Trade and Real Wages: a Macroeconomic Model*

We offer a new paradigm to understand the effects of trade on factor rewards. It utilizes the classical‐Keynesian model, and shows that normally a country’s trade deficit hurts labor by lowering the real wage, but benefits the owners of capital. The effects of tariffs on factor rewards and employment are opposite to those of the trade deficit, which falls with a rise in the tariff rate. Countries with trade shortfalls unambiguously benefit from their tariffs, because laborers far outnumber capitalists, who suffer from the declining interest rate. Thus, tariffs lead to a rise in social welfare in trade‐deficit countries.     

Conflict,distribution, and finance in alternative macroeconomic traditions

Power and conflict are issues that loom large in the work of David Gordon. They are also issues that are largely absent in conventional macroeconomics. This paper shows how these concepts can be introduced within alternative macroeconomic traditions, and it shows how their significance depends on the particulars governing the construction of the macroeconomic process. The paper details the implicit economic process embedded in the new classical, neo-Keynesian, classical Marxist, and Kaleckian constructions of macroeconomics. It then develops a general post Keynesian model that fuses the insights of the classical Marxist and Kaleckian models regarding the significance of conflict and income distribution, with the insights of the neo-Keynesian model regarding the place of finance. Last, the paper argues that finance matters both for aggregate demand and as a worker discipline device. This represents a supply side channel for finance that links with modern new classical models that emphasize credit rationing     

A graphical exposition of a more complete Keynesian system

This paper uses an expanded version of the widely cited Smith model to show the classical natural rate of interest and employment results as a special case of a more general Keynesian model. The model's equilibrium level of employment and real interest rate depend on the inflation rate. The classical results apply to changes in the price level while the Keynesian results apply to changes in the inflation rate. The model assumes inflation is anticipated in equilibrium. Violation of the classical results does not depend on market imperfections such as sticky prices or information costs.     

Classical and Keynesian unemployment in Austria

The labor market in a macroeconometric model of Austria is used to determine the natural unemployment rate, full-employment (F.E.) output, and the F.E. real wage for 1966–92. Gaps between actual and F.E. variables are examined analytically and historically. Observed unemployment is decomposed into natural, hidden, classical, and Keynesian components. Classical unemployment is associated with the real wage gap, while Keynesian unemployment depends on the output gap. A rise in the natural rate is found to account for almost all of the increase in unemployment between 1966–74 and 1975–81, but an increase in Keynesian unemployment is the major factor in the rise of unemployment between 1975–81 and 1982–92. A fiscal shock to the complete model is found to increase real GDP for a year or two, reducing Keynesian unemployment without an appreciable rise in classical unemployment; the wage gap is eventually increased, however, producing a modest rise in classical unemployment.A lengthier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association, Graz, April 14–16, 1993. The generous finacial support of the Jubiläumsfonds of the Austrian National Bank for the research of which this paper is a part is gratefully acknowledged.     

Imperfectly competitive cycles with Keynesian and Walrasian features

We consider a multi-sector overlapping generations model with oligopolistic firms in the output markets and wage-setting trade unions in the labour markets. A coordination problem between firms creates multiple temporary equilibria which are either Walrasian or of the Keynesian unemployment type. There exist many deterministic and stochastic equilibrium cycles fluctuating between Keynesian recession and Walrasian boom periods with arbitrarily long phases in each regime. The cycles are in accordance with certain empirical regularities. Money is neutral and superneutral, but appropriate countercyclical fiscal policies stabilize the cycles in a textbook Keynesian way.     

Non-nested tests of new classical versus Keynesian models: further evidence

This paper re-runs the experiment conducted by Dadkhah and Valbuena (1985), using data generated by the Australian, Canadian, Japanese, Swiss and Swedish economies. The aim of this exercise is to discriminate between new classical and Keynesian accounts of the business cycle. The results obtained in the present study are broadly supportive of Dadkhah and Valbuena's earlier findings in that the Keynesian model generally outperforms the new classical alternative.     

Labor Taxation in Search Equilibrium with Home Production

Conventional models of equilibrium unemployment typically imply that proportional taxes on labor earnings are neutral with respect to unemployment as long as the tax does not affect the replacement rate provided by unemployment insurance, i.e. unemployment benefits relative to after–tax earnings. When home production is an option, the conventional results may no longer hold. This paper uses a search equilibrium model with home production to examine the employment and welfare implications of labor taxes. The employment effect of a rise in a proportional tax is found to be negative for sufficiently low replacement rates, whereas it is ambiguous for moderate and high replacement rates. Numerical calibrations of the model indicate that employment generally falls when labor taxes are raised.     

