Model uncertainty,economic development,and welfare costs of business cycles

Some researchers argue that the welfare gains from eliminating consumption fluctuations for the United States are not small once model uncertainty is taken into account. This paper presents new evidence on the welfare gains from eliminating model uncertainty using a data set from a broad range of countries. It quantifies exactly the effect of model uncertainty on the welfare gains using an analytical formula. The results indicate that most countries derive much larger gains from the reduction of model uncertainty compared with the United States. Countries at higher stages of economic development tend to have lower welfare gains because their gains from eliminating model uncertainty become smaller. This relationship does not depend on country size or trade openness.     

Losers amongst the Losers:: The welfare effects of the great recession across cohorts

This paper studies the effect of deep recessions on intergenerational inequality by quantifying the welfare effects on households at different phases of the life cycle. Deep recessionary episodes are characterized by large declines in the prices of real and financial assets and in employment. The former levies high welfare costs on older households who own financial wealth, the latter determines labour income losses and destroys the human capital of younger cohorts, lowering their productivity. The paper extends previous analyses in the literature by including permanent labour income losses in an OLG model calibrated to match the Great Recession. The analysis shows that younger households lose more than double of all other living cohorts, as younger household become unemployed and experience a decline in their future income. The dynamics of households’ consumption and portfolio composition between 2007 and 2013 in the US are consistent with the predictions of the model.     

Internal trade,productivity and interconnected industries: A quantitative analysis

Does trade within a country affect welfare and productivity? What are the magnitude and consequences of costs to such trade? To answer these questions, we exploit unique Canadian data to measure internal trade costs in a variety of ways—they are large and vary across sectors and provinces. To quantify their consequences for welfare and productivity, we use a recent multi‐sector trade model featuring rich input–output relationships. We find interprovincial trade is an important contributor to Canada's GDP and welfare, though there are significant costs to such trade. Reducing interprovincial trade costs by 10% yields aggregate gains of 0.9%; eliminating our preferred estimates of costs, gains average between 3% and 7%—equivalent to real GDP gains between $50 billion and $130 billion. Finally, as policy reforms are often sector specific, we liberalize sectors one at a time and find gains are largest in highly interconnected industries.     

Re-evaluation of Welfare Changes during the Transition in Poland

The costs of shortages/rationing are not captured by standard consumer price indices. Thus the change in real GDP per capita is an over-estimate of welfare losses in transition economies. In this study virtual prices are used to calculate new cost of living indices, making it possible to construct more accurate pre-reform and post-reform welfare comparisons. The results for Poland using virtual prices show 62-84% decline in welfare over the transition 1987-92. This welfare loss is approximately one-third of the value obtained using actual prices.     

Congestion pricing of Canadian airports

Abstract Under congestion pricing, Canadian airports would annually save between $72 and $105 million. Social costs per landing and takeoff decrease about $300 at Toronto and Vancouver and $50 at Calgary and Montreal. Slot constraints fail to eliminate this airport congestion. Congestion prices are lower on average than existing weight‐based prices. Current airport capacity accommodates at least five more years of traffic growth before congestion reaches current levels. Substantial welfare gains occur even if dominant airlines already internalize their self‐imposed delays. This article calculates equilibrium congestion pricing schedules, traffic rates, queuing delays, layover times, and connection times by time of day.     

我国房地产业的金融负外部性考察

房地产业有明显的金融属性,其虚拟化易导致泡沫化。本文对长期以来所认为的房地产业是国民经济的支柱产业、房价上升的财富效应提出质疑,认为当前房地产业的迅猛发展、高房价的获益小于其带来的社会成本,即房地产市场在追求利润最大化过程中对社会造成福利损失,其经济绩效是局部、片面的,而社会成本是全局性的,此即房地产业金融负外部性效应。房地产业金融负外部性表现在全局性的社会成本,这主要有拉动通货膨胀、对实体经济的挤出效应、银行危机的外部成本、侵占耕地的代际成本、伦理代价、社会不稳定等,这些都是房地产业的成本外溢或成本社会化,是社会福利的纯损失。政府应当在降低房地产金融负外部性中扮演重要角色,通过控制房价与合理调控缓解负外部性影响。     

Transportation capital and its effects on the U.S. economy: A general equilibrium approach

We analyze the effect of the US transportation system on economic activity by building a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with a taxpayer-funded transportation capital stock. We highlight stark differences between the positive welfare effects of additional infrastructure spending in the long run, and its potentially negative effects when we account for the large transition (time and delay) costs to build. We also quantify large differences between the effects of additional infrastructure spending and efficient transportation policies, such as congestion pricing and eliminating laws that artificially inflate input prices, concluding that taxpayer-funded transportation improvements that increase GDP significantly may produce smaller welfare gains than efficient policies that increase GDP modestly.     

