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.     

Taxation in General Equilibrium: an Introduction

This paper provides an introduction to some aspects of the role of taxes in a static general equilibrium framework. The standard diagrammatic framework is first used, in the case of fixed factor supplies, in order to examine selective commodity and factor taxes. A simple two-sector model, with Cobb–Douglas production functions and preferences, and allowing labour supplies to be endogenous, is then constructed. Several tax policies are examined using numerical examples.     

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.     

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)     

Policy Bias Equivalence under Common Agency

This paper studies interest group influence on policy making. Lobbying occurs in a first price auction where an interest group wins with certainty, if her bid exceeds the loser’s bid by the policy maker’s valuation for the socially best policy. Otherwise the latter implements the privately known best policy. In equilibrium the size of the policy maker’s valuation does not matter for the size of the policy bias. The idea is to construct a “reference game” and to shift the support of the equilibrium mixed strategies into the original game, without altering the structure of the densities.     

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.     

Ecosystem and Economy: An Integrated Dynamic General Equilibrium Approach

A dynamic general equilibrium model is developed for analyzing economy-ecosystem interactions. It includes stock-flow relations of natural resources, species populations and pollution, and it provides a microfoundation of the growth of populations. Humans and (other) species compete for natural resources and (prey) biomass. Resource stocks, pollution and populations determine public ecosystem services which in turn affect all agents in both the ecosystem and the economy. We establish a benchmark market system encompassing Lindahl markets for ecosystem services and emission markets. We also analyze a system where those two types of markets break down (laissez-faire) and propose efficiency restoring policies.     

Migration, Jobs and Welfare: A General Equilibrium Analysis

Immigration has been an important element of the economic development of many countries, although in recent years there has been an intensification of doubts about the benefits of further immigration. This paper brings some simple general‐equilibrium modelling tools to bear on the question of the employment and welfare effects of immigration. Employment and taxation effects, rather than wage and distributional effects, are found to be crucial in determining the impact of immigration on the welfare of factor‐owners in the receiving country. These employment effects depend on the type of immigration and the substitutability or complementarity relationships between immigrant labour and unemployed labour. Certain types of immigration are shown to be Pareto‐improving for the receiving country, without any need for lump‐sum transfers. Simple numerical simulations illustrate the results.     

Economic Mismeasurement and the Bias in Policy Choice

The level of economic activity is never measured perfectly because of problems of definition, inaccuracies in data collection, and the existence of the hidden economy. Such mismeasurement implies that government policies based on official statistics can be optimal only by chance. The analysis formalizes this observation in a two-sector economy and attempts to quantify the direction and extent of the bias introduced into policy by the failure to account for the true size of the economy. It is shown that short-term reform (which need not balance the government budget) can be detrimental. When a budget constraint is imposed, this ensures that reforms will be beneficial no matter how bad is the mismeasurement.     

A Normative Analysis of Housing-Related Tax Policy in a General Equilibrium Model of Housing Quality and Prices

We evaluate an array of housing-related tax policies in a general equilibrium model with endogenous housing quality and prices. The local government facilitates the provision of local public amenities, financed by an array of housing-related taxes, including a developer gross revenue tax, a property tax, a land tax, and a development license fee. In a competitive spatial equilibrium, all households optimize and reach the same utility, all monopolistically competitive developers optimize and receive zero profit, and both housing and land markets clear. We examine the effects of various tax policies on housing quality, housing prices, land rent, as well as the population and housing density. By evaluating quantitatively the welfare of the local economy, we establish a globally optimal tax scheme in the housing market: complete elimination of the property tax and imposition of a lower gross revenue tax (possibly fully eliminated) than both development and land taxes.     

