Identifying optimal contingent fiscal policies in a business cycle model

Optimal fiscal policy is indeterminate in a dynamic and stochastic environment. The complete characterization of the fiscal policy requires the use of identification constraints. In the literature either capital taxes or debt have been restricted to be not contingent on the state of nature. We propose a different type of identification constraints to have both policy variables state-contingent. Three alternative identification conditions are considered: (i) restrictions on the dynamic and stochastic behavior of the debt path; (ii) an exogenous debt path, and (iii) an exogenous belief function. The main result indicates that the optimal capital tax is zero and constant over the business cycle for any of the identification conditions used, suggesting that is optimal for the government to use debt return as a shock absorber, keeping capital taxes constant. The result is quite different from the previous literature, which obtains very volatile capital taxes. JEL Classification: E62, H21. We are grateful to Alfonso Novales, Víctor Ríos-Rull, Javier Vallés and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. We acknowledge financial support from Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Ruiz and Pérez: BEC 2003-039; Manzano: BEC 2002-01995). Baltasar Manzano also acknowledges support from Xunta de Galicia (PGIDIT03PXIC30001PN, PGIDIT03CSO30001PR).     

The optimal intertemporal decision on industrial production and harvesting a renewable natural resource

This paper grew out of a research project financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in its program Economics of Natural Resources. This support is gratefully acknowledged. I also thank H. Wacker for helpful discussions. I also thank two anonymous referees for valuable comments on an earlier draft.     

A waste management model for optimal recycling-landfilling policies under macroeconomic conditions

This research provides a waste management model in the presence of macroeconomic conditions. An optimal control problem which integrates the recycling-landfilling decision with industry supply-demand dynamics is designed to achieve the value-maximizing objective. The model simultaneously considers idiosyncratic technical and aggregate demand shocks, while the stoppage time for landfill use is assumed to follow a Cox process with the intensity function of a firm's total waste collection. The closed-form solution of the optimal recycling ratio is also derived. The results suggest that when macroeconomic effects are neglected, optimal recycling ratios tend to be underestimated.     

The optimal harvesting problem with a land market: a characterization of the asymptotic convergence

We study the asymptotic behavior of the optimal harvesting policies for a multiple species forest with a land market, i.e., any fraction of the land can be traded at any time stage. We prove the existence of sustainable states and we discuss the conditions under which any optimal trajectory converges in the long run towards one of these states or towards the set of optimal periodic cycles. We also discuss briefly a more general problem that includes costs of converting land between the different species.      

Cost of capital,discounting and relational contracting: endogenous optimal return and duration for joint investment projects

Concession, project financing and public–private partnership schemes are investment projects that are generally submitted to valuation criteria based on discounted cash flow analysis. The theoretical basis of these valuation criteria are now at issue. Pursuant to recent advances in relational contracting economics and behavioural finance, joint investment projects can be considered as special relational environments where the project's returns improve on alternative replacement opportunities. This article seeks to bridge the gap between new theories and widely used valuation techniques by providing a generalized approach to investment valuation. This article suggests reasonable valuation criteria that fit these new theoretical developments, including an endogenous optimal duration function that may be integrated into the project's contractual agreement.     

National and international policies for tropical rain forest conservation—A quantitative analysis for Cameroon

This paper provides a numerical general equilibrium assessment of policies to reduce tropical deforestation in Cameroon. Market failure—mainly in the form of national and international externalities—and policy failures—such as highly distorted product markets—are identified as major sources of overexploitation. The ecological effects of deforestation control are shown to depend crucially upon its impact on land use patterns whereas its efficiency effects hinge on the manner in which a specified set-aside target is achieved. If the international community wants to ensure a higher level of protection of these forests, and to do so within a market-based system, the provision of conditional financial resources is neceassary.     

Invasive species management in a spatially heterogeneous world: Effects of uniform policies

The spread of invasive species (IS) is an inherently spatial process, and management of invasive species occurs over spatially heterogeneous regions, but policy constraints can restrict management responses to be homogeneous across regions. Using a spatial bioeconomic model that includes a representation of invasive species ecology based on heterogeneous environments that are linked across space and time by human and ecological pathways, we compare optimal spatially heterogeneous policy to spatially uniform policy. We explore the magnitude and pattern of the policy differences with emphasis on the influence of different types of underlying heterogeneity across locations.     

Licensing policies for a new product

This paper studies licensing policies for the owner of a new product and addresses their welfare impact in the assessment of market failures. We show that the best licensing policy for the patent holder is fixed fee licensing with an exclusive territory clause. Consumers are also better off with fixed fees but do not prefer the exclusive territory clause. Social welfare is higher under exclusive territories when fixed costs are not too large. As for efficiency, the number of licences in the private market equilibrium falls short of the socially optimal solution. Our analysis discloses that (i) any policy measures aimed at enhancing the diffusion of technology, in terms of the number of licences, would be welcomed and, (ii) the permissive treatment received by licensing agreements with exclusive territories is justified.     

