scholarly journals Output Growth Decomposition in the Presence of Input Quality Effects: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-409
Author(s):  
Yasmina Rim Limam ◽  
Giampaolo Garzarelli ◽  
Stephen M. Miller

Abstract How do physical capital accumulation and total factor productivity (TFP) individually add to economic growth? We approach this question from the perspective of the quality of physical capital and labor, namely the age of physical capital and human capital. We build a unique dataset by explicitly calculating the age of physical capital for each country and each year of our time frame and estimate a stochastic frontier production function incorporating input quality in five regions of countries (Africa, East Asia, Latin America, South Asia and West). Physical capital accumulation generally proves much more important than either the improved quality of factors or TFP growth in explaining output growth. The age of capital decreases growth in all regions except in Africa, while human capital increases growth in all regions except in East Asia.

2005 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Szalavetz

This paper discusses the relation between the quality and quantity indicators of physical capital and modernisation. While international academic literature emphasises the role of intangible factors enabling technology generation and absorption rather than that of physical capital accumulation, this paper argues that the quantity and quality of physical capital are important modernisation factors, particularly in the case of small, undercapitalised countries that recently integrated into the world economy. The paper shows that in Hungary, as opposed to developed countries, the technological upgrading of capital assets was not necessarily accompanied by the upgrading of human capital i.e. the thesis of capital skill complementarity did not apply to the first decade of transformation and capital accumulation in Hungary. Finally, the paper shows that there are large differences between the average technological levels of individual industries. The dualism of the Hungarian economy, which is also manifest in terms of differences in the size of individual industries' technological gaps, is a disadvantage from the point of view of competitiveness. The increasing differences in the size of the technological gaps can be explained not only with industry-specific factors, but also with the weakness of technology and regional development policies, as well as with institutional deficiencies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 501-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina Reis

Abstract In a Ramsey model of optimal taxation, if human capital investment can be observed separately from consumption, it is optimal not to distort human or physical capital accumulation in the long run, and only labour income taxes should be used. However, in reality the government can’t always distinguish between investment in human capital and pure consumption, so a tax on labour or consumption will necessarily tax human capital. We find that when investment in human capital is unobservable, the optimal policy is to tax human capital at a positive rate, even in the long run. Whether physical capital should be taxed or not depends on its degree of complementarity with human capital versus labour.


2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Földvári ◽  
Bas van Leeuwen ◽  
Dmitry Didenko

According to the consensus view, it was primarily physical capital accumulation that drove economic growth during the early years of state socialism. Growth models incorporating both human and physical capital accumulation led to the conclusion that a high physical/human capital ratio can cause a lower economic growth in the long run, hence offering an explanation for the failure of socialist economies. In this paper, we show theoretically and empirically that according to the logic of the socialist planner, it was optimal to achieve a higher physical to human capital ratio in socialist countries than in the West. Using a VAR analysis, we find empirical confirmation that within the Material Product System of national accounting, the relative dominance of investment in physical capital accumulation relative to human capital was indeed more efficient than under the system of national accounts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Hassan O. Ozekhome

Accumulation of human capital is critical to sustained economic growth in the long run, since it facilitates the efficient absorption of new capital developments, improves the speed of adaptation of entrepreneurs and generates innovation necessary for sustained economic growth. It is against this premise this study investigate the human-capital accumulation growth-nexus in Nigeria. Employing a dynamic approach, involving test for unit roots, and cointegration, and finally, the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation techniques on annual time series data, covering the period 1981 to 2016, sourced from the World Bank Development Indicators (WDI) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Statistical Bulletin, the empirical findings reveal that human and physical capital accumulation significantly induce rapid and sustained economic growth in the long-run. The other variables- infrastructural development (measured by ICT infrastructure) and industrial output (a measure of industrialization) have positive but weak impacts on economic growth, on account of the weak infrastructural development, and low level of industrialization in Nigeria. Inflation rate (a measure of macroeconomic policy environment) on the other hand, is found to have a militating effect on economic growth. We recommend amongst others; sustained investments in human and physical capital accumulation, stable and coherent macroeconomic policies, particularly with respect to taming of domestic inflationary pressures, supportive institutional structures and aggressive industrialization-enhancing policies, in order to enhance sustained economic growth in Nigeria.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-336
Author(s):  
Gilberto Tadeu Lima ◽  
Laura Carvalho ◽  
Gustavo Pereira Serra

This paper incorporates human capital accumulation through provision of universal public education by a balanced-budget government to a demand-driven analytical framework of functional distribution and growth of income. Human capital accumulation positively impacts on workers’ productivity in production and their bargaining power in wage negotiations. In the long-run equilibrium, a rise in the tax rate (which also denotes the share of output spent in human capital formation) lowers the pre- and after-tax wage share and physical capital utilization, and thus raises (lowers) the output growth rate when the latter is profit-led (wage-led). The impact of a higher tax rate on the employment rate (which also measures human capital utilization) in the long-run equilibrium is negative (ambiguous) when output growth is wage-led (profit-led). In any case, the supply of higher-skilled workers does not automatically create its own demand.


Author(s):  
Oksana Zakharova

The article is devoted to the characteristics of trends in the accumulation of human capital in Ukraine over the period of independence. The purpose of the article is to study the key factors that caused the existing trends in the accumulation of human capital during the period of independence of Ukraine. The novelty of the study lies in the application of a systematic approach to establishing the influence of the main factors on the accumulation of human capital in the country over the past twenty years.The expediency of the study of factors that directly affect the course of the processes of accumulating human capital at regional and national levels has been substantiated. The relationship between the quality of life of the population, the socio-economic development of the country and the volume of human capital has been established.The conditions (the number and structure of the current population; the number of live births and deaths per year and per 1000 people of the population; natural population decline, the number of marriages registered per year; total annual fertility rate, average life expectancy at birth), typical for Ukraine at the time of its independence in 1991, in the dynamics of demographic and socio-economic processes in Ukraine during the period of its independence have been analyzed.The tendencies that have been achieved by Ukraine in the nineteen years of independence in the field of socio-economic development, such as: the annual decline in the population and the total fertility rate; an increase in the mortality rate of the population; drop in GDP per capita and human development index are established. The key aspects of stabilizing the situation in the field of human capital accumulation in Ukraine, which should be based on the intensive development of the business environment, improving the quality of education, and comprehensive social protection of the population, have been substantiated.


Author(s):  
George J. Borjas ◽  
Barry R. Chiswick

Assuming that ethnicity acts as an externality in the human capital accumulation process, this chapter analyzes the extent to which ethnic skill differentials are transmitted across generations. The skills of the next generation depend on parental inputs and on the quality of the ethnic environment in which parents make their investments, or “ethnic capital.” The empirical evidence reveals that the skills of today's generation depend not only on the skills of their parents, but also on the average skills of the ethnic group in the parents’ generation.


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