the scale economies argument emphasizes the benefits that can be derived by means of expanding the scale of operations in the case of countries whose domestic markets are small in size exporting becomes an essential part of achieving scale economies j bhagwati considered scale economies to be a plausible explanation for the superiority of the export promotion trade strategy as opposed to the import substitution trade strategy but warned against the lack of convincing evidence 2 the study by j kwon on the korean manufacturing industry also found that scale economies are a main factor contributing to total fac

the cross sectional inter industry structure of capital utilization in a developing economy the case of s korean manufacturing t he literature on capital utilization has experienced a remarkable growth of late in particular implications of a model of optimal capital utilization put forth by kim and winston 1974 have been shown to be consistent with empirical findings 1 on inter country crosssectional sectoral rates of capital utilization kim 1969 mason and sakong 1971 and winston 1971b and 2 on intra country timetrend rates of capital utilization kim and kwon 1977 as a sequel to such recent developments this paper proposes to show an implication of the kim winston model in the context of an intra country cross sectional inter industry structure of capital utilization and then to test this implication against cross sectional data from s korean manufacturing industries

input measurement and productivity growth in japanese and u s manufacturing in their article in this review j r norsworthy and david h malmquist 1983 have presented interesting comparisons of productivity growth in the japanese and u s manufacturing sectors their paper starts with the discussion of whether the conventional value added or gnp measurement of output is an appropriate framework for productivity analysis some confusion frequently arises as to whether a production function should be structured on the basis of gross output or value added output separability is a pivotal concept in the analysis of production structures especially in relation to the existence of a real value added aggregate it is well known that there are two types of separability which pertain to the existence of a real value added function weak local separability and strong partial separability the practical advantage of distinguishing these two different forms of separability is that the double deflation method in conventional gnp accounting is justified only when strong partial separability holds using the approximate separability tests of michael denny and melvyn fuss 1977 norsworthy and malmquist have shown that a value added aggregate does not exist in either u s or japanese manufacturing and they conclude that the appropriate output measure for joint investigation of both countries for purposes of productivity analysis is gross output p 953 the purpose of this comment is to indicate some deficiencies in norsworthy and malmquist s analysis in particular it will be demonstrated that the conditions for weak local and strong partial separability in norsworthy and malmquist s paper are incorrectly formulated and as a consequence their findings may not be used as conclusive evidence that a gross output measure is an appropriate basis for the analysis of capital labor substitutability and productivity growth in japan and the united states

real product real factor input and productivity in the republic of korea 1960 1973 abstract estimates of real output real input and total factor productivity are constructed for south korea for the period 1960 1973 the average annual growth rates are 9 7 5 5 and 41 respectively higher than the major developed countries also capital deepening is observed to contribute substantially less to growth in korea than elsewhere

rapid economic growth with increasing returns to scale and little or no productivity growth total factor productivities for 28 korean manufacturing sectors were estimated jointly with markups scale economies and the capacity utilization rate using the short run generalized leontief cost function concavity conditions necessary for the cost function to be well behaved and consistent with a firm s optimizing behavior were imposed on the estimation by way of bayesian inference the study finds 1 the superiority of the short run equilibrium model over the long run model and of the short run generalized leontief cost function over the translog cost function 2 market imperfection 3 the existence of scale economies and 4 biases in the traditional tfp measures the study also suggests that a rapid growth of output is possible with negative tfp growth copyright 1995 by mit press

productivity and employment in a developing country some evidence from korea summary the vast majority of the sizable empirical literature which examines the relationship between productivity and employment examines data from developed countries in this paper we contribute to the limited empirical literature on the productivity employment relationship in developing countries by applying structural vector autoregression var models on korean data we find that productivity enhancing technology shocks reduce hours worked in the short run such evidence is qualitatively similar to findings from developed countries and more consistent with sticky price models than the real business cycle theory although productivity enhancing technology shocks are an important source of economic growth in korea they may have exerted a negative impact on employment

