Sudden stops,sectoral reallocations,and the real exchange rate

A sudden stop of capital flows into a developing country tends to be followed by a rapid switch from trade deficits to surpluses, a depreciation of the real exchange rate, and decreases in output and total factor productivity. Substantial reallocation takes place from the nontraded sector to the traded sector. We construct a multisector growth model, calibrate it to the Mexican economy, and use it to analyze Mexico's 1994–95 crisis. When subjected to a sudden stop, the model accounts for the trade balance reversal and the real exchange rate depreciation, but it cannot account for the decreases in GDP and TFP. Extending the model to include labor frictions and variable capital utilization, we still find that it cannot quantitatively account for the dynamics of output and productivity without losing the ability to account for the movements of other variables.     

Targeting Sectors for Foreign Capital Inflow in a Small Developing Economy

We argue, in a model with trade and unemployment, that exogenous inflow of foreign capital may deliver the desired result when it flows to a protected intermediate-goods sector. Whether foreign investment should be directed towards an intermediate-goods sector or to a final-goods sector depends on the technological specifications of either type of goods as well as on the existing set of trade policies.     

Comparing approaches to valuing sectoral net investments

In the literature of comprehensive national accounts, national net investments are used to indicate dynamic welfare improvement in an economy. A well-known approach associates national net investments with the shadow value of change in stock of capital assets in an economy. Following this capital stock approach, sectoral net investments can be defined as the shadow value of change in stock of capital assets owned by a sector in an economy. An alternative approach is based on future commodity flows to a sector. This commodity flow approach associates sectoral net investments with the present value of changes in future commodity flows to a sector. In the present paper, I compare these two approaches and prove that they coincide with each other only if the future commodity flows to the sector can be attributed to current stock of capital assets in the sector alone. In empirical studies, commodity flow approach can be a better alternative if the purpose is to estimate the contributions to national net investments of a recipient of future cash flows.     

资本账户开放与国际金融冲击的传导——基于DSGE模型的分析

本文在动态随机一般均衡的框架下,建立了一个包括贸易部门和非贸易部门的小型开放经济模型,系统研究和比较资本管制与资本账户开放两种情况下,国外金融冲击、出口需求冲击对中国经济的不同影响和传导机制,并检验资本账户开放情形下应对国际冲击时不同货币政策规则的有效性。结果发现：当资本账户开放时,一国受到国外冲击的波动幅度远大于资本管制的情况;资本管制和资本账户开放对国际金融冲击传导机制的关键差异在于贸易部门与非贸易部门的互动关系,具体表现为劳动力转移的差异;在资本账户开放后,面对不同形式的国际冲击,货币数量型规则和混合型规则均能有效熨平经济波动。     

On the Terms of Trade and Sectoral Reallocations

A commonly held view is that a small open economy adjusts to a negative external shock by switching both expenditure and resources toward the domestic traded goods sector. We show that, when both labor and imported inputs are used as factors of production, the average labor intensity in the nontraded sector may increase substantially with a decline in the terms of trade. This can lead to an internal transfer of labor into the nontraded sector, and an improvement in the trade balance even with a decline in traded sector output. This result depends on a combination of a high elasticity of substitution across nontraded varieties and large differences in labor intensities in the production of nontraded varieties. Our analysis suggests that intersectoral labor flows are not necessarily a good measure of an economy's flexibility, and that intersectoral resource reallocation and expenditure‐switching can move in opposite directions.     

SHORT-RUN TRADE SURPLUS CREATION IN A TWO-SECTOR SETTING

This study investigates the effect of the suppression of competition in the domestic non-tradable sector on a country's trade balance in a small open economy. Using a two-sector model, this study demonstrates that the effect on the trade balance of such a suppression depends on the sector on which the policy is imposed. This result sharply contrasts with Yano's result in a one-sector model demonstrating that such a policy unambiguously creates a trade surplus in the short run.     

Factor Endowments,Democracy, and Trade Policy Divergence

We develop a stochastic model of electoral competition in order to study the economic and political determinants of trade policy. We model a small open economy with two tradable goods, each of which is produced using a sector‐specific factor (e.g., land and capital) and another factor that is mobile between these tradable sectors (labor); one nontradable good, which is also produced using a specific factor (skilled labor), and an elected government with the mandate to tax trade flows. The tax revenue is used to provide local public goods that increase the economic agents’ utility. We use this general equilibrium model to explicitly derive the ideal policies of the different socioeconomic groups in society (landlords, industrialists, labor, and skilled workers). We then use those ideal policies to model the individual probabilistic voting behavior of the members of each of these socioeconomic groups. We use this model to shed light on how differences in the comparative advantages of countries explain trade policy divergence between countries as well as trade policy instability within countries. We regard trade policy instability to mean that, in equilibrium, political parties diverge in terms of the political platforms they adopt. We show that in natural resource (land)–abundant economies with very little capital, or in economies that specializes in the production of manufactures, parties tend to converge to the same policy platform, and trade policy is likely to be stable and relatively close to free trade. In contrast, in a natural resource–abundant economy with an important domestic industry that competes with the imports, parties tend to diverge, and trade policy is likely to be more protectionist and unstable.     

