Wagner’s law versus displacement effect

The public sector has grown dramatically over the past few centuries in many developed countries. In this article, we use wavelet methods to distinguish between two leading explanations for this growth – Wagner’s law and the displacement effect. In doing so, we use the long-term data of 10 OECD countries for a maximum time span of 1800–2009. We find that the validity of Wagner’s law is likely to vary strongly over time for each country. A roughly similar feature in most of the countries is that the law is less valid in the earliest stage of economic development as well as in the advanced stages, with the validity tending to follow an inverted U-shaped pattern with economic development. Further, our results indicate that the long-run growth of government size cannot be adequately explained by Wagner’s law. On the other hand, the displacement effect appears to account for the bulk of the growth in most of the countries.     

Groups,Networks and Hierarchy in Household Private Transfers: Evidence from Fiji

While economists have studied private transfers exchanged among households within a network extensively, those exchanged directly with groups to which the household belongs—such as ritual gifts, communal work and church donations—in developing countries have received very limited attention. Using original household survey data gathered in rural Fiji, this paper demonstrates that: the group-based transfers are much greater than the network-based transfers, probably because of significant household contributions to groups for the provision of local public goods; and group-based transfers influence network-based transfers through the social hierarchy. A comparison of various groups (e.g. kin and church groups) and social ranks (e.g. those determined by gender, disability, kin elite and religious elite) indicates that network-based transfers adjust to hierarchy bias in group-based transfers, depending on the physical and social connections of groups and networks.     

Analysis of information flow in Japan

This paper analyzes the volume of information flow in Japan which is carried by the various media. New statistics were compiled in order to understand the volume of information flow. A new integrated indicator which enables us to compare each of the media with other is composed. This is represented by the unit of ‘word’. The volume of supply of information and the volume of consumption were distinguished. The change of relationship between the supply and the consumption of information was examined by means of time series analysis of the volume of information flow in correlation to the economic and societal indicators. The costs of information flow were estimated. By estimating the distribution cost of the information, it was possible not only to understand the total cost to society for the circulation of information, but also to compare the efficiency of the media by comparing the unit cost of each medium, that is to say, the total cost divided by the total volume of information flow. Analysis of the actual state of information flow and positioning of the media were made in relation to the supply and consumption volume as well as cost of information flow.     

Smoothing Income against Crop Flood Losses in Amazonia: Rain Forest or Rivers as a Safety Net?

This article examines the role of ex post labor supply in smoothing income in response to crop losses caused by large floods among riverine households in the Peruvian Amazon, where rich environmental endowments permit a variety of resource extractive activities and coping responses. The paper finds that households respond to crop losses primarily by intensifying fishing effort, not by relying on gathering of nontimber forest products, hunting, or asset liquidation. This ex post labor adjustment helps to smooth total income against small crop losses but less well against large crop losses. Both relatively nonpoor households with better fishing capital and poor young households with a physical labor advantage employ this natural insurance in rivers.     

Wagner’s law,fiscal discipline,and intergovernmental transfer: empirical evidence at the US and German state levels

Does fiscal discipline restrain the government from increasing its budget size? To answer this question, this paper investigates whether Wagner’s law is satisfied for two types of states: US states, in which fiscal sovereignty is established, and German states, in which fiscal transfer dependence is high and budget constraints are softened. In US states, we demonstrate that Wagner’s law is validated, while some of the balanced budget requirements weaken the validity of the law. In German states, we find an “inverse” law, especially after the bailouts of Bremen and Saarland. The “inverse” law is a new channel of growth in government size and means that soft budget constraints cause significant negative correlation between government size and output. These results are robust regardless of whether intergovernmental fiscal transfers are taken into account, while they quantitatively change the validity of the law. Our findings imply that the characteristics of fiscal discipline are the prime determinants of the channel and degree of growth in government size.     

A model of shifting cultivation: can soil conservation reduce deforestation?

Shifting cultivators manage soil not only by adjusting soil use on already‐cleared lands, as in continuous cultivation, but also by clearing forests to obtain new fertile soils. This study examines the crucial link between on‐farm soil conservation and deforestation in shifting cultivation by modeling forest clearing as an investment in soil for a private farmer. More generally, by doing so the study attempts to integrate deforestation and soil conservation models which have been separately developed in the literature. Our policy goal is to arrest tropical deforestation—as destruction of global commons—caused by land degradation in shifting cultivation while improving the well‐being of poor shifting cultivators. Our integrated approach enables joint policy analyses of deforestation and land degradation. Three welfare‐enhancing policies are considered. The first is agricultural and nonagricultural subsidies affecting farm and nonfarm income opportunities. The second is fiscal and tenure policies affecting discount rates. Our question is whether the link between forest clearing and soil fertility alters the outcomes of these two standard macroeconomic policies commonly found in the literature. The third policy (or program) is various soil conservation measures affecting soil regeneration and erosivity on already‐cleared lands. This article examines a very important question which has received little attention in previous theoretical works: can soil conservation reduce deforestation? This study confirms anti‐deforestation effects of the promotion of nonfarming activities—a common and often emphasized finding in previous works—among shifting cultivators. More importantly, it also demonstrates that improving various soil conservation measures not only discourages forest clearing among shifting cultivators but also tends to have greater effects on forest protection than promoting nonfarming activities. Contrarily, agricultural price subsidy or technological progress gives rise to the opposite outcome, and lowering the farmer's discount rate or improving tenure security encourages him/her to clear more forests just to accumulate soil.     

On the Sources of the Feldstein–Horioka Puzzle across Time and Frequencies

This study quantitatively assesses existing explanations for the Feldstein–Horioka puzzle using time–frequency domain analyses for nine countries for the period 1885–2010. The main findings are summarized as follows. First, large economies (e.g. the United States, Italy) show higher correlations between saving and investment than middle‐sized and small countries do. Second, countries can be grouped into two time‐changing patterns of correlations: inverted U‐shaped and increasing patterns. Third, the fiscal balance seems most related to a positive saving‐investment correlation in many countries. Fourth, a global common factor plays an important role in explaining the Feldstein–Horioka puzzle.