the distribution of wealth and welfare in the presence of incomplete annuity markets this paper examines the implications of the absence of complete annuity markets on the distribution of wealth and welfare of agents whose saving decisions are obtained under uncertainty regarding the length of their life the absence of annuities is shown to yield a unique nondegenerate intragenerational distribution of wealth which is fully characterized this characterization is then used to evaluate the pareto desirability of an annuity system alternative welfare criteria that can be used when the proposed change has differential impacts on the initial state of subsequent generations are considered

property prices and exposure to multiple noise sources hedonic regression with road and railway noise this study examines the effect of road and railway noise on property prices it uses the hedonic regression technique on a swedish data set that contains information about both road and railway noise for each property and finds that road noise has a larger negative impact on the property prices than railway noise this is in line with the evidence from the acoustical literature which has shown that individuals are more disturbed by road than railway noise but contradicts recent results from a hedonic study on data of the united kingdom

convergence of industry labor productivity among advanced economies 1963 1982 data are used for thirteen industrialized countries to investigate convergence of labor productivity levels in individual manufacturing industries over the 1963 82 period the authors find convergence in virtually every manufacturing industry among these countries the co efficient of variation of industry labor productivity declined in all but one of twenty eight industries however productivity convergenc e is stronger for all manufacturing than within individual industries especially heavy and high technology industries also variation in employment mix among countries plays little role in explaining cross country differences i n aggregate manufacturing productivity nor have changes in employment mixes been an important source of convergence copyright 1988 by mit press

long run determinant of korean economic growth empirical evidence from manufacturing this paper challenges the recent contrarian view that the phenomenal growth of east asian nics is fuelled mainly by the accumulation of production inputs not by tfp growth to appraise this view we investigated and re evaluated south korean manufacturing growth 1973 q1 1993 q4 using johansen s cointegrating analysis our results show that south korean manufacturing appears to have increasing returns to scale in production technology the learning by doing effect defined by lucas 1988 is empirically supported this effect appears to be observed as a long run determinant of south korean manufacturing growth consequently south korean manufacturing growth can be described by an endogenous economic growth model such as the lucas 1988 model contradicting the contrarian view

hedonic valuation of odor nuisance using field measurements a case study of an animal waste processing facility in flanders in this paper we estimate the external cost caused by odor from an animal waste processing facility in flanders using new odor measures based on field measurements we compare three different ways of incorporating odor nuisance indicators into the model distance to the odor source continuous odor measures and a dummy variable approach comparable to the standard procedure in hedonic price analysis of noise pollution we argue that the dummy variable approach is best suited to estimate the external costs and we test these specifications for a dataset of about 1400 observations of house sales transaction between 2004 and 2008 results show that houses subject to moderate and severe odor nuisance sell at a discount of about 5 and 12 respectively compared to houses without odor nuisance the overall capitalized external cost of the odor exposure for the area of the case study was estimated to range between 6 and 56 million euro with a central estimate of about 31 million euro this estimate proves to be very stable over different model specifications compared to 1991 the external cost has almost been cut by half as a result of odor emission reducing measures taken by the facility

the east asia challenge to neoclassical orthodoxy abstract this article reviews the east asian miracle economic growth and public policy which concludes that east asian economic success has little to do with government using criteria similar to that used in the world bank report this study shows that contrary to world bank contention industrial policies used in east asian economies have been effective non neoclassical tools for economic development with government complementing market factors by creating an environment conducive to economic growth given that japan and korea are the most representative examples of industrial policies and that the report seems to acknowledge the success of the japanese industrial policies the present study confines itself largely to a discussion of korean evidence

