Moshe Syrquin

Patterns of structural change

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a discussion on the patterns of structural transformation during the transition from a low income, agrarian rural economy to an industrial urban economy with substantially higher per capita income. The chapter presents a review on the basic concepts of the empirical research program into the economic structure of developing countries during the transition process, which originated with the monumental work of Simon Kuznets. The chapter discusses methodological issues of empirical research on structural transformation. A summary of the main stylized facts of development, with emphasis on growth, accumulation, and sector proportions is presented. Attempts to model and explain the transformation are also presented. The chapter also discusses relative prices and the role of the state in facilitating, fostering, or at times hampering, an efficient transformation. Development economics can be characterized as dealing with issues of structure and growth in less developed countries. Analysis of structure appears in two variants. The first, and more recent, is concerned with the functioning of economies, their markets, institutions, mechanisms for allocating resources, income generation and its distribution, and so on. In the second variant, economic development is seen as an interrelated set of long-run processes of structural transformation that accompany growth. The central features of this approach are economy-wide phenomena such as industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural transformation, regarded as elements of what Kuznets identified as “modern economic growth.”

Economic Development and the Structure of Production

Significant changes in economic structure take place during the process of development. In this paper we concentrate on changes in the nature of interdependence in production summarized in input–output tables. The analysis is based on a sample of 83 input–output tables from 30 countries over the period 1950–75. We first compare measures of sectoral interdependence across countries and over time, and then estimate the average pattern of change in the structure of intermediate use of output with the level of development. Changes in intermediate use are traced back to changes in technology and compositional effects.

The Application of Multidimensional Scaling to the Study of Economic Development

I. Introduction, 621. — II. Multidimensional scaling, 621. — III. The Adelman-Morris study, 625. — IV. Smallest space analysis of socioeconomic development: Two illustrations, 627.

On the use and abuse of rights : An economic view

This paper presents a scheme for characterizing transactions (interactions) in economic terms. Four types of interactions are considered: two contracted for in markets (competitive and monopolistic), and two brought about by coercion (extortion and crime). One section focuses on monopoly and extortion, which some authors have claimed to be indistinguishable in economic terms. The analysis implies that the common attitude which regards crime as more offensive than extortion, and extortion as more offensive than monopoly, has a sound basis in terms of the impact on the efficiency of resource allocation. It also suggests that norms of behavior might emerge as an economic response to the market failure involved in extortion.

Growth accounting with intermediate inputs and the transmission of technical change

Abstract The aggregate rate of total factor productivity growth (TFPG) when there are intermediate inputs, can be expressed either as a weighted average or as a weighted sum of the sectoral rates depending on the choice of sectoral rates being weighted. The agrument that there is a magnification effect due to the transmission of TFPG through the intersectoral flows among sectors, is therefore to be more illusory than real.

Substitution and scale effects with and without homotheticity: An application to the intertemporal consumption decision

Abstract This paper derives a simple functional relation between substitution and scale concepts applicable to the theories of consumption and production. Its usefulness is illustrated by pulling together various results about the relation between savings and the interest rate.

Production externalities and convexity

Abstract This paper explores in some detail the relation between production externalities (detrimental or positive) and convexity of the production-possibilities set. A set of sufficient conditions to rule out local non-convexity is derived in terms of the original production functions. The problem is illustrated for the case of one productive input. Regardless of whether externalities lead to non-convexity they may still give rise to a multiplicity of local private maxima even when the social maximum is a global one. The possibility of unique private maximum coupled with multiple local social maxima had been mentioned before by Baumol among others. The fact that externalities may lead to the converse case, as shown in the paper, seems not to have been noticed before.