Production,unemployment and wage flexibility in an ICT-assisted economy: A model

This paper presents a simple macroeconomic model in which a fall in money wages has contractionary effects on output and employment. As it is well known this argument in itself is not novel: the contractionary effect of a rise in the mark-up is a standard result in Kaleckian models of imperfect competition. The new contribution of this paper lies in the fact that the contractionary effect of a money wage decline is consistent with perfect competition and rationality of economic agents. This result depends on an original specification of the production side and the associated implications for pricing. This specification, which embraces many features of modern production (characterized by a massive use of ICT), represents the first attempt to use Georgescu Roegen's contribution to production analysis within a Keynesian macroeconomic framework.     

Walras' Law and Keynesian Macroeconomics

This paper examines the claim that Keynesian models violate Walras' law. Walras' law is founded in the logic of exchange. Standard statements misrepresent it, as it pertains to a monetary economy. Keynesian models are consistent with Walras' law once this misrepresentation is corrected. The law holds for both notional and effective demands. It also holds in unconstrained Walrasian equilibria, constrained Walrasian equilibria, and constrained non-Walrasian equilibria. The latter corresponds to a Keynesian conception of equilibrium: markets need not clear, but agents expectations must be fulfilled.     

Alternative Theories of Competition: evidence from Greek manufacturing

The objective of this paper is to evaluate empirically the relevance of the neoclassical, post-Keynesian, and classical theories of competition in the light of the available empirical evidence from Greek large-scale manufacturing industries. The econometric analysis shows that the classical and post-Keynesian models provide a fairly good account of profit differentials, whereas the neoclassical performed the worst of the three. Between the classical and post-Keynesian models, we find that the classical is more consistent with the phenomena that it is designed to explain. Finally, a hybrid model combining variables from the three alternative theories displays the highest explanatory power.     

The Fall and Rise of Keynesian Economics*

Keynesian economics came under much criticism in the 1970s This paper argues that the decline in Keynesian economics and the rise in, notably, new classical economics in this period related to their respective theoretical appeal rather than their ability to explain developments in the macroeconomy. As this has become increasingly recognized, and with the development of sound microeconomic foundations, Keynesian economics has again been on the rise.     

Devaluation: Keynesian trade models and the monetary approach: The role of nominal and real wage rigidity

Labor market assumptions provide the crucial ingredients by which we distinguish between a Keynesian and a classical monetary trade model (monetary approach). Domestic and foreign goods are perfect substitutes and the law of one price holds. This minimal model should be appreciated as an income-cum-price specie flow mechanism although the long-run equilibrating process is not discussed in any detail. The paper stresses the interplay between demand pull and cost-push factors as a result of exchange rate changes.     

A macroeconomic rationing model of the belgian economy

This paper presents a small macroeconometric model that allows explicitly for the existence of rationing on the goods and labour markets and clearly distinguishes the three well-known regimes: Keynesian unemployment, classical unemployment and repressed inflation. The basic structure of the model contains two equations that can be estimated by single equation techniques. Estimation on Belgian postwar data establishes both the feasibility and the usefulness of the quantity rationing approach. Empirical results also reveal after 1972 an increasing discrepancy between the amount of labour supplied and the potential employment level determined by existing production capacities.     

Wage share,globalization and crisis: the case of the manufacturing industry in Korea,Mexico and Turkey

The aim of this paper is to analyze the changes in the wage share in the manufacturing industry in Mexico, Turkey and Korea in the era of globalization. The focus is on the one hand on the effects of globalization on the wage share, which is measured by the effects of international trade and FDI intensity of the economy. On the other hand, the process of opening up has been accompanied by major currency crises in most developing countries in the last decade, which has affected the wage share through exchange rate depreciation and economic recession. The paper develops a Post‐Keynesian conflicting claims model for an open economy under the pressure of globalization, and an equation for the wage share is estimated for each country using the Seemingly Unrelated Regression method. The results show that both recessions and nominal depreciations have a clear and lasting negative effect on the manufacturing wage share in all countries, whereas the effect of openness, in particular international trade depends on industrial policy structure. Increased export intensity leads to a decline in the manufacturing wage share in Turkey and Mexico, but has no significant effect in Korea. The positive expectations from FDI are also not materialized in any of the three countries.     

