Path-dependent economic progress and regress: The negative role of subsidies in economic growth

This paper develops a two-stage economic growth model with real options and examines the effects of various subsidy policies. The economic stages are the deterministic and stochastic AK stages, and the economy may shift between the two, depending upon state variables and technological shocks. This model allows for path-dependent economic growth that accounts for both club convergence and divergence across countries. Moreover, it is shown that under certain conditions, a decrease in the subsidy rate facilitates the shift from the deterministic to stochastic AK stages, which is defined as “economic progress”, even in the face of an economic crisis, while more subsidies delay economic progress and promote the shift from the stochastic to deterministic AK stages, which is defined as “economic regress”.     

Optimal fiscal policy, uncertainty, and growth

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy in a stochastic endogenous growth model. Due to externalities in human capital accumulation, the market allocation is inefficient, thereby justifying government intervention. The uncertainty stemming from technological disturbances affects the growth rate, which can be explained by precautionary motives of risk averse agents. Fiscal policy means consist of a consumption tax, investment subsidies, and bonds. We obtain counter-acting growth effects of investment subsidies, which are differentiated with respect to deterministic and stochastic capital income components. The policy implications from the deterministic model are substantially extended in the stochastic context. A general rule for a welfare maximizing policy is derived, which is represented by a continuum of alternative tax-transfer-schemes. We discuss three benchmark cases, which crucially differ with respect to their implications regarding the size of the government expenditure share.     

Basic Stochastic Dynamic Systems of Growth and Trade

Uncertainties are intrinsic features of dynamic economic systems, and this paper considers the dynamic implications of factor endowment (labor, capital) uncertainties for a small growing trading economy. The stochastic growth models presented extend the open neoclassical two-sector growth model (Deardorff) to a stochastic environment in continuous time, and extend the diffusion dynamics of one-sector growth models (Merton; Bourguignon) to a trading two-sector economy. It is demonstrated that the basic propositions of deterministic steady-state growth and endogenous growth theory, under some specifications and certain parametric restrictions, are preserved within a stochastic framework.     

An Application of Convergence Theory to Japan's Post-WWII Economic “Miracle”

The author provides an interpretation of the post-World War II economic “miracle” of Japan as a process of economic convergence within the framework of the neoclassical Solow-Swan model of economic growth. He shows how the predictions of the Solow-Swan model are qualitatively consistent with the actual economic record of Japan in the decades following World War II. The article is intended to help in the teaching of economic growth and the Japanese economic miracle, either as part of a macroeconomics course or in an advanced elective course in economic growth and development or in Japan's modern economic history.     

Conditional convergence and the dynamics of the capital-output ratio

Output per worker can be expressed as a function of technological efficiency and of the capital-output ratio. Because technology is exogenous in the Solow model, all of the endogenous convergence dynamics take place through the adjustment of the capital-output ratio. This paper uses the empirical behavior of the capital-output ratio to estimate the speed of conditional convergence of economies towards their steady-state paths. We find that the conditional convergence speed is about seven percent per year. This is somewhat faster than predicted by the Solow model and is significantly higher than reported in most previous studies based on output per worker regressions. We show that, once there are stochastic shocks to technology, standard panel econometric techniques produce downward-biased estimates of convergence speeds, while our approach does not. The views expressed in this paper are our own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland or the ESCB.     

Fluctuations in convex models of endogenous growth, II: Business cycle properties

Using ideas from the endogenous growth literature, we present a model of the endogenous determination of productivity growth based on individual worker decisions about human capital investment. We calibrate a version of the model to match long run growth facts from the US and study the business cycle properties of this model. This approach offers improvements along several dimensions over standard exogenous growth methodologies. Most importantly, our stochastic endogenous growth model generates much greater serial correlation in output growth and labor supply volatility relative to its real business cycle counterpart. We conclude that using the extra discipline of reproducing the trend productivity growth features of the data endogenously constitutes an important missing component from the real business cycle approach.     

Growth and financial liberalization under capital collateral constraints: The striking case of the stochastic AK model with CARA preferences

We consider a small-open, collateral-constrained AK economy. We show that the combination of CARA preferences and uncertainty on capital inflows generates long-term growth while the deterministic counterpart does not: long-term growth is entirely driven by precautionary savings, and the asymptotic growth rate of the expected capital stock is increasing in both the risk magnitude and the Arrow–Pratt absolute risk aversion parameters.     

