Growth Differentials Research Articles

Effects of coronavirus disease 2019 lockdown on metabolic syndrome and its components among Chinese employees: A retrospective cohort study.

ObjectiveCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the accompanying isolation have changed resident life rhythms and behaviors. This study investigated the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its components in employees in southwestern China.MethodsThis retrospective cohort study included 3,777 employees of five institutions who underwent physical examinations at the Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University for three consecutive years from 2018 to 2020. We collected data on participant age and sex and measured the component indices of metabolic syndrome, including waist circumference, blood pressure (systolic and diastolic), fasting blood glucose level, and blood lipid (triglyceride and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol) level. We applied t-, chi-square, Mann–Whitney U, and Friedman's M tests to compare metabolic variables at different times.ResultsThe incidence of MetS in 2020 was 18.6%, significantly higher than the prevalence of 15.7% before the epidemic. The number of abnormal MetS components following the COVID-19 lockdown was much greater than those in 2018 (P < 0.001) and 2019 (P < 0.001), with no significant variations between the two years (P = 0.142). All metabolic parameters, except for fasting blood glucose, were significantly worse than those pre-lockdown. The increase in the prevalence of MetS and all its abnormal components except for fasting glucose from 2019 to 2020 was significantly higher than that from 2018 to 2019. The change values between 2019–2020 and 2018–2019 for all indices except for diastolic blood pressure did not differ significantly between men and women. For all component indicators except for waist circumference, we observed no significant age differences in the growth differentials between the two periods (2019–2020 and 2018–2019).ConclusionsCOVD-19 lockdown have increased metabolic health risks among Chinese adults. Targeted measures, such as health education, are urgently needed to address poor metabolic health caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rhizoctonia Resistance Is Negatively Correlated to Early Root Growth Rate in Synthetic Hexaploid Wheat Derivatives.

Resistance to the soilborne fungal pathogen Rhizoctonia solani AG-8 is desirable in adapted wheat and barley but remains an elusive trait for prebreeders and breeders. In a previous study, we observed that emergence and root growth was faster in the Rhizoctonia-susceptible 'Scarlet' than in its resistant counterpart, 'Scarlet-Rz1'. The objective of the current study was to quantify early root growth rate and total root length in resistant and susceptible synthetic hexaploid wheat lines, including parental lines and 22 recombinant inbred lines derived crosses between parental lines. In Petri dish assays, the susceptible lines displayed a faster rate of root growth during the first 40 h of root emergence compared with resistant lines. This growth differential was observed in 14-day and 48-h greenhouse assays, in which the total root length of susceptible parental lines was significantly (P < 0.05) greater than that of resistant parental lines. However, the resistant lines sustained less root loss compared with susceptible lines when R. solani AG-8 was present in the soil. Early root growth rate and total root length were not correlated to freezing tolerance in a set of wheat cultivars selected for cold tolerance. The findings indicated that early root growth was negatively correlated to R. solani AG-8 damage in resistant synthetic wheat lines developed for the Pacific Northwest, United States, and suggested that the dynamics of root emergence affect resistance to this soilborne pathogen.

Carbon Consumption, the Carbon-Based Ecosystem, and Output

This paper studies the effects of the carbon-based ecosystem on a country's output. We propose and estimate a dynamic game production model in which a country's ecosystem, as measured by its reservoir of carbon in land biomass and soils, is a productive input. This reservoir is diminished when higher levels of greenhouse gas concentrations reduce land sink absorption of atmospheric carbon. In equilibrium, a country's land carbon policy accounts for its direct effects on the ecosystem and on diminished land sink as GHG concentrations increase. We first estimate land sink absorption rates and the output elasticities of land use and the land carbon ecosystem for 152 countries. Calibrating the model to these estimates, we simulate the model to 2100 under four standard Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios. In the simulations, all countries experience higher average annual GDP growth under lower GHG concentration scenarios. The growth differentials between high and low scenarios are starkest for more developed countries. When compared to a counterfactual constant sink model, the ``active sink makes little difference in low concentration scenarios, but decreases global GDP growth by around 1.3% per year over the next 80 years in the highest scenario. Again, the differences are most pronounced in developed countries.

