Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/55541 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 3736
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We discuss the sustainability of Chinese high growth relative to growth experience elsewhere, and specifically Soviet Russia in the 1950s to the 1960s by asking if the aggregate technology can eventually similarly constrain high growth performance in the Chinese case as argued by Weitzman in a paper in 1970 discussing the Soviet case. We note in the Chinese case, in contrast to Russia, the declining labor share in GDP over time, which suggests a substitution elasticity above rather than below one. We use time series data on labor's share in GDP to estimate a substitution elasticity for China, finding that the substitution elasticity is greater than one. We then discuss how sub aggregate high growth can occur when there are three sectors, and large outflows of labor occurring from rural to urban areas over time with implications for the role of factor substitution in future Chinese growth. We argue that high growth in China can be supported in such a framework by a rural to urban labor outflows even if the substitution elasticities in both the urban and rural sectors are less than one. We estimate these two production functions using share data and these indicate substitution elasticities less than one. As such we suggest that aggregate substitution elasticities do not necessarily provide a clear guide as to the sustainability of high Chinese growth.
Subjects: 
China
growth
sustainability
substitution elasticity
JEL: 
O40
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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