Tax/subsidy policies toward vector-borne infectious diseases

Vector-borne diseases especially rife in poor countries pose sectoral tax/subsidy issues. Preventions and therapies mitigate these diseases in a numerical optimization model combining dynamic epidemiology and economics. The medical distinction between prevention and therapy does not distinguish economic properties of preventions and therapies. Some interventions increase and others decrease moving to the steady state, depending: on the utility function, the targeting of interventions and the disease process. Interventions display negative own-price but indeterminate cross-price effects. Juxtaposing the social planner's with decentralized choices quantifies externalities and shows how subsidies implement the first-best. One prevention and the therapy are equally subsidized.     

Taxation In The Two‐Sector Neoclassical Growth Model With Sector‐Specific Externalities And Endogenous Labour Supply*

This paper examines the long‐run impacts of selective (or sector‐specific) commodity, payroll, and profit taxes in a two‐sector endogenous growth model with sector‐specific production externalities, in which one sector produces consumption goods and the other produces investment goods. The novelty of the model is that it allows not only for endogenous labour supply but also for the intersectoral allocation of resources, which may together lead to indeterminacy. We analytically show that the stability properties of the long‐run equilibrium critically affect the long‐run effects of these selective taxes, which may reverse the standard results of the growth effects of distortionary taxes.     

The effects of integration on regional disparities: Convergence, divergence or both?

This paper offers an explanation for the coexistence of convergence across countries and the lack thereof at the regional level in the European Union. The model shows that, even if it accelerates growth and brings convergence across countries, the intensification of international knowledge spillovers due to more cross-country interaction may exacerbate within-country regional disparities, if regions with different specialization do not benefit evenly from the exchange of knowledge. The empirical evidence supports the implications of the model. In particular, the data show that regions specialized in advanced sectors at the beginning of the sample period became more similar in terms of per capita income, while regions specialized in traditional sectors lagged.     

Reshaping the schooling system: The role of immigration

This paper studies how the schooling system may be impacted by the number and skill type of immigrants. When the number of low-skilled immigrants is large, the education regime tends to become segregated. Wealthy locals are more likely to choose private schools and vote for a lower tax rate to finance public education. In contrast, high-skilled immigrants tend to reinforce the public system. The optimal immigration policy is highly skill-biased. The admission of high-skilled immigrants expedites redistribution toward the less-skilled local households through both a stronger fiscal support for public education and a reduction in the skill wage premium.     

Income and bargaining effects on education and health in Brazil

This study examines the impacts of the 1991 reform of Brazil's rural pension system on schooling and health indicators. We conclude that the reform had significant positive effects on schooling, especially on literacy for girls co-residing with a male pensioner. We were unable to find similar results for children living with a female pensioner. We further investigated whether these results were driven by bargaining power differences within households; our findings suggest that this explanation is plausible.     

Public investment in developing countries: A blessing or a curse?

This paper analyzes the relationship between public and private investment in developing countries. We set up a simple theoretical model where two countervailing forces coexist. On the one hand, public investment raises the marginal productivity of private capital and leads to potential crowding-in of private investment. On the other hand, weak institutions and restricted access to financing could diminish the positive effects of public investment projects and crowd-out private investment. The empirical results - which exploit both the time series and cross sectional variation in the data using a panel of 116 developing countries with annual observations between 1980 and 2006 - suggest that on average the crowing-out effect dominates. Moreover, we find that this crowing-out effect is dampened (or even reversed) in countries with better institutions - where the marginal productivity of public investment is conceivably higher - and that are more open to international trade and financial flows, such that financing constraints are less binding.     

Measuring the incentives to learn in Colombia using new quantile regression approaches

This paper employs newly developed quantile regression techniques to investigate a policy that could differentially affect students' performance. The Colombian vouchers were assigned using lotteries, and were renewable as long as the students maintained satisfactory academic progress. This second aspect of the program may provide incentives for low attainment students to work harder. The evidence supports the hypothesis that incentives could account for the impact of the vouchers, including lower repetition rate. The effect of the vouchers is largest in the lower tail of the educational attainment distribution, a possibility that was conjectured by others, but has not yet been confirmed empirically. The evidence suggests that the incentive effect of the program increases weak students' test scores by at least 0.1 standard deviations, roughly the score gain associated to a half year of school learning.     

Brain-drain taxes for non-benevolent governments

This paper investigates the welfare effects of brain-drain taxes levied by non-benevolent governments, whereby a country collects a tax from skilled emigrants but potentially wastes a sizable portion of the revenue. Using a model in which taxes are chosen to maximize expected political rents, I show that the availability of a brain-drain tax increases a weighted sum of citizen utilities. However, the government's optimal brain-drain tax is found to be higher than the level that maximizes this weighted sum. In another model, a brain-drain tax is found to be desirable when governments use public good expenditures to compete for mobile residents.     

Inequality,growth, and environmental quality trade‐offs in a model with human capital accumulation

This paper develops a simple endogenous growth model where pollution exposure and vulnerability are unequally spread across the population, and growth and distribution are endogenous. In this set‐up, we investigate whether trade‐offs between growth, distributional, and environmental concerns may emerge. We show that a tighter environmental policy reduces income inequality and can improve both growth and total welfare. Immediate welfare losses, though, do occur, and are larger for countries that start at low levels of environmental quality (e.g. developing countries).     

Is there a “reform fatigue” in the euro area?

The absence of monetary policy within a currency union increases the need for structural reforms that make the participating economies more flexible. However, the absence of exchange rate risk with respect to the other members of the union may reduce the urgency for such reforms. A number of other considerations also suggest that theory is ambiguous about the impact of participating in a currency union on progress in structural reforms. This paper addresses this issue empirically for the euro area. The results suggest that reforms in the euro area seem to have decelerated following the introduction of the euro, but from a fast pace. The paper discusses a number of possible explanations, including “reform fatigue,” the absence of “market punishment,” and “good-times” complacency. Estimates from an empirical growth model suggest that the slowing of reforms may slow down annual output growth by up to 0.2%. However, the results are preliminary and depend on the area of reform considered. Furthermore, the reform dynamics may change with the euro area starting slowing at the end of 2007.     

Growth effects of environmental policy when pollution affects health

In this paper, we develop a R&D-based growth model with a pollution externality and a health production sector. We study how health-impairing pollution affects long term growth, and the effect of an emissions' reduction policy (tax). We show that a tighter environmental tax has positive effects on growth via two channels. On the one hand, it improves workers' health and, thereby, productivity; on the other hand, it induces a reallocation of resources towards R&D and, thereby, higher research intensity. The size of the growth effect of a tighter environmental tax, and the level of the optimal environmental tax, are both positively correlated with the weight individuals place on health relative to consumption. As for welfare, a tighter environmental tax brings about utility gains in the long run and, potentially, also in the short run.     

Donations in a recursive dynamic model

Abstract.  This paper studies how donations respond to unexpected permanent changes in income and tax rates in a recursive dynamic model. The dynamic approach yields several interesting insights. If marginal tax rates are progressive, a permanent jump in a household's income increases its consumption and donations in the short run, but has no effect in the long run. The permanent income elasticity of current donations is likely to exceed one. If the marginal tax rate is flat, the jump in income raises consumption and donations in both the short and the long run. A permanent marginal tax rate cut raises consumption and donations in the long run if marginal tax rates are progressive, while it reduces donations in the short run if it has little direct impact on tax payments. If the marginal tax rate is flat, a tax cut has a positive effect on consumption in both the short and the long run, but has an ambiguous effect on donations.