Quantitative Easing, Portfolio Rebalancing and Credit Growth: Micro Evidence from Germany

This paper sheds light on the effect of quantitative easing (QE) on bank lending. Using data on German banks for 2014-2016, I show that QE encourages banks to rebalance from securities to loans. For identification, I use bond redemptions as exogenous variation in banks' need to rebalance their portfolio and hence their exposure to QE. I find that more exposed banks increase their loan growth during QE relative to other banks. The growth differential is larger when bond market yields decrease stronger than loan market yields and for banks with equity constraints. These results imply that QE can affect bank lending even if banks do not hold assets purchased under the QE program, by increasing incentives to invest in higher-yield assets.

The Puzzle of Persistently Negative Interest‐Rate–Growth Differentials: Financial Repression or Income Catch‐Up?

AbstractThe interest‐rate–growth differential (IRGD) plays a critical role in determining the sustainability of government debt. Yet it is striking that IRGDs are correlated with income levels, and are generally negative in emerging and developing economies, which contradicts standard economic theory. Negative IRGDs constitute a powerful debt‐stabilising force, driving down debt ratios or keeping them stable even in the presence of persistent primary deficits. Motivated by the puzzling facts, this paper examines the IRGDs for a large panel of advanced and non‐advanced economies by utilising a newly assembled data set. The evidence shows that large negative IRGDs in emerging and developing economies are largely due to real interest rates well below market equilibrium – stemming from financial repression and captive and distorted markets – whereas the income catch‐up process plays a relatively modest role. Therefore, the IRGD in non‐advanced economies is likely to rise with financial market development and financial global integration, perhaps even before their GDP per capita converges to advanced‐economy levels.

Short‐Run Dynamics of the Trade Balance in the Emu‐12 Countries

During the pre‐EMU period real effective exchange rate or domestic and foreign GDP per capita growth rate differential Granger‐caused aggregate trade balance in most of the EMU‐12 countries. However, our data‐driven paper provides evidence that during the EMU period neither the growth differentials nor the CPI‐based real effective exchange rates have Granger‐caused the aggregate trade balances. When we decompose the aggregate trade balances into the intra balances (trade balance vis‐à‐vis the euro area) and the extra balances (trade balance vis‐à‐vis the rest of the world), we find that typically the change in the dynamics of the aggregate trade balance resulted from a change in the dynamics of the intra balance.

Open innovation and growth in IT sector

IT services are overrepresented among high-growth innovative enterprises. The nature of innovation in IT requires knowledge search and collaboration, which together constitute the inbound open innovation (IOI) strategy. This study analyses whether the IOI strategies in IT service firms lead to different performance effects in comparison to other service and manufacturing firms. A quantile regression on multi-country data from the Community Innovation Survey indicates that innovative IT service companies share the same benefits from increased cooperation as other innovators, while displaying a strong growth dynamic compared to others. Therefore, IT service firms’ growth differential may not be related to external cooperation and knowledge sourcing.

Trois décennies de modélisation des systèmes de villes : sources d'inspiration, concepts, formalisations

La géographie privilégie depuis longtemps une vision systémique des villes, l’amenant à placer les interactions entre les villes au cœur de sa compréhension des différentiels de croissance. Au cours des trois dernières décennies, la construction des modèles de systèmes de villes a connu deux sources majeures d’inspiration, l’une émanant de la physique et l’autre de l’informatique. Les concepts d’auto-organisation et de bifurcation, associés à une formalisation par les systèmes d’équations différentielles, caractérisent la première, le concept d’émergence et les systèmes multi-agents, la seconde. L’objectif est d’analyser l’articulation entre les familles de modèles qui ont découlé de ces deux sources d’inspiration. Certains auteurs décèlent une rupture entre ces deux familles de modèles, alors que d’autres, considérant des temporalités plus longues, discernent plutôt de la continuité dans les travaux de la modélisation urbaine. L’examen des travaux de cette période et des prises de position de différents auteurs, suggère une avancée en spirale.

Lucas Paradox and Allocation Puzzle: Is the Euro Area Different?

This paper examines the Lucas Paradox and the Allocation Puzzle of international capital flows referring to a panel data set of EMU countries and major industrialized and emerging economies. Overall, the results do not provide evidence in favour of the Lucas Paradox and the Allocation Puzzle. Rather, in line with neoclassical expectations, net capital flows are allocated according to income and growth differentials. The 'downhill' flow of capital from rich to poor economies was particularly pronounced in intra-euro area capital flows and after the introduction of the common currency. If we control for the fact that the assumptions of the neoclassical model are not perfectly given in emerging markets, the Lucas Paradox and the Allocation Puzzle can be dismissed for these countries too. However, in periods of financial stress, the neoclassical behaviour of financial flows is to some extent dampened.

