New Economic Theories

This paper analyses some of the most important spillovers of recent developments of economic theory into environmental economics. Attention is given to the anlaysis of sustainable economic development paths, where endogenous growth models are used; the implications of environmental dumping and more generally of policies concerning global environmental issues, where new trade theories are very useful; and, the effectiveness of environmental policy instruments when markets are imperfectly competitive, where industrial organisation theory is employed. The paper does not only note recent developments in environmental economics, but also relates these to the previous environmental economics literature. Thus, it can be assessed whether new results actually improve our knowledge of crucial economic and environmental issues.     

Central Wage Setting under Multiple Technological Equilibria: A Mechanism for Equilibrium Elimination

Instituting an initial round of centralized wage setting before an ultimate round of decentralized wage bargaining may actually raise employment. A general multi–equilibrium model is set up with strategic complementarities in the implementation of a new technology through aggregate demand spillovers. In this model, centralized wage setting to establish an outside option wage, which is selectively binding on lo–tech firms, may achieve the "big push" to a hi–tech general equilibrium with higher employment, output, wages and profits.     

Fiscal Competition and Growth When Capital Is Imperfectly Mobile*

Is tax competition good for economic growth? We address this question using a simple model of endogenous growth. Governments in a system of many small jurisdictions benevolently maximize the welfare of immobile residents. Quadratic (de‐)installation costs limit the mobility of capital. We look at optimal taxation and long‐run growth, and we analyse the effects of cost parameter variations on taxation and growth. A race to the bottom in capital tax rates is only one possibility; the relationship between capital mobility and capital tax rates is not monotonic. Growth and capital mobility are unambiguously positively related.     

FINANCIAL MARKET COMPETITION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: THE IMPORTANCE OF HOW PROFITS ARE RETURNED

If households have finite lives, the effect of imperfect competition in the financial sector on economic growth depends also on how its profits are returned. The return may be exogenous though fiscal transfers to the young and/or the old or endogenous through dividend payments to a subset of old households that have acquired financial sector equity. Returning financial profits to the old, either exogenously or endogenously, unambiguously reduces growth, but through the two respective mechanisms of consumption-smoothing and of encouraging 'unproductive saving'. As the latter is the more powerful, a public pension paid for by taxing financial profits will raise steady-state growth rate. However, the main results are that if profits are returned to the young, growth will be highest with monopolistic finance, if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is sufficiently low; and, generally, the number of Nash–Cournot financial firms that maximizes growth is increasing in the value of this parameter.     

Imperfect competition and capital accumulation: the role of price normalization

We consider a capital-accumulation model with infinitely lived households and two production sectors. The intermediate-good sector is characterized by perfect competition, a constant-returns-to-scale technology, and production externalities. The final-good sector is a monopoly operating under constant returns to scale. We analyze the general equilibrium in the sense of Gabszewicz and Vial [Journal of Economic Theory (1972) 4: 381–400] for this economy and different price-normalization rules. It is shown that the qualitative behavior of the equilibrium paths depends crucially on the chosen normalization rule. In particular, whether equilibria are monotonic or oscillating and whether indeterminacy occurs or not may depend on the choice of the numeraire.     

Does Environmental Policy Necessarily Discourage Growth?

This paper analyzes the long-run impact of an environmental policy on economic growth. A growth model with vertical innovation is modified by including intermediate goods as a source of pollution. Taxation on pollution reduces profits of intermediate firms as well as final outputs. However, it increases their mark-ups and alleviates profit losses. In this setting, profit losses are offset by the general equilibrium effect; thus, the tax enhances R&Ds which drive economic growth while it reduces pollution. If the government provides an R&D subsidy, the growth rate will be accelerated.     

Exhaustible Resources, Monopolistic Competition, and Endogenous Growth

One of the central analytical findings of the growth literature is that continuous growth is possible even in an economy with exhaustible resources. Based on this result, this paper addresses the question of whether different equilibrium trajectories which lead to a balanced growth path are possible within an endogenous growth model with incomplete competition. Although the Solow-Stiglitz condition is violated due to a monopolistic sector, we nevertheless demonstrate that steady growth in per capita consumption is possible under the condition that the rate of entry of new monopolists exceeds that of the average monopolist's decline in output. As a necessary but not sufficient condition for indeterminacies in a growing economy, this paper demonstrates that the partial production elasticity of capital must be smaller than that of the exhaustible resource.     

资产专用性理论分析

资产专用性概念引入对交易行为的分析是有用的 ,但资产专用性理论的逻辑是有问题的。如果坚持以企业契约的不完全性为逻辑前提 ,以企业所有权安排为逻辑结果 ,那就会否定资产专用性这一逻辑的核心变量 ;如果坚持资产专用性这一核心变量 ,并由此推出风险控制权而不是企业所有权安排的逻辑 ,就会否定企业契约的不完全性这一逻辑前提。     

WELFARE IN THE NASH EQUILIBRIUM IN EXPORT TAXES UNDER BERTRAND DUOPOLY

In the Eaton and Grossman Quarterly Journal of Economics, 101 (1986), pp. 383–406 model of export taxes under Bertrand duopoly, it is shown that welfare in the Nash equilibrium in export taxes is always higher than welfare under free trade for both countries.     