Quantifying the impact of services liberalization in a developing country

We compare goods versus services liberalization in terms of welfare, outputs, and factor prices in Tunisia using a CGE model with multiple products, services and trading partners. Restraints on services trade involve both cross-border supply (tariff-equivalent price wedges) and on foreign ownership (monopoly-rent distortions and inefficiency costs). Goods-trade liberalization yields a modest gain in aggregate welfare. Reducing service barriers generate relatively large welfare gains and low adjustment costs. Services liberalization increases economic activity in all sectors and raise the real returns to both capital and labor. The results point to the potential importance of deregulating services provision for economic development.     

Option contracting in the California water market

Temporary water transfers, as achievable under option contracts, capture gains from trade that would go unrealized if only permanent transfers of water rights were possible. This paper develops a bilateral option contracting model for water which includes the possibility of conveyance losses and random delivery. Seller-optimal and socially optimal option contracts are characterized in terms of relevant base and strike prices, as well as contract volumes, from an ex-ante and an ex-post point of view. Lastly, welfare gains are estimated, and actual contract prices in California are compared to model-predicted prices.     

Labour Rents,Adjustment Costs and the Cost of US Steel Trade Restraints in the 1980s

Recent studies have compared labour gains from protection in import-competing industries with the costs of protection and found that those gains are not large enough to justify trade restraints. This study utilizes a new empirical technique for estimating the costs and benefits of protection in a partial equilibrium framework, and provides a complete and consistent accounting of labour benefits including both labour rents and adjustment costs saved. We find that a small steel tariff could have generated net welfare gains for the US in the 1980s, even though actual protection through Voluntary Restraint Agreements generated net welfare losses.     

To integrate with a high- or low-wage country: That is the question

This paper considers the question of whether a country with the intermediate capital–labor ratio is better off forming a free trade area with the higher or lower wage country. Typical analyses of gains from trade ignore the effects of free trade on factor prices. When Europe forms a free trade area with a high-wage economy, the equalized wage rises and rent declines, while the price of the importable declines. Workers unambiguously benefit, but integration has an ambiguous effect on capitalists. However, consumers as a whole benefit from the integration and workers can more than offset the losses of the capitalists. On the other hand, Europe's integration with a low-wage economy raises rent but lowers the wage and the price of the labor-intensive good. Accordingly, capitalists unambiguously benefit, but integration has an ambiguous effect on workers. Again, welfare of all consumers rises and the capitalists can more than offset the losses of workers.     

Effects of Appliance Standards on Product Price and Attributes: An Hedonic Pricing Model

The tradeoffs between energy efficiency gains and product attributes as a result of the implementation of federal energy performance standards are examined. Hedonic pricing relationships are used to estimate changes in standardized marginal attribute prices for freezer volumes, food volumes, and annual energy consumption for refrigerators and refrigerator/freezers. From 1987/88 to 1993, energy performance standards significantly reduced energy consumption and at the same time, a historical decline in "quality-adjusted" real prices continued without disruption and consumers appeared to experience a welfare gain as a result of improving levels of energy efficiency.     

Monetary policy with linear information costs

The paper adresses the problem of a monetary economy with costs of information, imposed in linear form. In particular, we make use of a strategic market game with money where equilibria are standardly non-Walrasian, permitting an active role to monetary policy. The imposition of information costs alters the demand of real balances since traders demand extra money for gathering and processing the necessary information. As a result, money injections could be proved welfare improving only when the induced information costs do not offset the resulted gains to trade.     

Tax reforms under market distortions in product and labour markets

Using a two-agent model comprised of capitalists and workers, this paper examines the importance of imperfect competition in product and labour markets in determining the welfare effects of tax reform. The reform considered consists of eliminating the capital tax alongside a concurrent rise in the labour tax. In contrast to the perfectly competitive model, models with product or labour market failures each result in welfare losses for the workers in the long-run. In a realistic calibration to the UK economy, combining these imperfections implies that this tax reform will be Pareto improving in the long-run. However, these welfare gains over longer time horizons come at the cost of short-run losses, which, consistent with previous research, result in welfare losses for workers post-reform.     

