Wealth inequality,democracy and economic freedom

Using a novel panel data set from the Credit Suisse on the top wealth shares for 46 sample countries spanning 2000–2014, this paper empirically investigates to what extent wealth inequality influences economic freedom and whether this relationship is affected by the level of democracy. Economic freedom is measured by the Fraser Institute's economic freedom summary index as well as its five major sub-indices, such as government size, property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade, and regulations. Wealth inequality is measured by the top wealth shares. Trade union density is used as an instrument for wealth inequality. Empirical results suggest that the rising wealth inequality significantly hampers overall economic freedom, property rights protection, freedom to trade, soundness of money and regulatory environment. Furthermore, this negative effect of wealth inequality is reinforced at a lower level of democracy. These findings are robust to alternative measures of wealth inequality, economic freedom, treatment for endogeneity, and model specification.     

Steuart's position on economic progress

This paper attempts to understan James Steuart's position on economic progress in terms of the Hayekian version of the natural law tradition and the civic–humanist approach. It is argued that the latter paradigm offers a more relevant framework. Particular attention is to Steuar's preoccupation with ‘frugality’ in connection with his treatment of the stages of trade and his position is contrasted with that of Hume. Without denying Steuart's link with the Scottish Historical School, the mercantilist aspect of his outlook is emphasized.     

Human capital accumulation, fertility and economic development

We examine the development paths of an economy by incorporating the trade-off between the quality and quantity of children and the substitutability between the educational effect within the family and the education paid for by the parent. There is a threshold wage rate, above which individuals begin to invest in the human capital of their children, while reducing the number of children. At this point, the economy shifts from an exogenous growth phase to an endogenous growth phase. It is also shown that the aggregate saving rate is positively correlated with the youth dependency ratio in the development process.     

Migration, human capital accumulation and economic development

We study how the possibility of migration changes the composition of human capital in sending countries, and how this affects development. In our model, growth is driven by productivity growth, which occurs via imitation or innovation. Both activities use the same types of skilled labour as input, albeit with different intensities. Heterogenous agents accumulate skills in response to economic incentives. Migration distorts these incentives, and the accumulation of human capital. This slows down, or even hinders, economic development. The effect is stronger, the farther away the country is from the technological frontier.     

Management competence, firm growth and economic progress

Starting from the empirical observation of a positive correlationbetween the prosperity of an economy and the relative role oflarge firms operating in that economy, we propose that thiscorrelation is an artifact of the positive influence of 'managementcompetence' on both these variables. Drawing on Penrose's TheTheory of the Growth of the Firm, we develop a theoretical frameworkthat distinguishes between two aspects of management competence,i.e., entrepreneurial judgment and organisational capability.Both aspects relate to the process of value creation throughthe combination and exchange of economic resources. Whereasentrepreneurial judgement refers to the cognitive aspects ofperceiving potential new resource combinations and exchanges,organisational capability is the ability to actually carry themout. As we show, the interplay of these two factors affectsthe speed at which firms expand their operations, the kind ofexpansion, and the process through which firms create value,not just for themselves, but for society as a whole.     

Path-dependent economic progress and regress: The negative role of subsidies in economic growth

This paper develops a two-stage economic growth model with real options and examines the effects of various subsidy policies. The economic stages are the deterministic and stochastic AK stages, and the economy may shift between the two, depending upon state variables and technological shocks. This model allows for path-dependent economic growth that accounts for both club convergence and divergence across countries. Moreover, it is shown that under certain conditions, a decrease in the subsidy rate facilitates the shift from the deterministic to stochastic AK stages, which is defined as “economic progress”, even in the face of an economic crisis, while more subsidies delay economic progress and promote the shift from the stochastic to deterministic AK stages, which is defined as “economic regress”.     

Freedom,barriers to entry,entrepreneurship, and economic progress

While entrepreneurs benefit from unrestricted free entry into markets, they have a time-inconsistent incentive to lobby for government entry restrictions once they become successful. Bad political institutions yield to these demands, and growing barriers are placed on domestic and international competition. Good institutions do not, and this effort is instead channeled toward further wealth creation. We find that productive entrepreneurship depends on both the freedom to succeed and discipline of failure that free markets provide. Trade barriers result in fewer combinations of goods and inputs attempted, and less productive entrepreneurial resource use. We also provide evidence on the value of business failure.

