GROWTH AND BUBBLES WITH CONSUMPTION EXTERNALITIES*

This paper explores the role of consumption externalities in an overlapping generations economy with capital accumulation. If consumers in each generation are concerned with other agents’ consumption behaviours, there exist intergenerational as well as intragenerational consumption externalities. It is the presence of intergenreational consumption externalities that may produce fundamental effects both on equilibrium dynamics and on steady‐state characterization of the economy. This paper demonstrates this fact in the context of a simple model of endogenously growing, overlapping‐generations economy with or without asset bubbles.     

School Choice and the Intergenerational Poverty Trap

This paper formulates a dynamic altruistic model of parental choice of school quality and intergenerational social mobility. It shows that when there are many school qualities, the earnings of children as a function of parental schooling investment is a non‐concave function, which leads to multiple steady‐state equilibria. The paper studies the intergenerational dynamics of parental schooling investment and gives conditions on the rate of return from parental schooling investment under which some families are stuck in an intergenerational poverty trap. The policy implications are also discussed.     

Old‐age Social Security versus Forward Intergenerational Public Goods Provision

This paper introduces an overlapping‐generations model with earnings heterogeneity and borrowing constraints. The labour income tax and the allocation of tax revenue between social security and forward intergenerational public goods are determined in a bidimensional majoritarian voting game played by successive generations. The political equilibrium is characterized by an ends‐against‐the‐middle equilibrium where low‐income and high‐income individuals form a coalition in favour of a lower tax rate and less social security while middle‐income individuals favour a higher tax rate and greater social security. Government spending then shifts from social security to public goods provision if higher wage inequality is associated with a borrowing constraint and a high elasticity of marginal utility of youth consumption.     

International Integration, Risk and the Welfare State

How does international integration affect the welfare state? Does it call for a leaner or an expanded welfare state? International integration may affect the distortions caused by welfare state activities but also the risks motivating social insurance mechanisms. This paper addresses these potentially counteracting effects in a fully specified intertemporal two–country stochastic endowment model, focusing on the implications when product market integration reduces trade frictions across national product markets. It is shown that lower trade frictions may increase the marginal costs of public funds, which gives an argument for reducing (steady–state) public consumption. However, tighter integration of product markets unambiguously leads to more variability in private consumption, and this gives a case for expanding the social insurance provided via state–contingent public sector activities (automatic stabilizers). JEL classification: E30; F10; H11     

Relative price shifts,economies of scale and poverty during economic transition1

Economic transition is associated with significant shifts in relative prices between private and public goods. If, as a result, public goods claim a larger share of total expenditures, economies of scale in consumption increase. We show how relative price changes might alter the welfare of different‐sized households in the short run and over time. We illustrate, for a selection of transition economies, that conventional poverty profiles are quite sensitive to assumptions made about economies of scale in consumption. In particular, the common view that large households with many children are poor relative to small households (such as those comprising the elderly) is shown to be highly non‐robust.     

THE EFFECT OF FDI ON LOCAL EDUCATION EXPENDITURES: EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED STATES

The intense competition for foreign direct investment (FDI) by state and local governments within the United States has raised concerns among some that this leads to the underprovision of public services and possibly welfare losses for local communities. Economic analysis of this hypothesis yields mixed results. This paper investigates the impact of FDI on local education expenditures both theoretically and empirically. The theoretical model shows an ambiguous impact of FDI on local expenditures for education. Empirically using US state‐level data from 1991 to 2000 and the system‐GMM estimator that controls for fixed effects, times series issues and endogeneity, I find evidence that FDI is positively correlated with increased expenditures on education.     

Self-Enforcing Intergenerational Social Contracts for Pareto Improving Pollution Mitigation

We consider, in an overlapping generations model with an environmental externality, a scheme of contracts between any two successive generations. Under each contract, agents of the young generation invest a share of their labor income in pollution mitigation in exchange for a transfer in the second period of their lives. The transfer is financed in a pay-as-you-go manner by the next young generation. Different from previous work we assume that the transfer is granted as a subsidy to capital income rather than lump sum. We show that the existence of a contract which is Pareto improving over the situation without contract for any two generations requires a sufficiently high level of income. In a steady state with social contracts in each period, the pollution stock is lower compared to a steady state without contracts. Analytical and numerical analysis of the dynamics under Nash bargaining suggests that under reasonable conditions, also steady state income and welfare are higher. Delaying the implementation of a social contract for too long or imposing a contract with too low mitigation can be costly: Net income may inevitably fall below the threshold in finite time so that Pareto improving mitigation is no longer possible and the economy converges to a steady state with high pollution stock and low income and welfare. In the second part of the paper, we study a game theoretic setup, taking into account that credibly committing to a contract might not be possible. We show that with transfers granted as a subsidy to capital income, there exist mitigation transfer schemes which are both Pareto improving and give no generation an incentive to deviate from any of its contracts even in a dynamically efficient economy. Social contracts coexist with private savings.     

