The 19th “Theory and Policy” at RUC NADS

Endowment Structure, Skill Premium and Industrial Dynamics

Speaker: WANG Yong

Academic Associate Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economies, Peking University

Moderator：LIU Qing

Professor of National Academy of Development and Strategy, Renmin University of China

Time： Nov.30, 2018, Friday, 14:00-15:30

Venue：Meeting Room 815, Chongde Building West Wing (Keyan Building Block A）

Abstract：

We document six stylized facts about skill premium, endowment structures (consisting of capital, skilled labor and unskilled labor), and industrial dynamics using the US and cross-country manufacturing data. We build a tractable endogenous growth model with infinite industries, which differ in capital-skill intensities. The model generates life-cycle dynamics of each industry and the dynamics of skill premiums associated with industrial upgrading along the growth path of the aggregate economy, all qualitatively consistent with the six stylized facts. We show that optimal human capital investment should match the industrial upgrading process driven by the endogenous improvement of the endowment structures.

Speaker Profile：

Wang Yong is Academic Associate Dean and a doctoral supervisor of the Institute of New Structural Economics, Peking University and also one of its founding members. His research areas are economic growth, macro development and trade, China and India's economy, political economy, etc. His recent research topics include structural transformation, industrial upgrading and industrial policies, the middle-income trap, the reform of state-owned enterprises, Sino-US trade and exchange rates and innovation and income inequality. He has published dozens of papers in domestic and foreign academic journals such as Journal of Development Economics and Journal of Monetary Economics. He works as the associate editor of China and the World Economy (SSCI). He is the author of New Structural Economics: Thinking and Debating, What is New in the New Structural Economics, Industrial Policy: Summary, Reflection and Prospect (all published by Peking University Press). Besides, Wang was awarded the 2017 China Young Economist Award, the first Zhang Peigang Young Scholar Award in Development Economics in 2018, the Franklin Best Teaching Award in Business School, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, one of the most popular ten professors in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Martin and Magaret Lee Prize in Price Theory in University of Chicago.