Manchester School最新文献

This paper fills a gap in recent literature on productivity and regional development by examining the determinants of productivity in primary industries in English regions during the Middle Ages. It provides a comprehensive review of relevant literature on the tin, lead and silver mining industries in Medieval England. Modern studies of productivity typically focus on technology, labour skills, unionization and regional economic infrastructure as key determinants of productivity growth and focus on high-technology manufacturing industries This study of medieval mining, however, focuses on extractive industries in which advanced technologies played only a limited role. The paper shows that alternative factors contributed to the productivity of medieval mining including royal policy, the location of deposits and fluctuations in demand. Technology, investment in training and worker activism had, in contrast, little impact.

We provide a new reason for Bertrand-Cournot profit reversal. In a symmetric oligopoly, we show that firms get higher profits under Bertrand competition compared to Cournot competition under non-commitment process innovation if the products are sufficiently differentiated and there is positive knowledge spillover. As the number of firms increases, the degree of product differentiation over which the profits are higher under Bertrand competition can increase. Higher outputs under Bertrand competition compared to Cournot competition generate higher R&D investments under the former than the latter, which is responsible for our result.

This paper examines how cross-border ownership and restrictions affect commercial policies optimally chosen by the government of an importing country. Focusing on import competition in an oligopoly market served by two local producers and a foreign firm, we study and compare two partial ownership arrangements without corporate control: unilateral ownership by the foreign firm over a local producer and bilateral ownership between the two entities. The main findings are as follows: (i) When foreign ownership is unilateral, the optimal trade and industrial policies are an import tariff and a production subsidy, respectively. (ii) When foreign ownership is bilateral, the trade policy can be an import subsidy, and the industrial policy is a production subsidy. These results differ from the benchmark equilibrium without ownership, under which the optimal policy mix consists of an import tariff and a production subsidy. (iii) Unilateral foreign ownership always reduces domestic welfare. However, bilateral foreign ownership can increase domestic welfare when local producers' cost disadvantages are substantially high. (iv) Considering the usual lump-sum transfer for a balanced budget, bilateral ownership entails a lower public burden than two other scenarios for the government to finance its strategic use of trade and industrial policies.

This paper studies the impact of relative performance evaluation (RPE) on skilled-unskilled wage inequality. We find that in an economy with full employment, skilled-unskilled wage inequality will be expanded when the strength of RPE increases. However, when the urban sector is under the minimum wage restriction, the impact of RPE on skilled-unskilled wage inequality depends on the substitution elasticity between land and unskilled labor in the rural sector. If this substitution elasticity is sufficiently large (resp. small), skilled-unskilled wage inequality will be expanded (resp. narrowed down) when the strength of RPE rises.

This paper considers a mixed duopoly two-sided market of platforms in which a private firm competes with a public firm in a linear city model with fixed demand of full coverage. We examine whether prices of platforms are lower in the mixed duopoly market than in the standard pure duopoly market in which two private firms compete. We show that introducing a public competitor may or may not induce lower prices of the private platform than introducing a private firm, depending on the quality of the public platform service. In particular, if the quality of the public platform is superior, the prices of the platforms are lower than when it competes with the private rival, whereas they are higher if the quality is lower. We also show that the private firm invests more than the public firm. This has the policy implication that maintaining lower platform prices by introducing a competing public platform will not be sustainable in the long run.

The goal of this paper is to test the mean reversion process of the inflation rate in the Eurozone during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The study uses weekly data on consumer prices (measured through the Harmonized Consumer Price Index), spanning the period from 2020 to the mid of 2022. The findings document that euro area inflation follows a mean non-reverting process, with most of its components following a similar pattern. Moreover, sub-period analysis illustrates that the vaccination process against the pandemic gives a transitory character to euro area inflation, which, however, is dominated by the lockdown and the Omicron mutation periods. Finally, comparative analysis illustrated the differences of inflation persistence during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009.

We examine the impact of China's economic stimulus plan in 2008 on the total factor productivity (TFP) of China's listed firms. We hypothesize that firms operating in regions characterized by greater resource misallocation would experience a more pronounced decline in TFP following the implementation of the stimulus plan. To gauge the extent of resource misallocation, we employ the proportion of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as a measure. Our findings reveal a substantial decrease in TFP for firms located in provinces with higher SOE shares compared to those in provinces with lower SOE shares, amounting to approximately 9.2%. These results highlight the unintended policy consequence of the stimulus plan for firm-level productivity in China.

This paper presents a new framework for analyzing automation, robotics, and high-tech, which differs from the canonical model of technological progress by incorporating the higher education system. The main difference is that there is not just one type of skilled workers, but two types, and there is not one type of education but two - elite universities and standard ones. The gap between these two types of education is called ‘elitism gap’. The ‘elitism gap’ in the higher-education sector enables a separation of individuals by their abilities. Since the economy is divided between low-tech and high-tech sectors, the elitism gap leads to a separating equilibrium in which, high-ability workers graduating from top universities work in the high-tech sector, while low-ability workers, graduate from standard universities and work in the low-tech industries. In consequence, human capital in both industries is different, which leads to wage inequality. We then analyze the effects of an increased use of robotics on inequality. We show that robots affect the “matching effect” between abilities and education, and in consequence, inequality increases. We also show that wages and productivity gaps between high-tech and low-tech sectors are fueled by the elitism gap in higher education. This leads to heterogeneity in human capital, and therefore to an increase in wage inequality. We develop an index of the elitism gap, and show a positive correlation between the index of elitism gap and inequality in OECD countries.

In this paper we examine productivity trends, drivers of productivity growth and pro-productivity policies across the G-20 economies since 1970. While we find distinctly different productivity growth dynamics between G-20 economies and over time, one common observation is a widely shared slowdown in labour productivity growth since the 2010s underpinned by lower (or even negative) total factor productivity growth. Moreover, the growth in capital per worker hour has also begun to level off. We develop a typology of pro-productivity policies and argue that policies for investment and technological change need strengthening to support a revival of productivity growth. Such policies should include a balanced approach to stronger technological progress and more rapid diffusion; a strengthening of investment, especially in intangibles and public services; and greater attention for human capital. We also argue for stronger institutions and capabilities that allow for dynamic learning about pro-productivity policies across countries and over time.

The assumption of no correlation of the structural shocks as Blanchard and Quah's identification (BQ) assumes is not suitable when central banks, through discretionary policies or inflation targeting regimes, affect the output growth among other goals. In this study, we analyze the present value model of the current account (PVM) using a three-SVAR specification and a modified BQ to identify three structural shocks: country-specific permanent, country-specific temporary, and global, but allowing the correlation of the domestic ones. Using Australia, Canada, Norway, and the UK, we find that those shocks are correlated and are less volatile than BQ would assume they are. The PVM predictions that hold are: (i) a positive (no) response in the current account to a country-specific temporary (global) shock; and (ii) with the exception of Australia, there is no response in the current account to a country-specific permanent shock. In addition, for all countries, the country-specific temporary shock dominates current account changes but does not dominate net output growth fluctuations, which was a puzzle identified by a prior study. The role of the shock is enhanced by the modified BQ, but even with this enhancement, it still does not hold the most significant role in output variations, as indicated by PVM.