The Elephant In The Ground: Managing Oil And Sovereign Wealth

One of the most important developments in international finance and resource economics in the past twenty years is the rapid and widespread emergence of the $6 trillion sovereign wealth fund industry. Oil exporters typically ignore below-ground assets when allocating these funds, and ignore above-ground assets when extracting oil. We present a unified stylized framework for considering both. Subsoil oil should alter a fund’s portfolio through additional leverage and hedging. First-best spending should be a share of total wealth, and any unhedgeable volatility must be managed by precautionary savings. If oil prices are pro-cyclical, oil should be extracted faster than the Hotelling rule to generate a risk premium on oil wealth. Finally, we discuss how our analysis could improve the management of Norway’s fund in practice.     

Wealth Effects, Distribution, and the Theory of Organization

We construct a general equilibrium model of firm formation in which organization is endogenous. Firms are coalitions of agents providing effort and investment capital. Effort is unobservable unless a fixed monitoring cost is paid, and borrowing is subject to a costly state verification problem. Because incentives vary with an agent's wealth, different types of agents become attractive firm members under different circumstances. When borrowing is not costly, firms essentially consist of one type of agent and are organized efficiently. But when the costly state verification problem is sufficiently severe, firm organization will depend on the distribution of wealth: with enough inequality, it will tend to be dictated by incentives of rich agents to earn high returns to wealth, even if the chosen organizational form is not a technically efficient way to provide incentives.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: D2, D31, J41, L2.     

No Credit for Transition: European Institutions and German Unemployment

The Stability and Growth Pact, adopted by members of the European Union,imposes tight limits on government deficits. But since the collapse of Communism,Europe has been faced with the problems of economies in transition: and reunifiedGermany—the leading economy of the EU—combines a prosperous western stateand an eastern economy in the process of transition. In a model where unions play akey role in wage bargaining and transition imposes a substantial burden on thenational budget, we analyze the implications of balancing the budget for the path ofunemployment. Where high but temporary costs are financed by raising taxes onemployment to satisfy the Stability and Growth Pact, then the title is a misnomer:relative to a policy of `tax smoothing', the pact increases unemployment and slowsgrowth. In designing fiscal rules for Europe, the benefits of tax smoothing must beweighed in the balance along with the virtues of fiscal discipline.     

Unemployment Durations in West Germany Before and After the Reform of the Unemployment Compensation System during the 1980s

Abstract. This paper analyzes empirically the distribution of unemployment durations in West Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. It therefore covers periods before and after the changes during the mid‐1980s in the maximum entitlement periods for unemployment benefits for older unemployed. The analysis is based on the IAB employment subsample containing administrative data for about 500,000 individuals. Since these data only partly reveal the unemployment duration in an economic sense, we use a narrow and a wide proxy for unemployment. Our empirical analysis finds significant changes in the distribution of non‐employment durations for older unemployed. At the same time, the distribution of unemployment durations between jobs remained unchanged after the reforms. Our findings clearly show that many firms and workers used the more beneficial laws as a part of early retirement packages. Surprisingly, for those workers who found and accepted a new job, we do not observe a prolongation of their search periods to a sizeable extent.     

The Role of Shocks and Institutions in the Rise of European Unemployment: the Aggregate Evidence

Two key facts about European unemployment must be explained: the rise in unemployment since the 1960s, and the heterogeneity of individual country experiences. While adverse shocks can potentially explain much of the rise in unemployment, there is insufficient heterogeneity in these shocks to explain cross-country differences. Alternatively, while explanations focusing on labour market institutions explain current heterogeneity well, many of these institutions pre-date the rise in unemployment. Based on a panel of institutions and shocks for 20 OECD nations since 1960 we find that the interaction between shocks and institutions is crucial to explaining both stylised facts.     

澳大利亚家庭财富的结构与分配

《经济与社会变化的动态研究——澳大利亚家庭收入与就业动态调查之分析》,是一项大型的研究计划。本文只是该计划之下的一个子课题。这项子课题获得澳大利亚研究理事会的资助,(拨款编号为DPO342970)。我们在文中引用的数据,部分来自家庭与社区服务部辖     

Wealth Distribution and Imperfect Factor Markets: A Classroom Experiment

The author presents a simple exercise to demonstrate how initial property distribution can affect final wealth patterns in developing areas of the world. The simulation is a variant of the Monopoly board game in which students role play different members of a market in which they each face different rules of credit access and salary patterns. The property distribution and new mortgage rules reflect the reality of many developing areas. The simulation can be completed in one full class period and has proven successful in making students more sensitive to wealth distribution issues. Students have suggested several variations of this simulation to make it applicable across more settings.     