Publicly Provided Private Goods and Redistribution: A General Equilibrium Analysis

Public provision of private goods is examined within a self-selection framework where production depends on labour supply of different households and the level of public provision. It is shown that productivity and wage-structure effects can create a role for public provision, even if preferences are weakly separable between goods and leisure. Public provision of education may offer an intuitively appealing case for the production-side impacts. We also address the reasons for public provision in a dynamic, overlapping generations economy, whereby public provision may affect efficiency and social costs of redistribution of future generations as well.
JEL classification : H 23; H 42     

Capital Malleability, Emission Leakage and the Cost of Partial Climate Policies: General Equilibrium Analysis of the European Union Emission Trading System

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are the premier analytical platform for assessing the economic impacts of climate change mitigation. But these models tend to treat physical capital as “malleable”, capable of reallocation among sectors over the time-period for which equilibrium is solved. Because the extent to which capital adjustment costs might dampen reallocation is not well understood, there is concern that CGE assessments understate the true costs of greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction policies. This paper uses a multi-region, multi-sector CGE model to investigate cap-and-trade schemes, such as the European Union Emission Trading System which cover a subset of the economy, elucidating the effects of capital malleability on GHG abatement, the potential for emission leakage from abating to non-abating sectors, and the impacts on welfare. To simplify the complex interactions being simulated within the CGE model, that analysis is complemented with an analytical model. A partial climate policy results in negative internal carbon leakage, with emissions declining not only in capped sectors but also in non-regulated ones. This result is stronger when capital is intersectorally mobile. Interestingly, in partial climate policy settings capital malleability can amplify or attenuate welfare losses depending on the attributes of the economy.     

Voluntary Export Restraints and Economic Welfare: A General Equilibrium Analysis

We derive some sufficient conditions for the Suzumura-Ishikawa proposition on voluntary export restraints to hold when their model is extended to a general equilibrium framework. The sufficient conditions are concerned with the magnitude of income effects which play no role in the partial-equilibrium analysis of Suzumura and Ishikawa.     

General Equilibrium Tragedy of the Commons

Many poor economies depend on open access resources for their livelihoods. Households in resource-based economies allocate their time and other factors between resource extraction and other activities. As a result, factors may shift from one sector to another as marginal returns change. This has two important implications. First, it implies potentially strong linkages between resource and non-resource sectors. Second, it means that unmanaged resources cause inefficient allocations of inputs across all sectors, and the effects of resource management spill into other sectors. We construct a local general equilibrium model that accounts for inputs that over-allocate to an open access resource and create a general equilibrium tragedy of the commons. This model describes resource rent dissipation more adequately in economies with mobile factors than a model with slowly dissipating rents. Perfectly mobile factors dissipate rent in every period, but endogenous wages cause labor and capital allocations to change with the resource stock. We use the model to illustrate medium-run impacts of a limit on capital in an artisanal fishery in Honduras. Simulation results reveal that fishery management has economy-wide impacts on prices and wages. Managers in developing countries thus should consider these linkages when implementing policies to conserve fish stocks.     

Market, Trade and Welfare in General Equilibrium

This paper develops a tractable general equilibrium model of an economy with an arbitrary number of industries under increasing returns to scale and imperfect competition. The market structure of the model economy is expressed by two basic sets of parameters: the degree of competition, and the markup ratio prevailing in each industry. The government is supposed to control the degree of competition through antitrust policy and the markup ratio through entry policy. Using this model, I re-examine the results of traditional competitive equilibrium analysis and explore the effects of competition policies on economic welfare and international trade.
JEL Classification Numbers: D43, D50, F11, F12, L13, L41.     

增值税税率降低和加计抵减政策的经济效应评估-基于动态可计算一般均衡模型的研究

文章在2017年中国投入产出表的基础上,编制了社会核算矩阵,构建含有增值税抵扣机制的动态可计算一般均衡模型,测度了2018年以来增值税改革政策的经济效应.研究发现,作为税率式优惠政策,增值税税率降低能够产生良好的整体减税效应,降低了多数行业的增值税税负;但由于金融业、现代服务业和生活服务业的增值税税率没有下降,其他行业税率下降导致这三个行业的进项税额减少,增值税税负有所上升.作为税额式优惠政策,增值税加计抵减具有非常良好的定向减税效果,在一定程度上对冲了生产、生活性服务业的税负上升.增值税税率降低能够改善税收的扭曲,提高经济运行效率,促进各行业的增加值增长,而加计抵减政策则略微抑制了产出增长.动态来看,随着时间的推移,增值税税率降低政策的经济增长效应在持续扩大,加计抵减政策对经济的抑制效应在逐渐减弱.两类降低税负的政策都提高了企业利润和居民收入水平,政府的企业所得税和个人所得税收入增长,但受增值税收入下降影响,政府总体税收收入出现了一定幅度的下滑.     

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。