SOCIAL STATUS,EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT SPENDING IN A TWO‐SECTOR MODEL OF ENDOGENOUS GROWTH*

This paper extends the relative wealth specification of status preference to the two‐sector Uzawa (1965 )– Lucas (1988 ) model and examines the effectiveness of government spending on economic growth. It is found that the desire for relative wealth‐induced social status and/or the education component of relative wealth‐induced social status are important ingredients in determining the growth rate effects of government spending. Provided that the agent is concerned with his or her relative social position, the education‐induced social status plays a more important role than the physical‐asset‐induced social status in determining the validity of public spending on growth. If individuals do not care about their education‐driven social rewards, then an increase in government spending has no effect on the balanced growth rate regardless of the presence of the physical‐asset‐induced social status. A rise in government spending reduces the long‐run growth rate if the education‐induced social status is present.     

ENDOGENOUS TIME PREFERENCE,INTEREST‐RATE RULES,AND INDETERMINACY*

This paper extends the Benhabib et al. flexible‐price, money‐in‐the‐utility‐function model by considering endogenous time preference and re‐examines equilibrium indeterminacy in response to alternative interest‐rate rules. We show that either an active or a passive interest‐rate feedback rule can generate local indeterminacy even if consumption and real money balances are Edgeworth independent. This result is in sharp contrast to that in the related literature. We also find that in the presence of endogenous time preference, local indeterminacy may occur regardless of whether the monetary policy is based on the interest‐rate feedback rule or money growth‐rate targeting.     

RE‐EXAMINATION OF THE GROWTH‐ENHANCING BUBBLE

We investigate the growth and welfare effects of the bubble that arise on equities on newly created firms by R&D activities. Considering an economy where the input to the R&D sector is the final goods financed by the savings of the household sector, we show that such a bubble has a growth‐enhancing effect under the condition opposite to the previous literature. We also explore the characteristics of the steady state equilibrium with the bubble and demonstrate that there can be dual bubbly equilibria, one of which is unstable and the other stable, and that the growth and welfare effects of an unexpected permanent change in the initial bubble are very different depending on which equilibrium the economy stays in.     

TESTING THE ONE‐WAY EFFECT IN THE PRESENCE OF TREND BREAKS*

This paper provides an approach to testing the measures of the one‐way effect for cointegrated vector time‐series in the presence of trend breaks. We propose Wald testing the measures and their computational algorithm, an extension of previous work by Hosoya and Yao and Hosoya, to the case where trend breaks are explicitly taken into account in the cointegration relationship. On the basis of the proposed inferential method and the derived evidence, we present a causal structure characterization of money supply and income as well as interest rates for the last 44 years of the Japanese economy, and contrast it with the results of Yao and Hosoya.     

USE OF THE MONEY SUPPLY IN THE CONDUCT OF JAPAN'S MONETARY POLICY: RE‐EXAMINING THE TIME‐SERIES EVIDENCE*

This paper re‐examines whether the money supply (M2 + CDs) can predict future economic activity in Japan, using recent data to the end of 2003. I find that the linkage between M2 and income or prices has largely disappeared since the late 1990s. Evidence suggests that (i) time deposit behaviour is primarily responsible for the breakdown in the M2–income relationship; (ii) bank loans also lost their predictive content in the late 1990s; and (iii) there has been a close link between time deposits and bank loans. Non‐performing loans problems and ongoing restructuring may be root causes of these findings.     

THE MECHANICS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH THROUGH CAPITAL ACCUMULATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS*

This study develops a model wherein capital is used in final goods production and research and development (R&D) activities. This arrangement generates changes of the equilibrium capital allocation corresponding to capital endowment, which engenders a regime change from capital based growth with decreasing returns to R&D based perpetual growth. These two growth phases account for the polarization of economies. The model also engenders multiple equilibria on capital allocation—which emerge during the middle stages of capital accumulation—accounting for leapfrogging and the instability of the economic growth of developing countries with medium capital accumulation.     

INFLATION AND THE PUBLIC DEFICIT WHEN THE UTILITY OF MONEY IS INSATIABLE*

When the marginal utility of money is positive even at very high levels of the asset (Yoshiyasu Ono's, 1994, assumption), the relationship between inflation and the public deficit at full employment may result in a unique perverse equilibrium where higher deficits reduce inflation. If there are two equilibria, the low inflation equilibrium is one where the perverse effect between inflation and the public deficit prevails; while in the high inflation equilibrium higher public deficits increase inflation. These results contrast sharply with traditional results found in the literature.     

MONEY DEMAND STABILITY AND INFLATION PREDICTION IN THE FOUR LARGEST EMU COUNTRIES

In this paper, we analyze the money demand functions of the four largest EMU countries and of the four-country (EMU-4) aggregate. We identify reasonable and stable money demand relationships for Germany, France and Spain as well as the EMU-4 aggregate. For the case of Italy, results are less clear. From the estimated money demand functions, we derive both EMU-4 and country-specific measures of money overhang. We find that the EMU-4 overhang measure strongly correlates with the country-specific measures, particularly since the start of EMU, and is useful to predict country-specific inflation. However, it generally does not encompass country-specific money overhang measures as predictors of inflation. Hence, aggregate money overhang is an important, but by far not an exhaustive, indicator for the disaggregate level.     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF MONEY BALANCES AND THE NONNEUTRALITY OF MONEY*

Recent monetary models with explicit microfoundations are made tractable by assuming that agents have access to centralized markets after one round of decentralized trade. Given quasi‐linear preferences, this makes the distribution of money degenerate—which keeps the models simple but precludes the discussion of distributional effects of monetary policy. We generalize these models by assuming two rounds of trade before agents can readjust their money holdings to study a range of new distributional effects analytically. We show that unexpected, symmetric lump‐sum money injections may increase short‐run output and welfare, whereas asymmetric injections may increase long‐run output and welfare.     