Wearing corset, losing shape: The euro's effect on trade imbalances

When does trade become a one-way relationship? We study bilateral trade balances for a sample of 18 European countries over the period from 1948 through 2008. We find that, with the introduction of the euro, trade imbalances among euro area members widened considerably, even after allowing for permanent asymmetries in trade competitiveness within pairs of countries or in the overall trade competitiveness of individual countries. This is consistent with indications that pair-wise trade tends to be more balanced when nominal exchange rates are flexible. Intra-euro area imbalances also seem to have become more persistent with the introduction of the euro, some of which is linked to labor market inflexibility. Reviewing the direction of imbalances, we find that bilateral trade surpluses are decreasing in the real exchange rate, decreasing in growth differentials, and increasing in the relative volatility of national business cycles. Finally, countries with relatively higher fiscal deficits and less flexible labor and product markets exhibit systematically lower trade surpluses than others.

Regional disparities and productivity in China: Evidence from manufacturing micro data

AbstractIn this paper we first estimate firm‐specific total factor productivities within 2‐digit manufacturing industries using a semi‐parametric algorithm and micro data for the period 2000–2007. Next, to characterize regional disparities in China we compute aggregate productivity by the categories of three regional typologies, based on population density, coastal‐inland, and rural‐urban criteria. We analyse the productivity differentials across the categories of the typologies by decomposing regional productivity level and growth into productivity effect and industry composition effect. We find clear evidence of regional convergence. Besides density of economic activity, recent policy and structural factors seem to affect regional productivity level and growth differentials.

On the Joint Test of the Uncovered Interest Parity and the Ex‐ante Purchasing Power Parity

AbstractThis study revisits the relation between the uncovered interest parity (UIP), the ex‐ante purchasing power parity (EXPPP) and the real interest parity (RIP) for the UK and Japanese vs US data. The original contribution is on developing some joint coefficient‐based tests, obtained by rewriting the UIP, the EXPPP and the RIP as a set of cross‐equation restrictions in a vector autoregression (VAR) framework. Test results point to a “forward premium” bias in both the UIP and the EXPPP. The latter result is novel in the literature and stems from testing the PPP in expectational terms. Moreover, the results suggest a currency‐dependent pattern for the UIP, contrarily to the EXPPP equation. Finally, it is shown that conditioning the VAR on M3 growth differential has important explanatory power in resolving the aforementioned biases in both the UIP and EXPPP equations for the UK vs US data. At the same time, variables having a strong forward‐looking component (i.e. share prices) help recover a unitary coefficient in the UIP equation.

Distortions, structural transformation and the Europe-US income gap

This paper uses a model of structural transformation with sectoral distortions to study the convergence of income between Western Europe and the United States (US). It shows that in addition to income effects and growth differentials in sectoral total factor productivities (TFP), sectoral distortions are important for understanding the reallocation of resources across sectors. Allowing for a growing wedge between the marginal revenue product of labor relative to capital can explain the rapid decline in the manufacturing share of hours for the US that started in the 1980s. The distortions are also important for explaining the paths of sectoral hours for many European countries. However, the distortions lead to a misallocation of resources across sectors, which helps explain why the rapid Europe-US income convergence that started in the 1950s stopped in the early 1980s.

Credit Constraints and Growth in a Global Economy

We show that in an open-economy OLG model, the interaction between growth differentials and household credit constraints—more severe in fast-growing countries—can explain three prominent global trends: a divergence in private saving rates between advanced and emerging economies, large net capital outflows from the latter, and a sustained decline in the world interest rate. Micro-level evidence on the evolution of age-saving profiles in the US and China corroborates our mechanism. Quantitatively, our model explains about a third of the divergence in aggregate saving rates, and a significant portion of the variations in age-saving profiles across countries and over time. (JEL E21, E22, F21, F32, F41, O16, P24)

A Sensitivity Analysis Regarding the Impacts of Trade Openness and Globalization Growth: Empirical Evidence from Korea

By using the annual time series data from 1986 to 2008 in South Korea (hereafter Korea) we will examine the possibility that the difference in trade liberalization is causal to the differentials in growth and measure the sensitivity of growth to changes in trade liberalization. For the estimation, we will use both alternative measures of trade liberalization; imports for the total factor cost of national income for trade openness (hereafter openness) and the sum of exports and imports for the total factor cost of national income for trade globalization (hereafter globalization). The regression results suggest that both openness and globalization make a substantial contribution towards Korea’s economic growth. In a comparison between these two indicators of trade liberalization, openness is more sensitive to growth. A negative and statistically significant error correction term implies that the null hypothesis of no co-integration is rejected when one period lag is used. The existence of co-integration means that openness and globalization policies can be targeted in order to bring about a desired long-run effect as well as a short run effect on growth.