财富能力:现代财富生产的核心

历史上人们的财富观念以及获取财富的方法随经济活动方式的改变而改变。在经济全球化和虚拟经济迅猛发展的今天,财富生态发生了重大变化,同时使得我国的财富生产面临新的危机。增强国家和企业的财富能力,包括财富生产的能力、控制财富"食物链"的能力以及确保财富安全的能力等已成为当务之急。     

The Distribution of Wealth in Australia — A Survey*

This paper surveys and analyzes the available evidence on the distribution of wealth in Australia. On the basis of this evidence, it is argued that the cross-section distribution of personal wealth reveals considerable concentration in the top tail, with the top 1 per cent of adult individuals holding around 25 per cent of private wealth. The inequality of wealth revealed in the cross-section distribution among the top 10 per cent of wealth holders is not significantly reduced when adjustments are made to correct for life-cycle influences. Although the proportion of wealth held by the top 1 per cent of adult individuals has decreased sharply since World War I, the second to tenth percentiles have almost the same proportion in the 1960s and 1970s as in 1915.     

价值、财富与分配"新四说"

目前，学术界在商品价值、社会财富和分配关系的基本理论研究方面仍没有取得共识。为了清晰地使有关价值、财富与分配的各种现象和本质联系都可得到圆满的科学说明，笔者提出“新四说”：各种生产性活劳动创造商品价值——活劳动价值说；全生产要素或经济要素创造社会财富或商品使用价值——全要素财富说；多种产权关系决定按资和按劳等多种分配方式——多产权分配说；按生产要素贡献分配的形式是要素所有者创造价值和财富并据此参与分配，而实质是按生产要素产权分配——按要素贡献的分配形式与实质说(按贡分配形质说)。     

A Characterization of Australian Unemployment Compensation: An Analysis of Labour Market Adjustment*

This paper uses a labour contracting framework to analyze the microeconomics of the Australian unemployment compensation system. We find that employers adjust labour inputs by using layoffs rather than shortened workweeks or work-sharing during economic recessions. Increases in government benefits tend to reinforce this result Countervailing influences are shown to be the severity of the income test applying to benefits eligibility and the Family Allowance Supplement in its role as supplementing the income of low-income families.     

The Effects of Immigration on Regional Unemployment Rates in The Netherlands

The impact of immigration on the change in the unemployment rate in the Netherlands is analyzed using panel data from 26 labor market regions from 1996 through 2003. This study measures immigration through the year-to-year change in the foreign population, paying particular attention to immigrants of non-Western origin. Other variables controlling the composition of the local labor market include: occupation shares, the fractions of workers employed in high- and low-skilled jobs, the fractions of female workers, part-time employees, labor force participants over the age of 55, educational attainment shares, and population density. The ordinary least squares (OLS) results indicate a change in the foreign population in the labor force led to a statistically significant increase in the upward volatility of Dutch unemployment rates while the change in the non-Western share had no significant effect.

The Political Economy of Tax-Based Incomes Policy: Wealth Effects of Post Keynesian TIP

This paper explores the economics of electoral democracy, an almost entirely neglected subject. Running for office necessitates resources. But students of democracy have had almost nothing to say about how much money should be spent by candidates or where that money should come from. As a result, there is a gaping void in the theory of democracy. Joseph A. Schumpeter used a market analogy in his discussion of the electoral process, but even he did not discuss how electoral campaigns are to be paid for. In fact, the few citizens who largely fund campaigns for office in the United States purchase non-rivalrous influence. They obtain the ability to shape the policies that affect all citizens. In this way, political equality is undermined. The paper concludes that achieving a more representative political system can best be attained by treating political campaigns as a public good.     

On the Effects of Wage Pressure on the Unemployment Rate and Capital Share

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to understand the behaviour of the capital share and the unemployment rate in Europe over the past quarter of a century. We consider a model with monopolistic competition, increasing returns and an imperfect labour market, assuming that the elasticity between capital and labour is less than unity. Previous works have generally assumed constant returns to scale. Our results offer an important conclusion, namely that increased wage pressure will increase the unemployment rate and the capital share even though the latter initially decreases, which fits the stylized facts about the studied economies.     

主权财富基金对国际金融体系的影响

经过50多年的发展,主权财富基全(SWF)已发展为全球金融市场的一股重要力量.从规模数据上来看,目前全球主权财富基金已经超过了对冲基金,达3万亿美元.考虑到大多数主权财富基金的经营管理并不公开,而且还在一定程度上反映了国家的主权意志,其在全球范围内的投资行为必将对国际金融体系形成巨大影响.文章就此进行了简要的分析.     

关于管理层收购财富效应的研究综述

管理层收购在美国和英国等国家得到了较为广泛的应用,它所产生的财富效应也得到市场的认同。文中较为详细地介绍了近年来国外管理层收购的理论和实证研究文献并对有关研究进行了评述,同时对国内相关研究作了介绍,并分析了相关研究对中国的启示。     

论河北省农业和农村产业结构的调整与优化

我国加入WTO后,农产品市场逐步开放,农业发展将面临更加激烈的竞争,农业中的矛盾与城乡居民收入、消费、就业结构变动结合在一起,已成为制约新阶段农业和农村经济发展的主要问题。本通过对河北省农业和农村产业结构存在问题及产业结构调整面监障碍的分析,提出了新阶段河北省农业和农村产业结构高速的思路与措施。