RETROSPECTIVE ON OIL PRICES

Energy is the most abundant resource in the universe. While energy supplies are unbounded, useful energy is not. To convert naturally occurring energy resources into useful work, mankind must invest capital and labor–resources that normally are scarce. To produce or use primary energy, both producers and consumers must invest in specialized and often inflexible equipment. In calculating the perceived value of present and future oil supplies, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and almost everyone else mistook for economic rent the windfall profits associated with short-term rigidities in energy use. Attention focused on the cost of manufacturing a synthetic crude oil, rather than on the incremental cost of changing consumption patterns in end-use markets. Mis judgments on the future value of oil were compounded by ill-conceived government policies and inaccurate forecasts. Substitution of oil for other energy commodities can occur at nearly every point along the chain downstream from the production of primary resources, but it occurs most abundantly and importantly at the point of final consumption. Liquid petroleum remains the cheapest fuel to transport, chiefly because a vast infrastructure already exists to handle it. The steady advance of technology explains the long-term decline in the real prices of most products, including retail energy prices. Often, the increasing unit costs of harvesting or extracting a finite scarce natural resource have been more than offset by improvements in manufacturing or end-use technology. The mix of commodities bought and sold in the next generation may be unrecognizable to today's consumer. Thus, the cost of any one primary resource or intermediate product may be irrelevant.     

Renewable energy subsidies: Second-best policy or fatal aberration for mitigation?

This paper evaluates the consequences of renewable energy policies on welfare and energy prices in a world where carbon pricing is imperfect and the regulator seeks to limit emissions to a (cumulative) target. The imperfectness of the carbon price is motivated by political concerns regarding distributional effects of increased energy prices. Hence, carbon prices are considered to be temporarily or permanently absent or endogenously constrained by their effect on energy prices. We use a global general equilibrium model with an intertemporal fossil resource sector and calculate intertemporally optimal policies from a broad set of policy instruments including carbon taxes, renewable energy subsidies and feed-in-tariffs, among others. If carbon pricing is permanently missing, mitigation costs increase by a multiple (compared to the optimal carbon pricing policy) for a wide range of parameters describing extraction costs, renewable energy costs, substitution possibilities and normative attitudes. Furthermore, we show that small deviations from the second-best subsidy can lead to strong increases in emissions and consumption losses. This confirms the rising concerns about the occurrence of unintended side effects of climate policy – a new version of the green paradox. Smart combinations of carbon prices and renewable energy subsidies, however, can achieve ambitious mitigation targets at moderate additional costs without leading to high energy price increases.     

Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms

This paper examines how country, industry, and firm characteristics interact in general equilibrium to determine nations' responses to trade liberalization. When firms possess heterogeneous productivity, countries differ in relative factor abundance, and industries vary in factor intensity, falling trade costs induce reallocations of resources both within and across industries and countries. These reallocations generate substantial job turnover in all sectors, spur relatively more creative destruction in comparative advantage industries than in comparative disadvantage industries, and magnify ex ante comparative advantage to create additional welfare gains from trade. The improvements in aggregate productivity as countries liberalize dampen and can even reverse the real-wage losses of scarce factors.     

Nodal pricing of electricity: how much does it cost to get it wrong?

Economists know how to calculate optimal prices for electricity transmission. These are rarely applied in practice. This paper develops a 13-node model of the transmission system in England and Wales, incorporating losses and transmission constraints. It is solved with optimal prices, and with uniform prices for demand and for generation, re-dispatching when needed to take account of transmission constraints. Moving from uniform prices to optimal nodal prices could raise welfare by 1.3% of the generators’ revenues, and would be less vulnerable to market power. It would also send better investment signals, but create politically sensitive regional gains and losses.      

企业在同质产品市场的差异化战略行为——一个对我国反垄断立法的产业组织理论解释

我国在加入WTO后,一些重要的服务领域面临着全面对外开放。由于转换成本的存在,使得该领域中本来在购买前功能相近的同质商品或服务,在购买后成为异质的商品。企业因而拥有相对于消费者的事后垄断的权力。为此,企业有动机在初期采取战略行为吸引消费者。这既缓和了后续阶段的企业间竞争,也在整体上将该行业的产品价格维持较高水平。它可能会降低社会效率和消费者福利。文章通过分析企业间在同质商品市场竞争的市场效果和福利后果,为在我国该领域反垄断立法提供了理论解释。     

Countries, regions and trade: On the welfare impacts of economic integration

We study the impact of falling international trade costs and falling national transport costs on the economic geography of countries involved in an integration process. Each country is formed by two regions between which labor is mobile, whereas there is no international mobility. Goods can be traded both nationally and internationally at positive, but different, costs. A decrease in trade costs and/or in transport costs has a direct impact on prices and wages, which allows us to account for the impact of changes in these parameters on the economic geography and welfare of each country. We show that, as trade barriers fall, the benefits of integration come after its costs. We also show that national transport policies are of the beggar-thy-neighbor type. On both counts, policy coordination is required in the process of economic integration.