Richard Frensch Bücher

Recent panel studies have found relatively high point estimates for the elasticity of ag-gregate price measures with respect to productivity in (former) transition economies, while other studies report price-productivity elasticity estimates to depend positively on average productivity in the sample. We aim to reconcile both results by putting com-parative price developments of transition economies in an international perspective. We argue that estimating simple price-productivity relationships without the inclusion of other real factors connected to reform effort might severely bias estimates for CEEC economies. Our results imply that, when controlling for reform effort and therefore avoiding this endogeneity problem, the price-productivity-elasticity for CEEC econo-mies was not different from that of non-transition economies during the first 15 years of transition. -- Balassa-Samuelson ; transition

Recent panel studies have found relatively high estimates for the elasticity of real exchange rates with respect to productivity measures in transition economies within Balassa Samuelson frameworks. This contrasts with other findings reporting crosssection priceincome elasticity estimates to depend positively on average income in the sample. This paper aims to reconcile both results by putting real exchange rate developments of transition economies in an international perspective. We illustrate the special status of these economies in a simple worldwide BalassaSamuelsontype priceincome benchmark relationship between a real exchange rate measure (Penn World Table comparative prices, i.e., exchange rate gaps) and PPPadjusted per capita income. A pronounced undervaluation at the start of transition, followed by a strong appreciation results in normalisation towards the benchmark for Central and East European economies (CEEC) but not for the CIS. We then make an attempt at extending the simple priceincome relationship to incorporate other real factors as well as reforms related to price deregulation. Our results imply that, when accounting for demand shifts, external liberalisation, and especially for reform effort, the priceincomeelasticity for CEEC economies was not different from that of nontransition economies during the nineties. BalassaSamuelson ; transition

Several tradebased measures of product variety have recently been used implicitly to represent states of technology, promoting longrun growth. In this paper, we define the state of technology as the range of specialised production processes and propose the variety of capital goods available for production as a direct measure of technology. Within a simple growth framework, we derive a testable "conditional technological convergence" hypothesis on this measure. The hypothesis is tested with highly disaggregated trade data by economic categories, using tools from the income convergence literature. The results suggest that tradebased count measures of the variety of available capital goods indeed behave "as if" they were representing technology and that there is conditional technological convergence among our panel of mainly OECD and transition economies. Product variety ; diffusion ; adoption ; technical change