Regional Inequality and Growth Differentials in China

This paper attempts to survey the available literature on the issues of regional inequality and growth differentials in China, reviewing the convergence and divergence trends of real GDP and income across different regions of China. In this note, in addition to other papers, three main papers a, three papers are of great importance; Fan, Kanbur and Zhang (2008) Regional Inequality in China – An Overview, Kanbur, Ravi (2006) The Policy Significance of Inequality Decompositions, and Chen & Fliesher (2006) Regional Income Inequality and Growth in China. These papers review the inequality trends from 1952-onwards, as well as the post 1980s reform period examining the degree of regional inequalities using a various measurements and indices. This review shall summarize the main finding s of each of these papers as well as highlighting the factors that may cause the increasing regional inequality and the empirical evidences correspondingly, and a summary of the policy implications.

A Sensitivity Analysis Regarding the Impacts of Trade Openness and Globalization Growth: Empirical Evidence from Korea

By using the annual time series data from 1986 to 2008 in South Korea (hereafter Korea) we will examine the possibility that the difference in trade liberalization is causal to the differentials in growth and measure the sensitivity of growth to changes in trade liberalization. For the estimation, we will use both alternative measures of trade liberalization; imports for the total factor cost of national income for trade openness (hereafter openness) and the sum of exports and imports for the total factor cost of national income for trade globalization (hereafter globalization). The regression results suggest that both openness and globalization make a substantial contribution towards Korea’s economic growth. In a comparison between these two indicators of trade liberalization, openness is more sensitive to growth. A negative and statistically significant error correction term implies that the null hypothesis of no co-integration is rejected when one period lag is used. The existence of co-integration means that openness and globalization policies can be targeted in order to bring about a desired long-run effect as well as a short run effect on growth.

BANKING FLOWS AND FINANCIAL CRISIS FINANCIAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS AND BASEL III EFFECTS

This paper examines the factors that determine banking flows from advanced economies to emerging markets. In addition to the usual determinants of capital flows in terms of global push and local pull factors, we examine the role of bilateral factors, such as growth differentials and economic size, as well as contagion factors and measures of the depth in financial interconnectedness between lenders and borrowers. We find profound differences across regions. In particular, in spite of the severe impact of the global financial crisis, emerging Europe stands out as a more stable region. Assuming that the determinants of banking flows remain unchanged in the presence of structural changes, we use these results to explore the short-term implications of Basel III capital regulations on banking flows to emerging markets.

AGGLOMERATION ECONOMIES IN EUROPEAN REGIONS: PERSPECTIVES FOR OBJECTIVE 1 REGIONS

ABSTRACTEconomic growth is one of the main European policy objectives of structural funds targeted at objective 1 regions. In an empirical analysis on growth differentials over 219 European regions between 2000 and 2010, we find that – controlled for other determinants – objective 1 regions grow in productivity due to higher degrees of specialisation, while other regions grow faster in employment, being embedded in a diverse economic environment. We argue that the type of agglomeration economies in combination with the structure of the economy is crucial for future long‐term development prospects of regions – and that especially the larger objective 1 regions should diversify their economy more to reap long‐term convergence prospects. This outcome favours a focus on place‐based development, as advocated recently by the European Union.

Dominant convict cichlids (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) grow faster than subordinates when fed an equal ration

AbstractPrevious studies indicate that dominant fish grow faster than subordinate fish when fed equal rations. It is unclear, however, whether this growth differential is caused by intrinsic differences related to their propensity to become dominant, or by the extrinsic effect of the social stress experienced by subordinates. We first tested whether dominant convict cichlids (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) grew faster than subordinates when fed an equal amount of food. Second, we tested whether the growth advantage of dominants occurred when only visual interactions were allowed between pairs of fish. Third, we randomly assigned social status to the fish to rule out the possibility that intrinsic differences between fish were responsible for both the establishment of dominance and the growth differences. In three separate experiments, dominant fish grew faster than size-matched subordinate convict cichlids, but the growth advantage of dominants was higher when there were direct interactions between fish compared to only visual interactions. Our results provide strong support for the hypothesis that the slower growth rate of subordinate fish was due to the physiological costs of stress.