Keynesian Multipliers, Direct Crowding Out, and the Optimal Provision of Public Goods

This paper studies Keynesian multipliers in a macroeconomic model with monopolistic competition. We allow public and private consumption goods to be perfect substitutes in private utility. This enables us to study the effect of direct crowding out on the size of national income, profit and employment multipliers for a given rise in real public spending. A positive real national income multiplier is obtained if consumers value public consumption less than private consumption. In addition, we determine the effective marginal cost of public funds and the optimal provision of public goods, both in the short run and in the long run.     

The three regimes of the IS-LM model: A non-Walrasian analysis

Three different versions of the IS-LM model are generally found in the literature: A first version assumes both price and wage rigid, and excess supply on the two markets. A second version assumes a rigid wage, but a flexible price clearing the goods market. Finally, a third version assumes that both markets are cleared. We develop in this paper a synthetic model which displays the three above cases as particular regimes of the same model, by formalizing the implicit assumption of Keynesian models that the price and wage levels are rigid downwards, but flexible upwards. The resulting non-Walrasian equilibria can be of three types, which correspond to the three versions of the IS-LM model described above. In each case we show how production and employment are determined, and compute the multipliers for fiscal and monetary policy. Finally, the parameter space is partitioned into three subregions corresponding to each regime.     

TARGETS IN THE TAYLOR RULE: INFLATION,SPEED LIMIT,OR PRICE LEVEL?

This paper explores the link between alternative targets in the Taylor rule and their empirical fit using real‐time U.S. macroeconomic data. We first study the stabilizing properties of the classical Taylor rule (inflation targeting, IT) and add either a price‐level target (PLT) or output gap quasigrowth target (speed‐limit targeting, SLT) in the context of the standard New Keynesian model. We demonstrate that, although only SLT has the same functional form as the optimal interest‐rate reaction function, both PLT and SLT stabilize the model macroeconomy against a cost‐push shock for a wide range of parameter values better than IT. We then estimate all three specifications using the Greenbook data. We find much stronger support for SLT than PLT and discuss pitfalls in estimating the latter that are present in existing literature. (JEL E52, E58)     

Tariffs,quotas, and voluntary export restraints with endogenous labor supply

This paper develops a two-good, small-country, general equilibrium trade model with endogenous labor supply and wage taxes, and where trade is restricted by a tariff, or an import quota, or VERs. Within this framework we derive (i) the employment and welfare effects of the three types of trade restrictions, (ii) the price effect of an import quota and VERs, and (iii) the shadow price of foreign exchange under each type of trade restriction. The present results are compared to those where (i) factor supplies are fixed, and (ii) perfect international capital mobility exists.     

Market forms and effective demand: Keynesian results with perfect competition ∗

In recent years there has been a flourishing of models with microfoundations based on imperfect (or monopolistic) competition that claim to yield Keynesian results which, it is held, are incompatible with perfect competi-tion. The paper shows that Keynes’s results do not depend on market forms but are contingent on his treatment of investment. In Keynes’s analysis, the existence of underemployment equilibria is demonstrated regardless of the assumed market form. Far from taking into account the importance of investment, recent models with ‘Keynesian results’ ignore investment altogether.

The article argues that if the investment demand function, with its distinctive characteristics, is removed, involuntary unemployment can be explained only by imperfections or rigidities that prevent producers from pushing their supply up to the level of full employment. A conclusion that Keynes wanted to avoid.

The introduction of a hypothesis of market forms different from imperfect competition may be useful in order to develop macroeconomics along more realistic lines, however, as the conclusions of the paper suggest, this hypothesis loses its analytical power if made separately from a satisfactory treatment of investment.     

Accounting for the business cycle: Nominal rigidities, factor heterogeneity, and Austrian capital theory

An Austrian interpretation of the New Keynesian small menu cost model of the business cycle is proposed. Austrian and New Keynesian business cycle theories share the feature that the cycle is generated by rigidities which prevent the economy from adapting instantaneously to changing conditions. Austrian business cycle theory is capital-based, focusing on credit expansion which artificially lowers interest rates and causes an investment boom and unsustainable business expansion. In contrast, the New Keynesian small menu cost model of the business cycle is based on nominal rigidities which prevent markets from clearing. Small menu costs introduce dichotomous behavior, where firms find it locally optimal to avoid instantaneous output price adjustments in the face of the cost, but this local optimum results in economy-wide output and employment fluctuations which are much greater in relative magnitude. The small menu cost model of the business cycle is extended and reinterpreted in light of Austrian business cycle theory with heterogeneous, multiply-specific capital, thus providing a rigorous formalization of the Austrian business cycle. The Austrian interpretation of this New Keynesian model fortuitously addresses several of its shortcomings. JEL classification B53, E12, E23, E32