Understanding the economic dynamics behind growth-inequality relationships

In this paper, a dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) model of growth-inequality relationships, with missing credit markets, knowledge spillover and self-employed agents, is calibrated to New Zealand data. The model explains how two distinct policy shocks involving redistribution and immigration imply, subsequently, two completely opposite outcomes. Agents’ inability to borrow aggravates a negative macroeconomic effect of heterogeneity on growth. Redistribution mitigates that effect but creates microeconomic disincentives on saving and work-effort. Consequently, immigration shocks that perturb variance of efficiency induce a negative growth-inequality relationship, while redistribution shocks, in New Zealand’s case, produce larger fluctuations in incentives than in macro benefits, implying a positive growth-inequality relationship.     

Public consumption composition in a growing economy

This paper explores the role of the composition of public consumption within a three sector R&D growth model. A competitive industry supplies a homogeneous good and a monopolistic sector manufactures a composite commodity differentiated in many varieties, whose size can be increased through investment in R&D. We investigate the effects of changes in the level and in the composition of public consumption on the steady state and on the economy’s transitional dynamics. By varying the aggregate composition of demand, the government can effectively move resources away from the traditional industry to foster innovation. Welfare effects are also evaluated. We show that the composition of government consumption affects the entire time path of utility.     

Fiscal policy and the structure of production in a two-sector developing economy

This paper develops a two-sector model of a developing economy and examines the role of the informal sector in limiting the government's ability to increase tax revenues. A key feature is the introduction of auditing of the informal sector and degree of tax enforcement in that sector. We emphasize the interdependence between tax policy and enforcement in achieving a developing economy's fiscal objectives and show that by judicious policy choices the presence of the informal sector need not hinder its ability to raise tax revenues. We supplement the formal analysis with numerical simulations highlighting the contrasting intertemporal tradeoffs implied by higher tax rates and tax-enforcement levels.     

Official fiscal forecasts in EU member states under the European Semester and Fiscal Compact – An empirical assessment

The efficacy of official forecasts in the EU has been under the spotlight since the introduction of the euro, with biases widely reported prior to the 2008–12 financial and sovereign bond market crisis. Changes to the EU fiscal rules and procedures, in the form of the European Semester and Fiscal Compact, in the early 2010s were adopted to improve forecasting, including through providing a role for independent fiscal institutions. Using data for 22 countries between 2013 and 2019, this paper shows that, despite these changes, biases, of a pessimistic form, remain in forecasts of budget balance and output variables in Stability and Convergence Programmes and the European Commission's Spring Forecasts. Econometric analysis indicates forecast errors in both the headline budget balance and the structural budget balance being explained by forecast errors in output variables and by EU fiscal rule requirements. Member states under an excessive deficit procedure provide optimistic headline budget balance forecasts compared to non-EDP countries, while those that have not met their medium-term objective report smaller forecast errors for the structural budget balance. Independent fiscal institutions are linked to a smaller bias to forecasts of the structural budget balance but have no effect on the forecast errors of the headline budget balance.     

Intangible Investment and Changing Sources of Growth in Korea

We examine how intangible investments change the sources of growth in the Korean economy. After constructing a novel industry‐level data set on intangibles, we estimate the contribution of intangible‐intensive industries and other industries to aggregate productivity growth in 1981–2008. The contribution of intangible‐intensive industries to aggregate labour productivity growth has significantly increased, whereas that of other industries has substantially decreased. The increased contribution of intangible‐intensive industries is mainly associated with total factor productivity growth rather than with input growth. This suggests that innovations related to intangible investments in these industries might become a new key source of productivity growth in Korea.     

Total factor productivity differences: Appropriate technology vs. efficiency

Recent development and growth accounting studies have established that total factor productivity is an important source of cross-country differences in income levels and growth rates. This paper makes two contributions. First, it examines the sensitivity of the development accounting results to the Cobb-Douglas specification of the production function. Second, within the Cobb-Douglas framework, it weighs evidence of the two alternative explanations of total factor productivity differences: the inefficiency view and the appropriate technology view. To accomplish these tasks, the world production frontier is estimated using a nonparametric deterministic approach known as data envelopment analysis. I find that the fraction of income differences explained by physical and human capital increases from 32% to 55% when departing from the Cobb-Douglas assumption. There is also evidence consistent with the appropriate technology view; countries with an inadequate mix of inputs are unable to access the most productive technologies. Moreover, the world technology frontier appears to be shifting out faster at input combinations close to that of the R&D leader. However, inefficiency appears to be the main explanation for low incomes throughout the world; it explains 43% of output variation in 1995, and its importance has increased over time.     

Growth, income distribution, and fiscal policy volatility

The relationship between income distribution and economic growth has long been an important economic research subject. Despite substantial evidence on the negative impact on long-term growth of inequality in the literature, however, there is not much consensus on the specific channels through which inequality affects growth. The empirical validity of two most prominent political economy channels - redistributive fiscal spending and taxes, and sociopolitical instability - has recently been challenged. We advance a new political economy channel for the negative link between inequality and growth, a fiscal policy volatility channel, and present strong supporting econometric evidence in a large sample of countries over the period of 1960-2000. Our finding also sheds light on another commonly observed negative relation between macroeconomic volatility and growth. We carefully address the robustness of the results in terms of data, estimation methods, outlier problem, and endogeneity problem that often plague the standard OLS (ordinary least squares) regression.     

Capital taxation, long-run growth, and bequests

It has been shown that higher capital taxes can have a growth-enhancing effect when combined with a revenue-compensating cut in wage taxes or with an expansion in productivity-increasing public services. The present paper demonstrates that these results critically hinge on the existence of a bequest motive. It is shown that a wage-tax cut is no longer growth-enhancing when bequests are operative. By way of contrast, increasing productive public services may well boost growth. The theoretical findings are illustrated by numerical simulations based on US data.