Job-search and foreign capital inflow — A three-sector general equilibrium analysis

The purpose of this paper is to extend the Fields' (1989) multi-sector job-search model in a three-sector general equilibrium framework by introducing international trade and capital as input. The three sectors are the rural sector, the urban informal sector and the urban formal sector. The rural sector and the urban informal sector use one type of mobile capital while the urban formal sector uses a sector-specific capital. We find that the effects of an inflow of foreign capital in the urban formal sector on unemployment and social welfare crucially hinge on the relative factor intensities of the rural sector and the urban informal sector. We show that there is a possibility of trade-off between the government's twin objectives of improvement in social welfare and mitigation of the urban unemployment problem. These results are extremely crucial from the view point of policymaking in an unemployment plagued, low-income developing economy.     

Economic impact analysis of industrial projects: An approach

A method of calculating economic impact of industrial project proposals is described. The method identifies the benefits and costs of a project to the enterprise and to government, as well as its impact on the economy as a whole, with or without government assistance or intervention in any form. Entrepreneurial and social potentials or driving forces are identified, together with potentials common to both. The analytical method, called economic fertility analysis, employs a large input-output model of the economy to generate a series of impact elements, including increased economic activity, new government revenues, trade balance effects, new capital generation, personal savings, consumer expenditures, and employment. These elements are used to calculate simple income and employment multipliers, forward and backward linkages, and cash flows through the economy resulting from the project. A method of comparing different types of investments or interventions in the economy thus becomes available.     

虚拟经济视角下的汇率理论

在经济虚拟化程度很高的现代市场经济中,物质的生产与流通需要价值关系来体现,价值关系是协调整个市场经济系统能否正常运转的关键。汇率涉及两个或多个国家的价值系统的关系,是各国之间对虚拟资产的价格与实体经济实物的价格的比率,在货币与经济虚拟化之后,传统的汇率理论的解释力已显不足,通过对古典贸易理论的国际收支均衡、比较贸易优势理论、蒙代尔-弗莱明模型、资产组合平衡模型和货币分析法模型的简单评述,可看出其在经济虚拟化条件下,国际资本大规模流动造成了传统理论对解释现实的汇率运行及开放经济均衡的局限性。     

Entrepreneurial Migration in an Integrated World

A growing number of developed countries offer entrepreneurial visas as a means of attracting entrepreneurial talent and capital. In this paper, we use a simple two‐sector model of international trade with heterogeneous agents and financial frictions to show that entrepreneurial migration can contribute to the international efficiency of production, even when capital also flows internationally through borrowing and lending and foreign direct investment. In our model, all cross‐border transactions are motivated by cross‐country variations in the quality of financial institutions.     

Currency crisis transmission through international trade

The Eurozone recent crisis has shown how balance of payments problems in less developed European Monetary Union (EMU) member countries can affect EMU trading partners, spreading the crisis to a larger group of countries. This paper introduces a three-country dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze whether and how terms of trade effects can generate a spillover effect or a currency crisis transmission between countries. Specifically, using a two period model, it incorporates world market clearing conditions for tradables into a new theoretic model, analyzes net capital flow movements between countries, and establishes cross-border macroeconomic linkages. This paper shows how a currency crisis can transmit through the real (trade) sector channel of the economy.     

What to expect from an international system of tradable permits for carbon emissions

We use an econometrically-estimated multi-region, multi-sector general equilibrium model of the world economy to examine the effects of using a system of internationally-tradable emissions permits to control world carbon dioxide emissions. We focus, in particular, on the effects of the system on flows of trade and international capital. Our results show that international trade and capital flows significantly alter projections of the domestic effects of emissions mitigation policy, compared with analyses that ignore international capital flows, and that under some systems of international permit trading the United States is likely to become a significant permit seller, the opposite of the conventional wisdom.     

Property Rights, Renewable Resources and Economic Development

This paper analyzes the role of endogenous property rights in the development of an open resource-based economy. I incorporate renewable resources and endogenous decisions on property rights into a convex growth model with the formal and informal sectors. I find that along the transition path to steady state, property rights enforcement is not constant but improves with time as well as involves intermediate property rights specification (between open access and perfect property rights). International trade and labor market are driving these endogenous changes. Property rights improve with favorable terms of trade when the economy exports resource services and stronger property rights help maintain the resource stock by deterring illegal harvest. This pushes labor away from the informal harvest sector toward greater participation in the formal sector of the economy. In turn, more labor participation in the formal sector along with capital formation increase the country’s output and consumption. Overall, with an open economy and well-functioning institutions, renewable resources have a positive impact on economic growth.     

