New Keynesian Phillips Curve and inflation dynamics in Australia

The New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) was developed as a response to the New Classical critique that Keynesian macroeconomics lacked micro-foundations. The NKPC provides theoretical micro-foundations that attempt to explain, inter alia, nominal rigidities and, explicitly price stickiness. This paper investigates the validity of the NKPC for Australia. In contrast to the findings for the USA and Euro area, we find that neither the output gap nor marginal cost appears to be a key driving force variable across different set of instruments and estimators (GMM and 2SLS) over the sample period from 1959 to 2009. The flattening of the NKPC along with significant presence of price stickiness is also found in the data. In particular, the reduced form coefficients and implied estimates from the structural parameters of the model support the view that inflation dynamics are forward looking while the role of lagged inflation is also statistically important only after 1980s. However, we claim that the forward looking baseline NKPC contrary to the hybrid NKPC is stable and better explains inflation dynamics for the Australian economy.     

Energy,unemployment and trade

This article investigates the dynamic relationships among sectoral economic activities, macro expenditure patterns, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and unemployment in 41 countries from 1980 to 2014. The state of the art econometric techniques, both linear and non-linear panel and time series estimation techniques are used. The results show that industrialization, services sector, government expenditure and trade openness play a positive role in reducing unemployment, while agriculture and renewable energy consumption increase unemployment. This might be, in part, due to recent technological advancements and large capital intensive investments in agriculture and renewable energy sectors. Therefore, dedicated social and labour market policies need to be adopted to complement greening economic policies.     

Optimal Licensing Policy under Vertical Product Differentiation

This paper explores a vertical product differentiation model with a licensing arrangement between a multinational firm with superior technology and a domestic firm with obsolete technology. We find that a subsidy provided by the domestic country's government to the domestic firm to assist with the licensing arrangement is welfare enhancing for the domestic country. Furthermore, both the multinational firm and the domestic country are better off under royalty than under fixed fee licensing. These findings stand in contrast to earlier results in the literature.     

Technology Transfer,Quality Standards,and North–South Trade

This paper examines the economic consequences of technology transfer through licensing in a North–South model of vertical product differentiation, based on a product‐line pricing framework. With its limited technological expertise, the southern firm cannot export to the northern market without purchasing the northern firm's “clean” and low‐cost technology. With North–South cost‐asymmetry, we conclude that the transfer of technology through licensing promotes trade, product variety and improves global welfare. However, without government intervention, the private levels of product quality chosen by firms tend to be lower than the socially optimal levels. This finding helps to explain why developed countries often set quality standards for imported foreign products.     

Foreign Aid,Wage Inequality,and Welfare for a Small Open Economy with Tourism

While the welfare effect of foreign aid has been extensively analyzed, the impact on the distribution of income has received less attention. At the same time, there has been recent work on tourism where it is complementary to aid in improving welfare. By combining these two strands, this paper concentrates on wage inequality in developing countries. We find that an increase in aid in the form of tied aid can lower the relative price of nontraded goods. The rent extracted from tourists declines, reducing welfare of domestic residents. In addition, the fall in the nontradable price can widen the wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. Thus, increased foreign aid may have detrimental effects on national welfare and the distribution of income. Rising wage inequality is confirmed by numerical simulations.     

INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The paper considers a two-region model of trade based on the authors'earlier (HS) model, in which two nontraded goods, one urban and one rural, were introduced into the Harris-Todaro model. The HS framework captures the duality of the labour market, and it is argued that the HS model is suited to the purpose of regional analysis where the urban and rural agents may be in conflict as their welfare (income) may not respond in an identical manner to exogenous shocks and policy changes. The paper examines the implications of a change in capital and the terms of trade on outputs and regional incomes. It is established that in response to a terms-of-trade shock the prices of urban and rural nontraded goods could move in opposite directions, so structural change could also be in opposite directions. The same could also be true of welfare in the two regions.     