农村金融发展与经济增长关系的实证研究——以四川为例

以农村金融与经济增长相关理论和Pagano模型为基础,运用计量经济方法对四川1989～2008年农村金融发展与经济增长之间的关系进行了实证分析。研究表明:四川农村金融相关率、资本边际产出率与农村经济增长存在显著的正相关关系,而储蓄率与农村经济增长存在显著的负相关关系。最后结合研究结论提出了一系列符合四川实际情况的农村金融改革的相关政策和建议。     

Public capital,deficit financing,and economic growth in a stochastic economy

This paper examines the relationship among deficit-financing fiscal policy, risk and economic growth in a stochastic endogenous growth model with private and public capital. We show that there are positive balanced-growth rate and a debt-to-GDP ratio that depend on deep parameters such as the income tax rate and the standard deviation of the growth rate of private and public capital. Investment and fiscal shocks influence the mean and variance of the growth rate and the debt dependency rate through portfolio changes and capital accumulation. In particular, an increase in the risk of private investment destabilizes the economy and reduces the mean growth rate if the portfolio change is drastic, and this increase in risk increases the debt-to-GDP ratio. In contrast, an increase in the income tax rate stabilizes the economy, increases the mean growth rate, and has a positive or negative effect on the debt-to-GDP ratio according to the ratio of public to private capital if the income tax rate is sufficiently small.     

Growth and Welfare Effects of Tax Cuts: The Case of a Productive Public Input with Technological Risk

This paper analyzes the dynamic impact of tax cuts within a stochastic model of endogenous growth with a congested public input. A decreasing taxation of deterministic income parts leads to the well-known positive growth effect. Nevertheless, due to the insurance effect associated with the taxation of stochastic income flows, the overall growth impact of taxation is ambiguous. It is shown that the optimal structure of financing government expenditure does not only depend on the degree of rivalry but also on the degree of risk aversion. The optimal real value of government debt decreases with a rise in congestion. We identify that in the case of proportional congestion, the base for tax cuts should be the growth neutral consumption tax. Maximizing the growth rate does not automatically coincide with maximizing welfare. Hence, the base for tax cuts gains importance to realize a welfare optimal policy.     

Output gaps

What is the output gap? I discuss three alternative definitions: the deviation of output from its long-run stochastic trend (i.e., the “Beveridge–Nelson cycle”); the deviation of output from the level consistent with current technologies and normal utilization of capital and labor input (i.e., the “production-function approach”); and the deviation of output from “flexible-price” output (i.e., its “natural rate”). Estimates of each concept are presented from a dynamic–stochastic–general-equilibrium (DSGE) model of the U.S. economy used at the Federal Reserve Board. Four points are emphasized: The DSGE model’s estimate of the gap (for each definition) is very similar to gaps from policy institutions, but the model’s estimate of potential growth has a higher variance and substantially different covariance with GDP growth; the change in the Beveridge–Nelson trend covaries negatively with the change in the gap in the DSGE model, providing a structural model estimate of a controversial parameter; in this model, estimates of the natural-rate concept are similar to those based on the Beveridge–Nelson and production function approaches; and the estimate of the output gap, irrespective of definition, is closely related to unemployment fluctuations.     

Growth and the Current Account in a Small Open Economy

The authors provide a framework with which to analyze growth in a small economy with perfect capital mobility. The framework provides a diagrammatic representation of steady states that differs in interesting and important ways from the usual closed-economy Solow-Swan diagram. The authors use the key diagrams to illustrate the effects of changes in parameters such as the saving rate and productivity growth on steady-state values of macroeconomic aggregates. They compare the steady-state results for the open economy with those obtained using the more familiar closed-economy model. They illustrate the possibility of endogenous income growth.     