Fiscal policies, environmental pollution and economic growth

This paper develops a model of endogenous economic growth with special consideration to the role of productive public expenditure and environmental pollution; and analyses the properties of optimal fiscal policy in the steady state growth equilibrium. We consider the level of consumption as the source of pollution. Government allocates its tax revenue between pollution abatement expenditure and productive public expenditure. Optimum ratio of productive public expenditure to national income is equal to the competitive output share of the public input, when productive public expenditure is depicted as tax revenue minus abatement expenditure. However, the proportional income tax rate exceeds the competitive output share of the public input. There is no conflict between the social welfare maximizing solution and the growth rate maximizing solution in the steady state growth equilibrium. The unique steady state growth equilibrium appears to be a saddle-point when the growth rate is above a critical level and the steady state equilibrium growth rate in the market economy is not necessarily lower than the socially efficient growth rate.     

The Cost of Pollution on Longevity,Welfare and Economic Stability

This paper presents an overlapping generations model where pollution, private and public health expenditures are all determinants of longevity. Public expenditures, financed through labour taxation, provide both public health and abatement. We study the role of these three components of longevity on welfare and economic stability. At the steady state, we show that an appropriate fiscal policy may enhance welfare. However, when pollution is heavily harmful for longevity, the economy might experience aggregate instability or endogenous cycles. Nonetheless, a fiscal policy, which raises the share of public spending devoted to health, may display stabilizing virtues and rule out cycles. This allows us to recommend the design of the public policy that may comply with the dynamic and welfare objectives.     

Government expenditure,external and domestic public debt,and economic growth

This paper analyzes the relationship between government expenditure, tax on returns to assets, public debt, and growth in an endogenous growth model. Public debt is composed of two components, domestic debt and external debt. We show conditions for existence, uniqueness, and multiplicity of the steady states. More precisely, existence of steady state requires a sufficiently high productivity and a sufficiently low tax on returns to assets. We also provide the effects of an increase in the tax rate on returns to assets on the steady state. In particular, the relation between public spending and the tax rate has a bell shape. Domestic debt unambiguously increases with tax whereas external debt displays an inverted U‐shaped curve. A high tax rate leads to a reallocation of public debt in favor of domestic debt (to the detriment of external debt). The effect of taxation on consumption (and production) also displays a nonlinear pattern when the output elasticity of capital is lower than unity (the effect is monotonously increasing if this elasticity is unity). We also derive the conditions under which a tax increase can boost or reduce the balanced growth rate.     

Choosing Price or Quantity? The Role of Delegation and Network Externalities in a Mixed Duopoly

This paper considers a differentiated goods managerial mixed duopoly composed of one social welfare‐maximising public firm and one profit‐maximising private firm. We model the firm choice of the strategic contract. We find that when the strength of network effects is sufficiently strong, the price competition can become the unique equilibrium market structure. Furthermore, we show that there exists an area of the degree of product differentiation and the strength of network effects such that the situation wherein the public firm chooses its price contract whereas the private firm chooses its quantity contract can become the unique equilibrium structure.     

A CLOSED‐FORM SOLUTION FOR DETERMINING THE BURDEN OF PUBLIC DEBT IN NEOCLASSICAL GROWTH MODELS

This paper develops a new approach, termed as the stock approach, to calculate the steady‐state output loss caused by public debt in neoclassical growth models. The novelty of our stock approach is that it provides a closed‐form solution to the steady‐state output‐debt relationship. The main conclusion of the paper is that the steady‐state burden of public debt is country‐specific in neoclassical growth models and it decreases with the private saving rate and increases with the population growth rate, with the exception of the special case where Ricardian equivalence holds.     

Public Expenditure,Environment, and Economic Growth

This paper attempts to develop a model of endogenous growth with special consideration to the role of productive public expenditure in the presence of congestion effect of private capital and environmental pollution. We analyze the properties of the optimal fiscal policy in the steady‐state equilibrium when the level of production of the final good is the source of emission. Government allocates its income tax revenue between pollution abatement expenditure and productive public expenditure. In the steady‐state equilibrium, optimum ratio of productive public expenditure to national income is less than the competitive output share of the public input; and this ratio varies inversely with the magnitude of the emission‐output coefficient. The steady‐state equilibrium appears to be a saddle point; and the market economy growth rate is not necessarily less than the socially efficient growth rate in the steady‐state equilibrium.     

Shocks and the unavoidable road to higher taxes and higher unemployment

This paper considers a matching model in which multiple steady-state unemployment rates exist if government expenditures and unemployment benefits are high enough. The focus on the extensive margin and a possible transition to a steady state with higher unemployment rates imply that the effect of tax rates can be high even when the elasticity between consumption and leisure is low. The matching friction limits transitions between steady states due to self-fulfilling expectations. After a sufficiently large increase in the unemployment rate and after a large enough increase in the tax burden caused by an exogenous increase in government spending, however, transition towards the high-unemployment steady state is unavoidable in an economy with generous unemployment benefits.     

