Union Wage Setting and Capital Income Taxation in Dynamic General Equilibrium

This paper concerns the effects of capital income taxation in a dynamic general equilibrium framework with union wage setting, when households face taxes related to both labor and capital. One purpose is to characterize the general equilibrium solution. Another is to study the effects of increased capital income taxation – in terms of the responses in real wages, employment, capital stock, output and consumption – and relate these behavioral responses to the overall tax structure. We also derive a cost–benefit rule for the purpose of analyzing the welfare effects of a small shift from labor income taxation to capital income taxation.     

Introduction to a General Equilibrium Approach to Economic Growth

Endogenous growth theory has had some success in explaining the observed data related to the process of economic growth. However, the results of the models in this literature are typically very sensitive to their micro-economic structure. It is therefore important to understand how the growth process behaves under more general specifications of such features as the number of commodities, the number and preferences of consumers, the factors of production, and the financial and information structures. In other words, valuable insights can be gained by integrating growth theory into the framework of general equilibrium theory. The summary of the papers in this volume, focuses on seven issues that are crucial to this integration and highlights the contributions of the papers to the resolution of these issues. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C61, D50, D90, F43, O30, O41.     

Trade Unions in an Open Economy: A General Equilibrium Analysis*

This paper derives a general equilibrium demand-for-labour schedule within the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model of a large open economy, and then introduces an economy-wide labour union that maximizes its utility subject to this demand schedule, thereby determining the real wage and hence total employment A parametric shift's comparative-static effects on the equilibrium levels of unemployment and welfare are analyzed within this fully unionized economy.     

Optimal Redistributive Taxation in a Search Equilibrium Model

This paper characterizes optimal non-linear income taxation in an economy with a continuum of unobservable productivity levels and endogenous involuntary unemployment due to frictions in the labour markets. Redistributive taxation distorts labour demand and wages. Compared to their efficient values, gross wages, unemployment, and participation are lower. Average tax rates are increasing. Marginal tax rates are positive, even at the top. Finally, numerical simulations suggest that redistribution is much more important in our setting than in a comparable Mirrlees-type setting.     

Labor Taxation in Search Equilibrium with Home Production

Conventional models of equilibrium unemployment typically imply that proportional taxes on labor earnings are neutral with respect to unemployment as long as the tax does not affect the replacement rate provided by unemployment insurance, i.e. unemployment benefits relative to after–tax earnings. When home production is an option, the conventional results may no longer hold. This paper uses a search equilibrium model with home production to examine the employment and welfare implications of labor taxes. The employment effect of a rise in a proportional tax is found to be negative for sufficiently low replacement rates, whereas it is ambiguous for moderate and high replacement rates. Numerical calibrations of the model indicate that employment generally falls when labor taxes are raised.     

Price Shocks in General Equilibrium: Alternative Specifications

Smets and Wouters (2003) find that at short- and medium-termhorizons stochastic variations in the goods market mark-up arethe most important source of inflation variability in the euroarea. This article shows that an empirically plausible alternativeinterpretation is that the estimated price mark-up shocks representrelative price (e.g. productivity) shocks in a flexible-pricesector. Such an interpretation is consistent with recent microfindings that prices are very flexible in some sectors suchas the food and energy sector, while they are very sticky inother sectors such as services. (JEL codes: E1, E2, E3)     

Adjustment in General Equilibrium: Some Industrial Evidence

The link between output changes and factor-mix adjustments in general equilibrium is examined for each of nine industries using pooled data from 12 developed countries over the years 1970–85. Specifications of the Stolper-Samuelson theorem and the specific-factors model of production are built on the assumptions and structure of theory with each industry isolated in turn. In their simplest version with only capital and labor input, these competitive general-equilibrium models explain a good deal of the observed variations in industrial factor mixes. The specific-factors model performs better.     

Conditional Policies in General Equilibrium

Obtaining lower generalized system of preferences (GSP) tariffs requires meeting costly Rules of Origin (ROOs). Growing coffee in the shade is more costly, but yields a price premium. This paper analyzes the effects of such restrictions in a general equilibrium setting and shows that such policies may have unanticipated effects. It is shown that in a world with capital mobility, the GSP could result in capital outflows rather than inflows and consumer preferences for shade grown coffee end up hurting labor in developing countries. Even small subsidies that are contingent on the use of domestic intermediates can result in specialization in the targeted good. Value added contingent policies can easily lead to multiple equilibria despite the absence of externalities or market imperfections.     

