Physical Capital in Dual Economies

Author(s):  
Sibabrata Das ◽  
Alex Mourmouras ◽  
Peter C. Rangazas
Author(s):  
Sibabrata Das ◽  
Alex Mourmouras ◽  
Peter Rangazas

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.


1975 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 370-375
Author(s):  
M. A. Akhtar

I am grateful to Abe, Fry, Min, Vongvipanond, and Yu (hereafter re¬ferred to as AFMVY) [1] for obliging me to reconsider my article [2] on the demand for money in Pakistan. Upon careful examination, I find that the AFMVY results are, in parts, misleading and that, on the whole, they add very little to those provided in my study. Nevertheless, the present exercise as well as the one by AFMVY is useful in that it furnishes us with an opportunity to view some of the fundamental problems involved in an empi¬rical analysis of the demand for money function in Pakistan. Based on their elaborate critique, AFMVY reformulate the two hypo¬theses—the substitution hypothesis and the complementarity hypothesis— underlying my study and provide us with some alternative estimates of the demand for money in Pakistan. Briefly their results, like those in my study, indicate that income and interest rates are important in deter¬mining the demand for money. However, unlike my results, they also suggest that the price variable is a highly significant determinant of the money demand function. Furthermore, while I found only a weak support for the complementarity between money demand and physical capital, the results obtained by AFMVY appear to yield a strong support for that rela¬tionship.1 The difference in results is only a natural consequence of alter¬native specifications of the theory and, therefore, I propose to devote most of this reply to the criticisms raised by AFMVY and the resulting reformulation of the two mypotheses.


1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Auman Reed

This paper examines the magnitude of the reporting bias inherent in the historical cost accounting of a firm's physical capital. Reported depreciation data pertaining to U.S. Steel Corporation (currently USX) between 1939 and 1987 are compared with standardized historical cost figures and replacement cost estimates. The findings suggest that replacement cost depreciation would have provided more information about U.S. Steel's ability to maintain its productive capacity than historical cost depreciation did. Thus, this analysis provides an illustration of one of the primary arguments for replacement cost accounting.


Author(s):  
Balázs Égert ◽  
Peter Gal

This chapter describes and discusses a new supply-side framework that quantifies the impact of structural reforms on per capita income in OECD countries. It presents the overall macroeconomic impacts of reforms by aggregating over the effects on physical capital, employment, and productivity through a production function. On the basis of reforms defined as observed changes in policies, the chapter finds that product market regulation has the largest overall single policy impact five years after the reforms. But the combined impact of all labour market policies is considerably larger than that of product market regulation. The paper also shows that policy impacts can differ at different horizons. The overall long-term effects on GDP per capita of policies transiting through capital deepening can be considerably larger than the five- to ten-year impacts. By contrast, the long-term impact of policies coming only via the employment rate channel materializes at a shorter horizon.


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