Empirical Analysis on the sources of economic growth : comparative analysis between the Asian newly industrialized countries and Eastern European countries in transition

在这个研究项目中，我们分析了与经济发展相关的产业结构、收入分配、生产率、国际资本流动和环境问题的变化。首先，在产业结构的变化方面，我们发现东亚地区农业部门的下降和工业部门的扩张与收入水平的提高相关，这不仅可以通过描述性数据分析得到证明，也可以通过面板数据分析得到证明。其次，我们在亚太国家考察了库兹涅茨曲线假设。然而，根据我们的经验结果，我们无法支持库兹涅茨曲线假设，其结果似乎并不稳健。此外，我们还分析了东亚在收入分配方面的普遍平等，特别关注民主化水平。我们的描述性数据分析表明，与其他收入水平相似的发展中国家相比，日本、韩国和泰国的民主化水平较高，而新加坡、马来西亚和中国的民主化水平相对较低。第三，我们的生产率分析，包括增长核算和回归分析，显示韩国和泰国的TFP随着时间的推移稳步增长，这与克鲁格曼（1994）的悲观观点有所不同。对东亚地区环境问题的实证分析表明，随着经济的进一步发展，东亚地区的能源消耗和二氧化碳排放可能会进一步增加，环境和自然资源可能会进一步退化，因此，东亚地区的环境政策将变得越来越重要。最后，我们考察了国际资本流动对东亚经济发展的作用。实证分析表明，至少在1997-1998年区域货币危机之前，国际资本流动对东亚经济的快速增长起着重要作用。因此，货币危机后东亚经济增长的恢复也可能依赖于国际资本流动的恢复，其含义与Barro（2001）相同。此外，我们在整个研究项目中收集了东欧转型期国家的宏观经济数据和统计数据，这些数据和统计数据将从现在开始进行分析。少

In this research project, we conducted the analyses on the change of industrial structure, income distribution, productivity, international capital flows, and environmental problems associated with economic development.First, concerning the change of industrial structure, we found the decline of agricultural sector and the expansion of industrial sector associated with the increase of income level in East Asia as well as the previous studies, which is evidenced not only by the descriptive data analysis but also by the panel data analysis.Second, we investigated the Kuznets curve hypothesis in Asia and the Pacific countries. Upon our empirical results, we however could not support the Kuznets curve hypothesis whose results appear to be not robust. Moreover, we also analyzed the equality in general in East Asia in relation to income distribution, especially focusing upon the democratization level. Our descriptive data analysis shows that the positive association between income level and … More democratization level in Japan, South Korea and Thailand whilst the democratization level has been relatively lower in Singapore, Malaysia and China compared with other developing countries with the similar income levels.Third, our productivity analysis, including growth accounting and regression analysis, shows the steady increase of TFP for South Korea and Thailand over time which is somewhat different from the pessimistic views of Krugman(1994).Our empirical analysis for environmental issues implies the possibility of further increase of energy consumption and emission of CO_2, and the degradation of environmental and natural resources associated with further economic growth in East Asia : to these issues, the environmental policies in the region will be increasingly important.Lastly, we investigated the role of international capital flows for the East Asian economic development. Our empirical analysis shows that international capital flows played the important role for the rapid economic growth in East Asia at least until the regional currency crisis in 1997-1998. Therefore, the recovery of economic growth in East Asia after the currency crisis also may depend on the resume of international capital flows whose implication is the same as Barro(2001). Moreover, we collected the macroeconomic data and statistics in Eastern European countries in transition throughout this research project whose analysis will be conducted from now on. Less