Commentary on Potential output in a rapidly developing economy: the case of China and a comparison with the United States and the European Union

Economic development ; Economic conditions - United States ; Economic conditions - China ; European Union

The metric space of geodesic laminations on a surface II: small surfaces

We continue our investigation of the space of geodesic laminations on a surface, endowed with the Hausdorff topology. We determine the topology of this space for the once-punctured torus and the 4-times-punctured sphere. For these two surfaces, we also compute the Hausdorff dimension of the space of geodesic laminations, when it is endowed with the natural metric which, for small distances, is -1 over the logarithm of the Hausdorff metric. The key ingredient is an estimate of the Hausdorff metric between two simple closed geodesics in terms of their respective slopes.Comment: Published by Geometry and Topology Monographs at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTMon7/paper17.abs.htm

Accounting for China's Growth

China has achieved impressive growth over the last three decades. However, there has been debate over the sources of the growth, and the role of the intensive versus extensive margin. Growth accounting exercises at the aggregate level (Rawski and Perkins, 2008; Bosworth and Collins, 2008) suggest an equal role for both. But for the non-agricultural sector, there have been doubts about the contribution of TFP improvements to growth. For the period between 1978 and 1998, Young (2003) stresses the role of labor deepening, including the reallocation from agriculture, while more recent analysis point to the role of rising rates of investment. Because labor reallocations across sectors, TFP growth at the sector level and investment are all inter-related, simple growth decompositions that are often used in the literature are not appropriate for quantifying their contributions to growth. In this paper, we develop a three sector model to quantify the sources of China's growth. The sectors include agriculture, and within non-agriculture, the state and non-state components. We find only a modest role for labor reallocation and capital deepening, and identify rising TFP in the non-state nonagricultural sector as the key driver of growth. We also find significant misallocation of capital: The much less efficient state sector continues to absorb more than half of all fixed investment. If capital had been allocated efficiently, China could have achieved the same growth performance without any increase in the rate of aggregate investment. This has important implications for China as it tries to rebalance its growth. Finally, in light of important concerns over data, we examine the robustness of our key results to alternative dataChina, Growth, TFP, Investment, intensive vs extensive margins

Modernization of Agriculture and Long-Term Growth

This paper develops a two-sector model that illuminates the role played by agricultural modernization in the transition from stagnation to growth. When agriculture relies on traditional technology, industrial development reduces the relative price of industrial products, but has a limited effect on per capita income because most labor has to remain in farming. Growth is not sustainable until this relative price drops below a certain threshold, thus inducing farmers to adopt modern technology that employs industry-supplied inputs. Once agricultural modernization begins, per capita income emerges from stasis and accelerates toward modern growth. Our calibrated model is largely consistent with the set of historical data we have compiled on the English economy, accounting well for the growth experience of England encompassing the Industrial Revolution.long-term growth, transition mechanisms, relative price, agricultural modernization, structural transformation, Industrial Revolution, England

Accounting for China's Growth

China has achieved impressive growth over the last three decades. However, there has been debate over the sources of the growth, and the role of the intensive versus extensive margin. Growth accounting exercises at the aggregate level (Rawski and Perkins, 2008; Bosworth and Collins, 2008) suggest an equal role for both. For the non-agricultural sector, there have been doubts about the contribution of TFP improvements to growth. For the period between 1978 and 1998, Young (2003) stresses the role of labor deepening, including the reallocation from agriculture, while more recent analysis points to the role of rising rates of investment. Because labor reallocation across sectors, TFP growth at the sector level and investment are all inter-related, simple growth decompositions that are often used in the literature are not appropriate for quantifying their contributions to growth. In this paper, we develop a three-sector dynamic model to quantify the sources of China's growth. The sectors include agriculture, and within non-agriculture, the state and non-state components. We find only a modest role for labor reallocation from agriculture and capital deepening, and identify rising TFP in the non-state non-agricultural sector as the key driver of growth. We also find significant misallocation of capital: The less efficient state sector continues to absorb more than half of all fixed investment. If capital had been allocated efficiently, China could have achieved the same growth performance without any increase in the rate of aggregate investment. This has important implications for China as it tries to re-balance its growth. Finally, in light of important concerns over data, we examine the robustness of our key results to alternative data sets.China, investment, growth, productivity, capital market distortions

Exciton Binding Energy of Monolayer WS2

The optical properties of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) feature prominent excitonic natures. Here we report an experimental approach toward measuring the exciton binding energy of monolayer WS2 with linear differential transmission spectroscopy and two-photon photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy (TP-PLE). TP-PLE measurements show the exciton binding energy of 0.71eV around K valley in the Brillouin zone. The trion binding energy of 34meV, two-photon absorption cross section 4X10^{4}cm^{2}W^{-2}S^{-1} at 780nm and exciton-exciton annihilation rate around 0.5cm^{2}/s are experimentally obtained.Comment: 5page,3 figure

Fiscal Shocks and Fiscal Risk Management

We use the returns on a set of international financial securities to identify exogenous shocks to the Canadian federal surplus. We find that a large portion of the variation in the surplus can be replicated by a linear combination of these returns and that the rising debt observed in the 1980s and 1990s was a result of adverse exogenous shocks and a delayed response by the government to these shocks. We develop a formal framework to evaluate the potential gains from a fiscal risk management strategy, using these securities to hedge against exogenous shocks. We show that fiscal risk management can generate significant welfare gains by enhancing the sustainability of fiscal policy and thereby lowering average tax rates.Fiscal policy, sustainability, asset pricing, risk management.

The Effects of Housing Push Factors and Rent Expectations on Household Formation of Young Adults

Following a group of young adults aged 25–34 living with their parents in the American Housing Survey (AHS) data from 1985 through 1995, this paper investigates the effect of overcrowding and neighborhood satisfaction on household formation after controlling for local rental levels and their changes over time. Most of these except for local rent levels have not been tested before in models and hence this study enriches the knowledge on household formation and its consequent potential demand for rental and ownership housing units.

Using Financial Market Information to Enhance Canadian Fiscal Policy

In this article we argue that the evaluation and implementation of Canadian fiscal policy could be significantly improved through the systematic use of information provided by global financial markets. In particular, we show how the information contained in internationally traded asset returns can be used to (1) provide a more meaningful cyclical-adjustment of the budget deficit, (2) assess the sustainability of the public debt, and (3) reduce the risk of the debt becoming unsustainable without having to run excessively large surpluses.Public debt, cyclically-adjusted deficit, sustainability, hedging