“富人社区效应”还是巴拉萨-萨缪尔森效应？--一个基于外生收入的实际汇率理论

The "Rich Neighborhood Effect" versus the Balassa-Samuelson Effect:An Income-Based Theory of Real Exchange Rates

作为对国际价格水平差异的标准解释,巴拉萨—萨缪尔森(BS)效应依赖于国内劳动力同质假设和跨部门工资套利行为。本文提出了一个与之相对的"富人社区效应",可以在一国劳动力异质的条件下解释为什么富国的非贸易品价格较高。其直观解释是,如果一个国家拥有一个"富有居民"群体(比如高生产率的贸易品部门劳动者,或者全球贸易资源的所有者),而这个群体通过国际市场获得的硬通货总收入相对于该国总人口而言较高的话,其需求将抬高该国非贸易品价格。本文进而指出,关于BS效应的实证文献所广泛采用的两种基本统计检验,实际上无法区分BS效应与富人社区效应,这就对该领域相当一部分实证文献的正确性提出了质疑。此外,富人社区效应也有别于林德效应。

As a standard explanation for national price levels, the Balassa-Samuelson （BS） effect presupposes a homogeneous domestic labor force and inter-scctoral labor mobility. We propose a contrasting theory of the ＂rich neighborhood effect,＂ which predicts high nontradables prices in rich countries with domestic labor force heterogeneity. The intuition is that if a country has a group of ＂rich residents＂ （e. g. highly productive tradable sector workers, or owners of globally traded resources） whose combined hard currency income is large enough relative to its total population, non-tradables prices wiU be driven high by their demand. Moreover, for two kinds of tests commonly used in the literature, the above two effects are observatinnally equivalent, calling into question the soundness of many important empirical studies on the BS effect. The rich neighborhood effect also contrasts with the Linder effect.