Growth,Employment and Taxation with Distortions in the Goods and Labour Market

Abstract. This paper analyses taxation in the presence of distortions in goods and labour markets in an endogenous growth model. The government disposes of capital, labour and consumption taxes. It is shown that the market solution leads to suboptimally low levels of growth and employment. However, available tax instruments are sufficient to attain the first‐best growth path in this economy. The paper further explores the relative distortion of capital and labour taxes. For plausible parametrisations of the model, lowering capital taxes dominate reductions in labour taxes in welfare terms.     

Price discrimination: A classroom experiment

In this article, the authors describe a classroom experiment aimed at familiarizing students with different types of price discrimination (first-, second-, and third-degree price discrimination). During the experiment, the students were asked to decide what tariffs to set as monopolists for each of the price discrimination scenarios under consideration. The objective was to allow the students to work empirically, through trial and error, selecting tariffs for each type of discrimination that would maximize a monopolistic entrepreneur's profits. The purpose of the exercise also was to enable the students to differentiate each type of price discrimination and to set tariffs in each case, as well to help them understand the repercussions in terms of welfare for each type of price discrimination.     

Review article. Kalecki on imperfect competition, inflation and money

This paper reviews the final two volumes of Kalecki's CollectedWorks. It first discusses, based on the papers in Vol. VI, hiscontributions on cartels, on Nazi Germany, the development ofindices of business fluctuations and of national income accounts,and the movement of prices and costs over the business cycle.Drawing on the papers reproduced in Vol. VII, this paper continuesby discussing Kalecki's writings on rationing, inflation, imperfectcompetition and unemployment, money and finance, the nationaldebt and the welfare state, international economic arrangements,the post-war American economy and econometrics and methodology.     

What are the determinants of hiring? The importance of product market demand and search frictions

In this article, we study the importance of product market demand and search frictions for hiring. We use a search-matching model with imperfect competition in the product market to derive an equation for total hiring in a local labour market, and estimate it on Swedish panel data. If product markets are imperfectly competitive, product demand shocks should have a direct effect on employment for given levels of prices and wages. Our main finding is that product demand has such a direct effect on hiring. This highlights the importance of taking imperfect competition in the product market into account in studies of employment dynamics and hiring. We also find that, for given levels of prices, wages, and product demand, the number of unemployed workers in a local labour market has a positive effect on hiring, suggesting that search frictions matter. Quantitatively, product demand shocks seem to be more important for understanding the variation in hiring than shocks to the number of unemployed workers.     

Technology transfer in duopoly The role of cost asymmetry

This article examines the possibility of a profitable technology transfer deal in a duopoly. We show that under a fixed fee contract, technology transfer will be always profitable if the products are sufficiently differentiated or the firms behave sufficiently cooperatively or both. Under a profit sharing contract, however, a profitable technology transfer deal always exists even in a market characterised by Cournot duopoly with homogeneous goods.     

Screening, cross-border banking, and the allocation of credit

The author analyses competition among banks when banks can use creditworthiness tests that generate (imperfect) information about borrowers. When banks can strategically adjust the test characteristics by investing resources in the screening technology, he shows that credit markets are not easily contestable. An increase in the intensity of competition may have few effects on incumbents» conduct and overall market shares. Moreover, conditions are provided under which screening efforts are reduced by competition. In such situations the quality of the overall loan portfolio declines and the economy incurs higher aggregate risk due to the lower quality of banks» information production. The welfare gains from integrating fragmented loan markets can actually be negative.     

A Note on Ad Valorem and Per Unit Taxation in an Oligopoly Model

This note shows that per unit taxation welfare dominates ad valorem taxation in an oligopoly model, when the number of consumers is sufficiently high compared to the number of oligopolists. It aims to provide an alternative perspective to existing literature arguing instead the dominance of ad valorem over per unit taxation in oligopoly frameworks. Our result is obtained in a simple example which uses a strategic market game formulation to study strategic behavior at a general equilibrium level.     

Marriage Settlements

French couples may choose between two types of marriage settlements governing asset ownership after a divorce or inheritance: common property or separate property. A cooperative model considers the marriage contract as a means of providing for widowhood of the less endowed spouse. A second model addresses the probability of divorce and the production of a marriage good. The common property contract then becomes a means of inducing the wife to invest in the marriage good. Choice of contract, labor supply and fertility are simultaneous. Empirically we find that characteristics of the spouses such as relative age or differences in endowments influence the choice. So do the expected number of children and the wife's labor supply decision. This last decision is also shown to be influenced by the chosen settlement, while fertility is not.
JEL classification : J 12; J 4; K 12     

Efficient bargaining with underutilization of labor

The standard efficient contract involving a monopolistic firm and a union has always been derived under the assumption that the firm operates efficiently, i.e., it fully uses its labor force. However, nothing constrains the firm to do so and production with underutilization of labor may occur. The implications of ignoring that possibility and the conditions under which underutilization effectively occurs are studied in this paper.     

The impact of China's accession to the WTO on its economy: an imperfect competitive CGE analysis

To examine the impact of trade barrier reductions on the Chinese economy following its WTO accession, a single‐country, static CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) model is constructed, which incorporates certain elements of imperfect competition in China's current economic situation. China's real GDP and total employment are expected to rise by small degrees, while the general price level may decline by a few percentage points. Total imports would rise by more than 10%, whereas total exports would increase far less. China's trade surplus is, therefore, likely to shrink substantially and its dependence upon foreign trade is likely to rise by a few percentage points. A sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of the simulation results. A comparison with other CGE studies on China's trade liberalization also shows the plausibility of this study's predictions.

JEL Classification: F17, C68