Timber harvesting versus forest reserves—producer prices for open-use areas in German beech forests (Fagus sylvatica L.)

A strong demand for nature conservation can be ascertained in Germany. Several nature conservation groups argue that in order to provide nature conservation in considerable parts of the forest area forestry should sacrifice timber harvesting. For example, the abandoning of harvesting altogether is supposed to enhance and protect the species richness. This fact and the very low profitability of forestry in Germany motivated the writing of this paper. The paper explains a methodology for deriving producer prices involved in forest reserves, where harvest benefits are sacrificed totally. Such methodology can be useful to form a basis for private contracts between forest owners and nature conservationists, who demand forest reserves. The results of this methodology can also be integrated in financial programs for species and habitat conservation.In a basic theoretical consideration, it is demonstrated that a stand-by-stand evaluation approach may only serve as an initial step in deriving compensation prices for forest reserves. Due to the stochastic character of forest management, a nonlinear programming approach (NLP) was adopted to find an optimal operational plan for a hypothetical beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) forest. In both the constraints and the objective function, the nonlinearity is considered by integrating stochastic components. Additionally, only virtual homogenous forest reserves are considered. Firstly, a basic NLP solution for the hypothetical forest with the objective “maximise the net present value (NPV) of timber harvests adjusted to risk” was obtained when considering several constraints subject to stochastic variation of net revenues and timber harvests without considering forest reserves. Secondly, other solutions allowing for forest reserves were computed. The decrease of the objective function when forest reserves were increased in periodic increments seemed well suited to mirror the opportunity costs of forest reserves.The results showed that a stand-by-stand approach gave much greater compensation prices than the NLP approach. The reason for this lay in the consideration of a nonlinear objective function as well as the nonlinear constraints in the case of NLP. The first 42-ha forest reserve was priced at 11,494 Euro/ha or, 483 Euro/ha/year expressed in infinite yearly compensation. The yearly compensation price for the last forest reserve had an increase up to 607 Euro/ha/year. A stand-by-stand approach, however, resulted with compensation prices from minimally 609 up to maximally 709 Euro/ha/year.Various interest rates (3.2% and 5.2%) caused different compensation price curves. The slope of the curves increased when the interest rate decreased.The limits of the approach, the problem of deriving a demand for forest reserves and the opportunities for applying the presented approach to state forests are discussed.     

Toward a benchmark for optimal prudency policy

This paper presents a benchmark model of prudency policy. The incidence and the financial implications of optimal prudence reviews are examined in a stylized setting. In the environment considered, prudence reviews optimally occur following particularly unfavorable performance by the regulated firm, and they impose expected penalties on the firm. However, rewards as well as penalties from prudence reviews are generally optimal. Furthermore, the risk and expected penalties associated with prudence reviews decline as the regulator's ex ante assessment of the firm's activities becomes more favorable.We are grateful to the National Science Foundation for financial support, and to Sanford Berg, Eugene Brigham, Joel Demski, Carl Pechman, and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments.     

The dynamics of optimal abatement strategies for multiple pollutants—An illustration in the Greenhouse

We investigate optimal abatement strategies for cumulative and interacting pollutants. We show that different decay rates can cause non-monotonic behavior in the optimal paths of emissions, the aggregate level of pollution, and even the relative optimal price for emissions. This contrasts strikingly with the case of a single pollutant. The results are illustrated by numerical simulations, first for instructive fictitious and second for more realistic parameters mimicking the greenhouse problem. The results add to the skepticism existing about whether the concept of global warming potential is a useful indicator for the optimal relative abatement of different GHGs over time. In fact, we show that a constant index suitable for comparing dynamically different pollutants with respect to their economic harmfulness does not exist.     

Bundling as an optimal selling mechanism for a multiple-good monopolist

Multiple objects may be sold by posting a schedule consisting of one price for each possible bundle and permitting the buyer to select the price-bundle pair of his choice. We identify conditions that must be satisfied by any price schedule that maximizes revenue within the class of all such schedules. We then provide conditions under which a price schedule maximizes expected revenue within the class of all incentive compatible and individually rational mechanisms in the n-object case. We use these results to characterize environments, mainly distributions of valuations, where bundling is the optimal mechanism in the two and three good cases.     