APEC数字经济合作的最新进展及展望

数字经济改变了传统经济增长方式和贸易模式,催生出新需求、新业态和新领域,数字经济成为全球创新、转型和增长的重要驱动力,随着各国经济联系愈发紧密,数字经济合作逐渐成为国际经济合作的重要议题。APEC顺应数字经济快速发展的趋势,进行了战略规划、运行机制、组织结构方面的改革,以进一步加强亚太地区的数字经济合作。当前,APEC的数字经济议题不断拓展和深化,并在缩小"数字鸿沟"、推进亚太地区隐私保护等领域取得了重要进展。展望未来,信息基础设施建设和数字化转型依然是亚太地区数字经济合作的焦点,APEC应采取更灵活、多元的机制开展合作。     

Discount rate and research progress in economic analysis on climate change

This paper has organized and summarized the economic analysis on climate change from five angles,namely,connotation of discount rate,identification of and dispute about discount rate,discounting way,impact of the discount rate,and the integrated evaluation model of climate change impact and the discount evaluation.As the climate change economic analysis shows,there is a major dispute about discount rate between the market school and the ethic school.Rate of discount largely relates to the present value of potential loss attributable to climate change,and then influences the selection of policies for adapting and slowing down climate change.In the past,the constant index discount was adopted as the main way.But with the full understanding of discount rate,the uncertainty of loss attributable to climate change has been considered in the discount.     

International migration,economic policy and human capital accumulation: a simulation study

"This paper examines the economic policy implications of international migration and human capital accumulation within a dynamic general equilibrium model. Each country produces by means of physical and human capital of two types (skilled and unskilled labour). Along optimal growth paths in a world of diverging population growth rates immigration can only be beneficial when the free rider effect (i.e., not paying for training costs) exceeds the capital dilution effect of an increase in population growth. Under quite general conditions the optimal immigration rate is zero."     

Wealth Inequality and Intergenerational Links

Previous work has had difficulty generating household saving behaviour that makes the distribution of wealth much more concentrated than that of labour earnings, and that makes the richest households hold onto large amounts of wealth, even during very old age. I construct a quantitative, general equilibrium, overlapping-generations model in which parents and children are linked by accidental and voluntary bequests and by earnings ability. I show that voluntary bequests can explain the emergence of large estates, while accidental bequests alone cannot, and that adding earnings persistence within families increases wealth concentration even more. I also show that the introduction of a bequest motive generates lifetime savings profiles more consistent with the data.     

Wealth distribution and output fluctuations

We explore the link between wealth inequality and output fluctuations in a general two-sector neoclassical growth model with endogenous labor and heterogeneous agents. When agents have homogeneous CRRA preferences and individual wealth is Pareto distributed, a sufficiently large rise in the Gini index typically leads to an increase in endogenous fluctuations of output. For general economies, we show that under plausible conditions on the fundamentals, wealth inequality is still a destabilizing factor.     

Wealth inequality and employment fluctuations

This paper is concerned with the business cycle dynamics in search and matching models of the labor market when agents are ex-post heterogeneous. We focus on heterogeneity caused by different labor market histories and the resulting wealth inequality they generate. We show that this inequality implies wage rigidity relative to a complete insurance economy. The fraction of wealth poor agents prevents real wages from falling too much in recessions, since small decreases in income imply large losses in utility. Analogously, wages rise less during expansions than in models with homogeneous workers as small increases are enough for poor workers to accept job offers. This mechanism reduces the volatility of wages but generates more volatile employment levels.     

Wealth constraint and contractual arrangements

Abstract .  We examine how a project owner optimally selects a project operator and motivates him to deliver an unobservable effort when potential operators are wealth constrained. We show that, when potential operators' abilities are common knowledge, an operator's share of realized profit can be increasing, invariant, or decreasing in his ability depending on the nature of production technology. However, when potential operators are privately informed about both their abilities and their effort supply, a bunching contract arises in equilibrium for a general class of production technology. In the case of bunching, all potential operators are selected equally often and awarded an equal share of realized profit. The finding provides an explanation for the relative uniformity of contract terms in many practical settings.     

Wealth Inequality and Asset Pricing

In an Arrow–Debreu exchange economy with identical agents except for their initial endowment, we examine how wealth inequality affects the equilibrium level of the equity premium and the risk-free rate. We first show that wealth inequality raises the equity premium if and only if the inverse of absolute risk aversion is concave in wealth. We then show that the equilibrium risk-free rate is reduced by wealth inequality if the inverse of the coefficient of absolute prudence is concave. We also prove that the combination of a small uninsurable background risk with wealth inequality biases asset pricing towards a larger equity premium and a smaller risk-free rate.     

Precautionary Wealth Accumulation

When does an individual's expected wealth accumulation profile increase as earnings risk increases? This paper answers this question for multi-period models where earnings shocks are independent over time. Sufficient conditions are stated in terms of properties of a decision rule for savings and, alternatively, in terms of properties of preferences.     

Wealth and the capitalist spirit

The wealth distribution in the U.S. is more unequal than either the income or earnings distribution, a fact current models of saving behavior have difficulty explaining. Using Max Weber’s [Weber, M. (1905). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Charles Scribners’ and Sons (1958 translated edition)] idea that individuals may have a ‘capitalist spirit’, I construct and simulate a model where individuals accumulate wealth for its own sake rather than as deferred consumption. Including capitalist spirit preferences in a simple life cycle model, with no other modifications, generates a skewness of wealth consistent with that observed in the U.S. economy. Furthermore, capitalist spirit preferences provide a way to generate decreasing risk aversion with increases in wealth without resorting to idiosyncratic rates of time preference.