Estimation And Verification Of Capital Stock In Modern China(1887-1936)

From the 1880s to the eve of the outbreak of the comprehensive anti Japanese War,although China’s political situation experienced frequent changes of the late Qing government,the Northern Warlord government and the Nanjing Nationalist government,it has been in a relatively peaceful period compared with the whole process of modern history.During this period of about 50 years,China’s modernized economy was able to develop relatively normally.The economic growth of a country or region is closely related to its capital stock.Capital stock is an important part of the total wealth of a country or region,and it is the premise and foundation for economic operation.Therefore,this article will systematically estimate the capital stock time series data from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China in order to have a clearer understanding of the overall economic operation during this period and provide basic data for further in-depth study of the macroeconomic issues of modern China.Due to the lack of data in the economic history of modern China,the accounting of capital stock is very difficult.Until the end of last century,with the efforts of many scholars,most of the basic macroeconomic data in modern years have been estimated,but for the capital stock,there are only some discontinuous data.Based on the existing research results,this paper attempts to make a preliminary estimation and Exploration on the data gap of the capital stock time series of modern China from 1887 to 1936.Firstly,the 50 years are divided into three periods: 1887—1901,1902—1926 and1927—1936.The last period is estimated by Professor Liu Wei(1998).Then,on this basis,we use the perpetual inventory method to calculate the data from 1902 to 1926,estimate the agricultural capital stock and industrial capital stock in the same year respectively,and then summarize them.Finally,for 1887—1901,we build a theoretical model based on Cobb-Douglas production function,combined with macroeconomic data such as GDP,capital stock and labor force population,to explore the relationship among total output,capital input and labor force input of modern China,and use interpolation method to estimate the capital stock data.In the end,we get the complete time series data of capital stock in modern China from 1887 to 1936.Based on the time series data of modern China’s GDP,capital stock and labor force obtained from 1887 to 1936,this paper draws the annual data time series diagram of the three,and makes a preliminary analysis and verification on the capital stock estimation data from the perspective of imported capital goods(including raw materials).Secondly,under the premise of the supply-constrained economic model,we use the time series data of GDP,capital stock and labor force population to fit the expanded Cobb-Douglas production function model of China from 1887 to 1936,that is,the quantitative relationship among total output,capital stock and social labor productivity,so as to further verify the accuracy and credibility of the capital stock data estimation.The results show that: during 1887—1936,when the input capital increases by 1%,the total output increases by 0.202%;when the social labor productivity increases by 1%,the total output increases by 0.867%.This is basically in line with the actual situation of modern China.Secondly,in the result of the model,the sum of the two output elasticities is greater than 1,which indicates that it is in the stage of increasing returns to scale,which is also in line with the overall economic structure of modern China in this period.