Tourism, globalization, social externalities, and domestic welfare

One of the impacts of globalisation has been the growth in tourism and mobility of capital. This paper examines the welfare effect of tourism on the host economy with imperfect competition. Three channels that affects domestic welfare by tourism are: social externalities accompanied with tourists, the terms of trade effect via rises in the non-tradable prices, and the resource movement effect to the manufacturing sector. Owing to the positive terms-of-trade effect and/or the beneficial resource movement effect, the optimal levels of tourism occur at the situations that tourists bring negative social externalities to the economy.     

Price distortions,joint production and some international trade theorems

Zusammenfassung Preisverzerrungen, verbundene Produktion und einige Theoreme des internationalen Handels. — In diesem Aufsatz werden Faktorpreisunterschiede in ein Modell mit Kuppelprodukten eingefügt. Im Fall verbundener Produktion ohne Marktunvollkommenheiten fanden Chang, Ethier und Kemp heraus, da\ die folgenden vier Theoreme im gro\en und ganzen die Einführung von Kuppelprodukten überstehen. Die vier betrachteten Theoreme sind das Rybczynski-, das Stolper-Samuelson-, das Faktorpreisausgleichs- und das Heckscher-Ohlin-Theorem. Wenn es Unterschiede in den Faktorentgelten gibt, dann zeigt sich, da\ — abgesehen vom Rybczynski-Theorem — diese Theoreme im allgemeinen nicht mehr gültig sind. Es werden Bedingungen genannt, unter denen die Theoreme so-wohl bei verbundener Produktion als auch bei Marktunvollkommenheiten anwendbar sind.

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Résumé Les distorsions de prix, la production conjointe et quelques théorèmes du commerce international. — Dans cet article des différences dans la rémunération des facteurs sont introduites dans un modèle de la production conjointe. Au cas de la production conjointe et en l’absence des imperfections sur les marchés des facteurs Chang, Ethier et Kemp ont trouvé que les quatre théorèmes suivants, en majeure partie, survivent l’introduction des produits conjoints. Les quatre théorèmes discutés sont ceux de Rybczynski, de Stolper-Samuelson, d’équalisation des prix des facteurs et de Heckscher-Ohlin. Si les rémunérations des facteurs diffèrent le modèle montre que — le théorème de Rybczynski à part — ces théorèmes ne sont pas valables en général. Il y a présenté des conditions sous lesquelles les théorèmes peuvent être généralisés au cas de la production conjointe aussi bien que des imperfections sur les marchés des facteurs.

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Resumen Distorsiones de precios, producción conjunta y algunos teoremas del comercio internacional. — En este artículo se han introducido diferenciales en la retribución a factures en un modelo de producción conjunta. En el caso de producción conjunta sin imperfecciones en el mercado de factores, Chang, Ethier y Kemp encontraron que los siguientes cuatro teoremas subsistieron en gran medida gracias a la introducción de producción conjunta. Los cuatro teoremas investigados son los de Rybczynski, Stolper-Samuelson, Igualación de Precios de Factores y los teoremas de Heckscher-Ohlin. En presencia de diferenciales en la retribución de factores encontramos que, aparte del teorema de Rybczynski, estos teoremas en general no subsisten. Se presentan las condiciones bajo las cuales los teoremas son generalizables con respecte a producctión conjunta e imperfecciones del mercado de factores.

     

Illegal Migration, Border Enforcement, and Growth

This paper analyzes the economic consequences of illegal migrants in the context of a model of trade and growth. In the model, capital and domestic labor are mobile sectors while illegal migrants are sector-specific. These assumptions give rise to a production possibility curve (with migrants) that lies partially inside the zero migration production possibility frontier. It is this feature of the model which generates ambiguous results regarding the relation betweendomestic welfare, illegal migrants, and enforcement. The steady-state growth path with migrants may lie above or below the balanced growth path without migrants.