Testing separability of public consumption in household decisions

In this paper we propose a sequential strategy, based on the microeconomic approach of the demand theory, in order to test for separability between private and public consumption. The aim of the present work is to verify, using a conditional almost ideal demand system, whether the different components of public consumption exert conditioning effects on the allocative structure of private spending. The empirical estimation of the model and the separability tests are developed for both a demand system in five functional categories of private spending, and for a demand system in six categories, where the private expenditures on those goods and services which can also be offered by the public sector are enclosed in a single functional category. The results of the separability tests, obtained using UK data for the 1974–2000 period, show that public individual consumption plays an important role in modifying consumer choices, while public collective consumption does not affect private consumption behaviours. The relationships between the different components of private spending and public individual consumption are both of substitutability and complementarity; in particular, we find that public individual consumption and the corresponding private expenditures on ‘Health, education, recreation and social protection’ are complements.     

On Indeterminacy and Growth under Progressive Taxation and Utility‐Generating Government Spending

We examine the theoretical interrelations between progressive income taxation and macroeconomic (in)stability in an otherwise standard one‐sector AK model of endogenous growth with utility‐generating government purchases of goods and services. In sharp contrast to traditional Keynesian‐type stabilization policies, progressive taxation operates like an automatic destabilizer that generates equilibrium indeterminacy and belief‐driven fluctuations in our endogenously growing macroeconomy. Unlike the no‐sustained‐growth counterpart, this instability result is obtained regardless of (i) the degree of the public‐spending preference externality and (ii) whether private and public consumption expenditures are substitutes, complements or additively separable in the household's utility function.     

Public goods,voting, and growth

We study a parametric politico‐economic model of economic growth with productive public goods and public consumption goods. The provision of public goods is funded by a proportional tax. Agents are heterogeneous in their initial capital endowments, discount factors, and the relative weights of public consumption in overall private utility. They vote on the shares of public goods in gross domestic products (GDP). We propose a definition of voting equilibrium, prove the existence and provide a characterization of voting equilibria, and obtain a closed‐form solution for the voting outcomes. Also we introduce a “fictitious” representative agent and interpret the outcome of voting as a choice made by a central planner for his benefit. Finally, we undertake comparative static analysis of the shares of public goods in GDP and of the rate of balanced growth with respect to the discount factors and the preferences for public consumption. The results of this analysis suggest that the representative‐agent version of our model is capable of capturing the interaction between many voting heterogeneous agents only if the heterogeneity is one‐dimensional.     

Heterogeneous Dynasties and the Political Economy of Public Debt

We consider a small open overlapping generations economy with descending altruism. Heterogeneity is introduced by assuming that each parent procreates a fixed proportion of selfish children. Altruistic parents can recognize the type of each child. There is no Ricardian equivalence and an active public intergenerational transfer policy is attractive to altruistic dynasty members, although there may be no unanimity among them. We display reasonable conditions for indirect preferences to be single-peaked and we apply the median voter theorem. We then describe political equilibrium paths and discuss their compatibility with the steady path of an underlying closed economy with autonomous labor productivity growth.
JEL classification : D 31; D 64; D 72; D 91; H 63     

Distributional Effects of Public Education in an Economy with Public Pensions*

We study how the allocation of government expenditures between two major outlays—education and pay‐as‐you‐go social security—affects human capital distribution in an economy with heterogeneous agents. We consider an overlapping generations economy where the government maintains both programs, and allocates tax revenues to finance them. In our model, human capital is one of the factors of production. It is itself produced as a combined result of public inputs and private inputs. Parents' decisions to invest time and material resources in education of their children are motivated by altruism, heterogeneous in its strength across the population, which leads to heterogeneity of incomes. We investigate the effect of an increase in public funding for education on the human capital distribution. We show that in this framework, contrary to some earlier results, increased spending on public education may lead to higher inequality. Our results depend crucially on the interaction of education funding with the social security budget and on the elasticity of substitution in the learning technology.     

GOVERNMENT CONSUMPTION AND THE COMPOSITION OF PRIVATE EXPENDITURE: A CONDITIONAL ERROR CORRECTION MODEL

In this paper we provide empirical evidence of the relationship between government purchases and private expenditure by adopting a microeconomic approach. Using UK quarterly data, a long‐run demand system conditioned to the public sector is obtained by specifying a vector error correction model in which government consumption is assumed as an exogenous I(1) forcing variable. Our findings reject the hypothesis of separability of individual preferences between public and private expenditures, with simultaneous crowding‐out/in effects. Moreover, crowding‐out effects of government consumption on private spending are found to be larger for those goods and services that produce similar utility.