Government Policy in a Stochastic Growth Model with Elastic Labor Supply

Endogenous labor supply is introduced into a stochastic growth model. Money is superneutral, and the real part of the equilibrium can be characterized by two nonlinear trade-off loci between the time devoted to leisure and the mean growth rate that ensure the following: (i) equality among the risk-adjusted rates of return and (ii) equilibrium in the output market. The balanced growth equilibrium is characterized analytically and policy implications derived. Extensive numerical simulations are also conducted. These assess the effects of risk on growth and the impact of fiscal policy on both the mean growth rate and its volatility. Implications for optimal monetary policy are also addressed.     

Stability of M2 money demand function in industrial countries

In this article, we set out a model of labour productivity which distinguishes between shocks which change productivity permanently and shocks which have transient affects on productivity. We show that this model is a type of unobserved components model – a random walk with drift plus noise model. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a coherent framework to identify the deterministic trend growth component and also the productivity enhancing (or technology related) stochastic components. The model is applied to aggregate labour productivity in Australia and the time series of technology shocks extracted is used to shed some light on the contributions of policy reforms to productivity.     

Time-varying uncertainty and variance risk premium

This paper extends the AK production model in Pindyck and Wang (2013) into a more general setting in which the volatility of capital stock is stochastic and driven by shocks. After solving the equilibrium, the fundamental shocks are embedded into the stock price and the leverage effect is contributed from three distinct channels. As an application, we employ our extended AK production model to match well the negative variance risk premium.     

Anticipated Environmental Policy and Transitional Dynamics in an Endogenous Growth Model

This paper makes a new attempt toinvestigate how an anticipatedenvironmental policy governs the transitionaldynamics of an economy when pollutionexternality is taken into account. Themodeling strategy we use is an AK technologyendogenous growth framework with an endogenousleisure-labor choice. It is found that, unlikeinelastic labor supply framework, a rise inpublic abatement expenditure will stimulate thebalanced economic growth rate. It is alsofound that public abatement technology plays animportant role in determining the transitionaladjustment of the economic growth rate inresponse to a pre-announced environmentalpolicy.     

NEUTRAL TECHNOLOGY SHOCKS AND THE DYNAMICS OF LABOR INPUT: RESULTS FROM AN AGNOSTIC IDENTIFICATION*

This article studies the dynamic response of labor input to neutral technology shocks. It uses benchmark dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium models enriched with labor market search and matching frictions and investment‐specific technological progress that enables a new, agnostic, identification scheme based on sign restrictions on a structural vector autoregression (SVAR). The estimation supports an increase of labor input in response to neutral technology shocks. This finding is robust across different perturbations of the SVAR model.     

Real Minimum Wage and Growth Theory: Simulations and Some Policy Results

Abstract

A Solow type two‐sector growth model is used to examine several issues related to growth and unemployment in a minimum wage economy. By simulating the model, we demonstrate that given the same percentage increase in wage rate, an economy with a higher capital–labor ratio is more likely to decay. More importantly, a tariff policy reduces the unemployment periods by 92% provided that the current capital–labor ratio is one‐sixth of that of the steady state capital–labor ratio. We assume that the first best policy of uniform wage subsidy is not politically feasible.     

Causal relationship between stock returns and real economic growth in the pre- and post-crisis period: evidence from China

This article empirically examines the causality in mean and variance between stock returns and real economic growth in China before and after the outbreak of US subprime crisis. Using a nonuniform weighting cross-correlation approach and the multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model, we found no causality in mean or variance between China’s stock returns and real economic growth for the period before the subprime crisis. Interestingly, however, in the period after the crisis, we detected unidirectional causality in mean from real economic growth to stock returns and unidirectional causality in variance from stock returns to real economic growth. These new findings imply that the linkage between China’s stock market and its real economy has become stronger in the post-crisis period. The implication of our results is that Chinese policymakers should continue the deregulation and improve the efficiency of the stock market to sustain high economic growth rate in the future.     

Time‐consistent optimal fiscal policy*

This article studies the properties of optimal fiscal policy in a stochastic growth model when the government cannot commit itself beyond the next period's capital income tax rate. We find that the results contrast markedly with those under full commitment. First, capital income tax rates are very high (65% on average versus close to zero on average under full commitment). Second, labor income taxes are rather low on average (about 12% versus a value of around 31% under full commitment). Finally, labor income taxes are quite volatile, whereas under full commitment their standard deviation is essentially zero.