Sraffian Indeterminacy in General Equilibrium

The indeterminacy claim for competitive price systems made by Sraffa (1960) is examined by placing Sraffa's work in an intertemporal general equilibrium model. We show that indeterminacy occurs at a natural type of equilibrium. Moreover, the presence of linear activities instead of a differentiable technology is crucial and the indeterminacy is constructed, as in Sraffa, by fixing some or all of the economy's aggregate quantities. On the other hand, an extra condition, that some factors have inelastic excess demand is necessary, and, unlike Sraffa's model, relative prices must be allowed to vary through time. Sraffian indeterminacy and the generic finiteness of the number of equilibria are reconciled by showing that indeterminacy occurs at a measure-zero set of endowments. We use an overlapping-generations model to show that these endowments nevertheless arise systematically and that indeterminacy does not occur when relative prices are constant through time.     

Externality Policy Reform: A General Equilibrium Analysis

We characterize Pareto‐improving and equilibrium‐preserving policy reforms in a second‐best (Diamond/Mirrlees) world with a consumption externality. A counterintuitive finding is that, starting from an initial equilibrium with no direct quantity control on the externality, it is possible that all Pareto‐improving and equilibrium‐preserving directions of change require an increase in a negative externality. We provide intuition for these results by establishing a nexus between Guesnerie's approach to designing (tax) policy reforms and the standard Kuhn–Tucker technique for identifying the manifold of feasible Pareto‐optimal states, given the instruments available to the policy maker.     

Public Enterprise Privatization: A General Equilibrium Analysis

This paper develops a general equilibrium model to examine the short‐run and long‐run optimal privatization policies. By assuming that all firms are public firms initially, the paper focuses on how the degree of product differentiation γ and the average efficiency of the industry influence the determination of the optimal privatization policy. The paper shows that privatization decreases the more efficient firms' outputs while increases the less efficient firms' outputs in the short run, and reduces all firms' outputs in the long run. The paper also shows that the larger is γ and the smaller is the number of firms, the more privatized will be the public firm in the short run. Moreover, as γ or the entry barrier f_E is sufficiently small, full privatization is the best policy in the long run. On the contrary, as γ and f_E are large enough, partial privatization is optimal.     

转轨国家的机制性腐败:一个一般均衡模型

本文通过一个一般均衡模型考察腐败对经济福利，分工的网络规模以及社会生产力的影响，我们首先计算了在每个个体均可自由择业的市场经济中的瓦尔拉斯均衡。然后考察当一个特权集团被选定为高层管理者时对社会福利产生的影响；最后考虑在管理者通过其代理人而形成共谋时的情形，即机制性腐败，此时，这个代理人通过索取一笔相当于贿赂的进入费用来为管理者的利益服务，而这时的管理者服务的价格仍然由一个瓦尔拉斯市场的供给和需求决定。该模型表明腐败增加了转轨国家特权集团（包括腐败的官员以及与其密切联关的人）的福利，并以牺牲大众的利益为代价。     

中国财税博物馆简介

财税乃立国之基,安邦之本。中国财税博物馆隶属于财政部和国家税务总局,坐落在钱江之滨,西湖之畔,吴山之麓,占地面积27亩,建筑面积12000平方米,收藏各类财税历史相关文物和文献资料近万件,是国家级的专业博物馆。     

Inflation and Unemployment in General Equilibrium*

When labor is indivisible, there exist efficient outcomes with some agents randomly unemployed, as in Rogerson (1988) . We integrate this idea into the modern theory of monetary exchange, where some trade occurs in centralized markets and some in decentralized markets, as in Lagos and Wright (2005) . This delivers a general equilibrium model of unemployment and money, with explicit microeconomic foundations. We show that the implied relation between inflation and unemployment can be positive or negative, depending on simple preference conditions. Our Phillips curve provides a long‐run, exploitable, trade‐off for monetary policy; it turns out, however, that the optimal policy is the Friedman rule.