GROWTH AND CYCLES, IN THE MODE OF MARX AND SCHUMPETER

I propose a theory of endogenous growth and cycles under competitive conditions. Firms choose how many workers to hire, how much to invest, and which technologies to use. New capacity, embodying labor-saving technologies, is costlier than old one but allows for a lower wage bill. The interaction between labor-saving innovations and changes in the relative price of labor is the source of growth cycles.     

NEOCLASSICAL GROWTH AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONSUMPTION

Abstract.  The neoclassical growth model is used to compare an economy with growing per capita income with an economy with stationary per capita income, in terms of equity in distribution of consumption. The economies have the same initial conditions including the same initial wealth distribution. The outcome of the comparison depends on the nature of structural differences between the economies. Even with convergence in wealth distribution in the growing economy, the consumption distribution there may be less equitable and dynasties with least initial levels of wealth may be worse off than dynasties with same initial wealth levels in the stationary economy.     

GROWTH EFFECTS OF INFLATION UNDER THE PRESENCE OF INFORMALITY

In this paper we build an endogenous growth model in which the informal economy is subject to a cash‐in‐advance constraint along with physical capital accumulation and consumption. In this setting, we find that inflation generally adversely affects long‐run growth. However; this effect strongly interacts with the size of the informal economy. Specifically, the negative effect becomes milder (and can even be positive) under the presence of a large informal economy. Moreover, using an annual cross‐country panel data set of 161 countries over the period 1950‐2010 we also provide some empirical support for the mechanism of our theory.     

GROWTH AND BUBBLES WITH CONSUMPTION EXTERNALITIES*

This paper explores the role of consumption externalities in an overlapping generations economy with capital accumulation. If consumers in each generation are concerned with other agents’ consumption behaviours, there exist intergenerational as well as intragenerational consumption externalities. It is the presence of intergenreational consumption externalities that may produce fundamental effects both on equilibrium dynamics and on steady‐state characterization of the economy. This paper demonstrates this fact in the context of a simple model of endogenously growing, overlapping‐generations economy with or without asset bubbles.     

MICROECONOMIC FOUNDATION OF LENDER OF LAST RESORT FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF PAYMENTS*

We construct a model to clarify the mechanism by which the lender of last resort (LLR) can prevent bank runs. In our model, a bank has both the function of facilitating payments in which inside money is settled using outside money and the function of financial intermediation using a deposit contract. The deposit contract might lead to a bank run, and might even contribute to an efficient allocation. Therefore, to consider the liquidity supply by the LLR, we introduce the deposit contract as a factor of instability in the banking model. We show that the LLR can assist in the recovery of both the efficiency and stability of the financial system.     

SECTOR‐SPECIFIC EXTERNALITIES AND STATUS PREFERENCES IN THE UZAWA‐LUCAS MODEL*

This paper shows that introducing preferences for social status based on human capital holdings modifies the finding of Gómez (2004 ) that sector‐specific externalities associated with human capital in the goods sector do not violate the optimality of the competitive economy in the Uzawa–Lucas model. The effect of an increase in the degree of sector‐specific externalities is qualitatively the same as that of an increase in the strength of the desire for status. Hence, paradoxically, a greater degree of sector‐specific externalities makes human capital accumulation more excessive from the social point of view.     

FIRST‐BEST FISCAL POLICY WITH SOCIAL STATUS*

This paper examines the first‐best fiscal policy in a stochastic, infinite‐horizon representative agent model that exhibits consumption‐enhanced as well as wealth‐enhanced social status in the household utility. We show that the first‐best labour tax rate is a positive constant that is used to correct negative consumption externalities. The first‐best tax rate on capital income is also positive in order to overturn agents' status‐seeking capital over‐accumulation. Moreover, we find that in sharp contrast to a conventional automatic stabilizer, the first‐best capital tax rate moves in the opposite direction with shocks to firms' production technology, thus exacerbating the business cycle.     

Endogenous growth, monetary shocks and nominal rigidities

We introduce endogenous growth in a standard NK model with staggered prices and wages. We find that the source of nominal rigidities, the shock persistence and the type of Taylor rule affect the relationship between monetary volatility and growth.     

Fiscal and Monetary Policies in a Transactions‐Based Endogenous Growth Model with Imperfect Competition

This paper's model is capable of explaining the empirical evidence on the mixed growth‐rate effects of fiscal and monetary policies and a nonlinear inflation–growth relation. When monopoly power in the product market is strong/weak, an increase in the money growth rate or the income tax rate promotes/reduces the output growth rate through lowering/raising the equilibrium gross markup and increasing/reducing the net rate of return on capital. The fact that money can generate a positive growth rate effect allows for the appearance of a nonlinear inflation–growth relation. Such a nonlinear relation cannot be caused by changes in the income tax rate.     

Welfare cost of inflation in a stochastic balanced growth model

There is a large and growing literature on the welfare cost of inflation. However, work in this area tend to find moderate estimates of welfare gains. In this paper we reexamine welfare costs of inflation within a stochastic general equilibrium balanced growth model paying a particular attention to recursive utility, portfolio balance effects, and monetary volatility and monetary policy uncertainty. Our numerical analysis shows that a monetary policy that brings down inflation to the optimum level can have substantial welfare effects. Portfolio adjustment effects seem to be the dominant factor behind the welfare gains.