Optimal macroeconomic policies in a financial and economic crisis: a case study for Slovenia

In this paper, we study different and, in particular, “optimal” reactions of fiscal (and to some extent monetary) policies to the financial and economic crisis of 2007–2009 in Slovenia, a small open economy that is part of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Using an econometric model of the Slovenian economy, we simulate the effects of the global crisis under the assumption of no-policy reactions, i.e. assuming that macroeconomic policies are conducted without attempting to deal with the effects of the crisis. Next, we study the possibilities of fiscal policy reducing or even annihilating the effects of the crisis. We also investigate the optimal reaction of fiscal policies based on the assumption that Slovenian policy-makers behave as though they were optimizing an objective function. We show that optimal policies call for only a very modestly active countercyclical role of fiscal policies. There are strong trade-offs between countercyclical fiscal policies and the requirements of fiscal solvency.     

Pricing policies for a two-part exhaustible resource cartel: The case of OPEC

This paper examines pricing policies for OPEC under the assumption that the cartel is composed of a block of spender countries with large cash needs and a block of saver countries with little immediate need for cash and a lower rate of discount. The decision problem for the two-part cartel is embodied in a game-theoretic framework and the optimal bargaining solution is computed using results from the theory of cooperative games developed by Nash. The set of feasible bargaining points—and the corresponding Nash solution—is computed under two assumptions on the behavior of output shares: that they are subject to choice and that they are fixed at historical values. Our results suggest that for fixed output shares, there is little room for bargaining, and the price path approximates the optimal monopoly price path. If the shares are subject to control, optimal paths depend significantly on the relative bargaining power of each block.     

Technologies,preferences, and policies for a sustainable use of natural resources

We discuss eight contributions that combine the topics of sustainable natural resource use and economic dynamics. In the first part we consider enhanced oil recovery (EOR), carbon capture and storage (CCS), as well as innovations allowing for energy-efficiency improvements and renewable energy cost reductions. We discuss how to include these technologies and innovations in CGE models, how each of them has different effects on the timing of emissions and abatement and on total emissions, and how (first-best as well as second-best) complementary policies (in particular, emission taxes and innovation subsidies) differ across these technologies. In the second part we compare differences in intergenerational preferences towards resource conservation - altruistic preferences and concern for social status from relative consumption -and also found sharply contrasting effects across the alternative assumptions.     

An optimal auction for capacity constrained bidders: a network perspective

This paper examines the problem of a seller with limited supply selling to a group of agents whose private information is two-dimensional. Each agent has a constant marginal value for the good up to some capacity, thereafter it is zero. Both the marginal value and the capacity are private information. We describe the revenue maximizing Bayesian incentive compatible auction for this environment. A novel feature of the analysis is an interpretation of an optimal auction design problem in terms of a linear program that is an instance of a parametric shortest path problem on a lattice. We thank the referees for a number of useful suggestions that have been incorporated into the paper. Mallesh Pai suggested the argument given in Lemma 1. The research was supported in part by the NSF grant ITR IIS-0121678.     

A bioeconomic model for determining the optimal response strategies for a new weed incursion

Invasions by non-indigenous plant species pose serious economic threats to Australian agricultural industries. When a new invader is identified a rapid response is critical, particularly if the invasive species has the ability to spread rapidly. An early decision is required whether to attempt to eradicate or contain the infestation, or do nothing and leave it to landholders to manage. These decisions should be based on economic considerations that account for long term benefits and costs. This paper describes a bioeconomic simulation framework with a mathematical model representing weed spread linked to a dynamic programming model to provide a means of determining the economically optimal weed management strategies over time, from the government’s perspective. The modelling framework is used to evaluate hypothetical case study invasive weed control scenarios in the Australian cropping systems. The benefit–cost ratios of invasion control are shown to be generally very high and clearly, there are significant benefits to be achieved by controlling highly invasive weeds when initial infestations are at a low level. Even if the invasion cannot be eradicated due to its high invasiveness or budget constraints, it still pays to maintain invasions at low levels.     

Pareto optimal improvements for sunspots: The golden rule as a target for stabilization

Summary The stationary sunspot equilibria of a simple one good OLG economy are considered. These equilibria are known to be suboptimal. We show that, for any such equilibrium allocation, there always exists a Pareto optimal improvement which has the additional property of reaching the Golden Rule in finite time, i.e., the monetary steady state acts as a target. We also show that, in general, periodic allocations cannot be used as targets. The result is interpreted as a welfare theoretical justification for stabilization policy.This paper is based on my dissertation at SUNY Stony Brook. I would like to thank my supervisor, T. J. Muench, for his advice and encouragement. O. Galor's comments on a previous draft, and discussions with M. Kurz, J. Peck, H. M. Polemarchakis, B. Smith, and I. Zilcha, are gratefully acknowledged. Comments from F. Marhuenda, two referees and, especially, the Co-Editor, M. Woodford, did much to improve the exposition. Thanks are due to the Lady Davis Foundation for supporting my stay at the Hebrew University, and the IVIE and DGICYT PB92-0342 at Alicante, where successive drafts were prepared.