precautionary saving and accidental bequests this paper presents a simple general equilibrium model of precautionary saving and accidental bequests this model is used to analyze the implications of individual lifetime uncertainty for aggregate consumption and capital accumulation a precautionary demand for saving arises because an individual consumer does not know in advance the date at which he will die and he wants to avoid low levels of consumption in the event that he lives longer than expected an implication of this precautionary saving is that when death does occur the consumer is generally holding some wealth which is then passed on to his heirs in the form of an accidental bequest even if all consumers have the same ex ante mortality probabilities there will be some intracohort variation in the date of death consequently there will be a nondegenerate distribution of bequests left by consumers in a cohort this nondegenerate distribution of bequests left by one generation induces variation in the distributions of wealth consumption and bequests of subsequent generations the importance of bequests in aggregate saving has been established by laurence kotlikoff and lawrence summers 1981 who reported that 80 percent of u s household wealth is inherited wealth one interpretation of this finding is that the simple life cycle model without bequest motives is an inadequate description of saving behavior in the united states but the model i present demonstrates that accidental bequests by selfish consumers can account for a potentially sizeable fraction of aggregate wealth although some part of bequests especially by the wealthy undoubtedly results from an explicit bequest motive accidental bequests also play a role in the intergenerational transfer of wealth as well as in the intragenerational variation in wealth in order to focus on the role of accidental bequests i purposely exclude a bequest motive from the specification of the utility function the effects of lifetime uncertainty on individual consumption behavior were first examined formally in a seminal paper by menachem yaari 1965 yaari s model provided the basic framework for virtually all subsequent work on uncertain lifetimes including well known papers by nils hakansson 1969 stanley fischer 1973 robert barro and james friedman 1977 david levhari and leonard mirman 1977 and kotlikoff and avia spivak 1981 however all of these papers focused on the consumption decision of an individual and ignored the effect of accidental bequests on the behavior of the recipients of these accidental bequests 2 as will be shown at various points in this paper changes in the economic environment can have effects on aggregate behavior which differ sharply from the effects on individual behavior because of the endogenous adjustment of bequests the effects of department of economics harvard university cambridge ma 02138 this paper is a revised version of bequests and social security with uncertain lifetimes nber working paper no 1372 june 1984 i thank olivier blanchard john burbidge christopher cavanagh robert clower stanley fischer benjamin friedman elhanan helpman mervyn king nobuhiro kiyotaki laurence kotlikoff robert mcdonald james pesando julio rotemberg lawrence summers lars svensson mark watson and jeffrey wolcowitz for valuable conversations and correspondence i also thank the participants in seminars at boston university columbia university cornell university federal reserve board harvard university university of iowa mit university of minnesota university of montreal national bureau of economic research north carolina state university the wharton school and yale university and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments i also thank the national science foundation for financial support 1 in the presence of perfect annuity and life insurance markets there may or may not be bequests depending on the presence or absence of a bequest motive but there would be no accidental bequests 2 kotlikoff and spivak focus on the role of the family in providing an incomplete annuities market but stop short of a full scale overlapping generations model in which the distribution of bequests is determined endogenously

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

an existence theorem on the stationary state of income distribution and population growth through a utility maximizing process individuals derive their optimal fertility and bequest decisions both as functions of their initial socioeconomic backgrounds the combination of these two decisions form a multi type galton watson process under weak assumptions it is proved that the economy will converge to a unique stationary state which implies both a constant population growth rate and a time invariant income distribution as such this paper extends the becker willis static micro level fertility demand model to a dynamic macro level population growth model alternatively our model can be viewed as a generalization of laitners stochastic income theory where no differential fertility is allowed excerpt

hedonic models and air pollution twenty five years and counting this paper reports a meta analysis of how effectively hedonic property models have detected the influence of air pollution on housing prices probit estimates are reported describing how data model specification and local property market conditions in cities represented in thirty seven studies influence the ability of hedonic models to uncover negative statistically significant relationships between housing prices and air pollution measures

convergence of south korean productivity on west german levels 1966 1978 abstract south korean labor productivity in manufacturing converged rapidly on the productivity level in west german manufacturing during the period 1966 1978 achieving two thirds of the german level by 1978 this convergence was more rapid at the industry level than for all manufacturing the capital labor ratio and total factor productivity in south korean manufacturing also converged on west german levels during this period with the former accounting for two thirds and the latter one third of the labor productivity convergence the source of labor productivity convergence however differed greatly across industries with capital deepening the dominant source in heavy industries and total factor productivity tfp convergence the main source in light industries