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Publications

"East Asian Growth Experience Revisited from the Perspective of a Neoclassical Model"
Review of Economic Dynamics 15(3), July 2012, 359-376.

"The Role of Capital Market Efficiency in Long-term Growth: A Quantitative Exploration" Journal of Macroeconomics 36, June 2013, 161-174.



Dissertation - Understanding Growth Miracles: The Case of Taiwan , Chairman: Lee E. Ohanian

Chapter 1: "Revisiting Taiwanese Economic Growth from 1961 to 2002 through the Lens of a Neoclassical Model"
Abstract: This paper studies the sources of growth for Taiwan from 1961 to 2002 using a diagnostic tool, known as business cycle accounting, developed in the recent business cycle literature. The results show that the path of Taiwanese growth would not have been achieved without improvements in total factor productivity (TFP). In addition, there are significant distortions in capital markets in the equilibrium investment decisions of agents operating in otherwise competitive capital markets. Finally, frictions in labor markets also contribute to growth but are minor relative to TFP growth and frictions in capital markets.

Chapter 2: "How Does Arithmetic Demystify Growth Success? The Taiwanese Case"
Abstract: This paper studies the productivity improvement in economies experiencing rapid structural transformation, i.e. resource reallocation from a low to a high productivity sector. In particular, it measures the productivity growth that is attributed to reallocating labor from the farm to the non-farm sector in Taiwan between 1951 and 2003. The results show that resource reallocation, especially that of labor, from a low to a high productivity sector plays a substantial role in accounting for the significant productivity improvement in an economy experiencing rapid structural transformation.


Chapter 3: "Understanding Taiwan's Growth Miracle: The Role of Capital Market Efficiency"
Abstract: This paper examines the development success of Taiwan from 1961 to 2002 to determine the source of its growth, and in particular to understand the role played by improvements in bank efficiency. Different from the major literature about financial development and growth, this paper adopts optimal growth theory and time series data to address this issue quantitatively by a neoclassical model with financial intermediaries. The model demonstrates that the higher the bank efficiency, the greater the economic output. Although the effect is consistently positive for all levels of productivity, it is a more effective contributor to growth in a low rather than high productivity economy. For the Taiwanese case, the model show that its output level today is 4.4% higher as a result of bank efficiency improvements.

Conference Papers and Presentations
"What Drives Structural Change in Different Stages of Development?"
Presented at the 2013 SAET meeting, Paris, France, July 2013

"Labor Structural Transformation and Labor Productivity Growth: A Comparison of Asian and Latin American Countries"
Presented at the 2012 CEANA meeting (together with Allied Social Science Association meetings), Chicago, IL, January 2012

"East Asian Growth Experience Revisited from the Perspective of a Neoclassical Model"
Presented at the 2011 CEANA meeting (together with Allied Social Science Association meetings), Denver, CO, January 2011

"How Does Arithmetic Demystify Growth Success?"
Presented at the 2010 Annual meeting American Economic Association and the Econometric Society North American Winter meeting (AEA/ES), Atlanta, GA, January 2010

"The Role of Capital Market Efficiency in Long-term Growth: A Quantitative Exploration"
Presented at the 2010 CEANA meeting (together with Allied Social Science Association meetings), Atlanta, GA, January 2010

"Revisiting the Growth of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, 1978-2006, from the Perspective of a Neoclassical Model"
Presented at the 2009 Annual Congress of the European Economic Association and the Econometric Society European meeting (EEA-ESEM), Barcelona, Spain, August 2009

"Revisiting Taiwanese Economic Growth from 1961 to 2002 through the Lens of a Neoclassical Model"
Presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of Society for Economic Dynamics (SED), Cambridge, July 2008

"How Arithmetic Demystifies Growth Success: the Taiwanese Case"
Proceedings of the International Conference on Policy Modeling, Hong Kong, June 2006

"Banking and Growth: the Taiwanese Case"
Proceedings of the International Conference on Policy Modeling, Hong Kong, June 2006


Working Papers

"Why Have Asia and Latin America Grow Differently? Labor Structural Transformation and Labor Productivity Growth" [PDF] (updated: 11/2012)


"What Drives Structural Change in Different Stages of Development? " [PDF] (updated: 08/2013)