Economic liberalization and welfare in a model with an informal sector

The paper reexamines the conventional results relating to inflow of foreign capital, removal of protectionism and structural reform programmes, in a small open economy in terms of a two-sector general equilibrium model with an informal sector. The paper shows that in the presence of labour market distortion and a protectionist policy, inflow of foreign capital may be desirable irrespective of the pattern of trade of the economy due to its favourable impact on welfare. But the welfare implications of tariff reductions and/or structural adjustment programmes, such as deregulating the formal sector labour market, depend crucially on the economy's trade pattern. The paper provides an answer to the question as to whether in a developing economy labour market reform and tariff reform should go hand-in-hand or whether one should precede the other for welfare improvement.
JEL classification: F10, F13, F21, O17.     

CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS FOR HOUSING IN THE 1980s

Massive federal budget deficits and declining personal saving flows portend an acute private-sector capital shortage over the balance of the 1980s decade. Housing is the sector of the economy most likely to bear the brunt of this shortage. Quantifying that shortage and suggesting preventive policy changes are the primary purposes of his paper. The recent, conservative estimates of household formations and housing production requirements of the MIT-Harvard Joint Center for Urban Studies form the basis for estimates of the net capital requirements for homing during 1984 through 1989. These estimates are compared with estimates of net capital supply for housing to reveal a capital shortage that will preclude the achievement of the housing production requirements without further change in economic policy. The paper concludes with specific recommendations for policy change, including proposals for deficit reduction and a broad-based tax incentive for saving     

An analysis of the demand for skill in a growing economy

We construct a trade theoretic model of skill formation with skill as a produced intermediate input. Capital is required for production as well as for education which transforms unskilled labor into skilled. We use this model to reflect analytically on India's rising requirement of skilled manpower. We show that even if growth of capital and supply of skilled manpower match, relative stagnation of unskilled manufacturing sector will magnify the gap between growth in demand and supply of skill. This may happen, for example, if there is a vast pool of workforce who may not have even the basic education to qualify as “unskilled” and excessive capital flows into the skilled sector. Thus a country with lack of education at a very basic level will be forced to import skilled manpower from the rest of the world.     

QUANTITY AND PRICE EFFECTS IN AN ANALYSIS OF WORLD TRADE BASED ON AN ACCOUNTING MATRIX*

This paper describes the construction of an accounting matrix for the world economy in 1977, cast along similar lines to SNA National Accounts, but one in which trade flows replace inter-industry flows as intermediate demand. The matrix distinguishes ten regions. Institutional accounts are presented for three of these, the European Community, North America and Japan. This matrix is used to provide the basis of a linear model in which average propensities to import and consume are replaced by estimated marginal propensities. Use is made of standard estimates of the income effects of terms of trade changes in order to distinguish substitution from income effects in the model, and a means is suggested for separating the full as well as the impact effects of a terms of trade change into income and substitution effects. The estimated import equations are used to derive estimates of regional growth rates compatible with external balance in each region. Multiplier matrices are calculated from the model showing regional interdependence of the world economy reflecting the pattern of trade which is identified in the marginal propensities to import. The effects of various aid policies are calculated using the model. It is shown that the cost of aid to any region is radically altered by taking into account the feedback effects of changes in demand. A policy of tied aid pursued by EEC, North America and Japan can actually lead to an improvement in Japan's balance of payments position. Finally the effects of movements in relative prices are illustrated by means of two examples.     

Simulating A Multifactor General Equilibrium Model Of Production And Trade

This study builds and simulates a high dimensional general equilibrium model of production and trade with inputs of capital and eight separate skilled groups of labor. Constant returns to scale cannot be rejected in any sector as a null hypothesis. International capital flows and labor migration are found to have very small effects on income redistribution, a result which is called near factor price equalization. Protectionism, on the other hand, has more substantial effects. Elasticities describing the income redistribution due to protection in manufacturing, agriculture, and services follow a pattern suggested by factor intensities. [410]     

Exchange rate devaluation,monetary policy and wages: A general equilibrium analysis for Chile

A range of devaluation, monetary and wage policy mixes are analysed for the Chilean economy using a 10 sector comparative static model built along neoclassical lines. The model, while focusing on the real side of the economy, also contains a simple monetary sector. Quantifying the short-run implications of each policy mix for key macroeconomic and sectoral variables enables judgements to be made about the effectiveness of each mix in reaching specified targets and their feasibility. Money wage flexibility downwards is crucial if balance of trade and employment targets are to be achieved with lower domestic inflation and a smaller nominal devaluation.