Stochastic Relation between Money and Capital in an Economy with Spatially Separated Markets

This paper examines the stochastic relationship between money and capital in an economy with spatially separated markets. The new ingredient of the model is that trades between markets may be desirable but are eliminated by market separation. When this cross-market friction is operative, aggregate capital is negatively correlated with and only with contemporaneous money growth, given past capital stocks. When the cross-market friction is not operative, aggregate capital can be positively correlated with contemporaneous money growth and current money growth has direct predictive power on future aggregate capital through its effect on the distribution of capital among agents. Therefore, in a more fragmented economy, aggregate capital is more likely to be negatively correlated with money growth and more unpredictable by past money growth.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: E40, E50     

Horizontal Mergers in a Liberalizing World Economy

This paper is concerned with the effect of horizontal mergers in an open economy environment. It is found that, with the presence of economies of scale and imperfect competition, a domestic merger may bring about an additional gain to the country in that it shifts profit from foreign to domestic firms. Consequently, the condition on the degree of economies of scale for permitting domestic horizontal mergers would be weaker under an open economy than under a closed economy. Furthermore, the analysis shows that such mergers can also raise foreign welfare. Finally, the model is used to discuss the need to coordinate merger policies among trading partners in tandem with trade liberalization.     

Information, the Dual Economy, and Development

We examine the interactions between different institutional arrangements in a general equilibrium model of a modernizing economy. There is a modern sector, where productivity is high but information asymmetries are large, and a traditional sector where productivity is low but information asymmetries are small. Consequently, agency costs in the modern sector make consumption lending difficult, while such lending is readily done in the traditional sector. The resulting trade-off between credit availability and productivity implies that not everyone will move to the modern sector. In fact, the laissez-faire level of modernization may fail to maximize net social surplus.
This situation may also hold in the long run: in a dynamic version of the model, a "trickle-down" effect links the process of modernization with reduction in modern sector agency costs. This effect may be too weak and the economy may get stuck in a trap and never fully modernize. The two-sector structure also yields a natural theoretical testing ground for the Kuznets inverted-U hypothesis: we show that even within the "sectoral shifting" class of models, this phenomenon is not robust to small changes in model specification.     

An Institutionalist Vision of a Good Economy

The current crisis in global capitalism and the wide-ranging problems that have been caused by the promulgation of a regime of deregulation of goods, services, and labor markets across the globe, but especially in the United States over the past thirty years, may indeed prove to be the end of the neoliberal era. Thus it is an opportune time to reconsider how the global economy could be restructured along more equitable and progressive lines. This paper will present the institutionalist vision of just such a good economy, building on the ideas of Veblen, Ayres, Commons, and Galbraith. The institutionalist vision of a good economy is productive but also non-invidious, democratic but also pragmatic, egalitarian but also efficient. The good economy must therefore be embedded in key social institutions, and be regulated appropriately to preserve the most beneficial social and cultural institutions. The good economy must, furthermore, be a full-employment economy, with jobs available to all who are capable of making productive contributions to their society and to enable those who labor to work in decent conditions. Finally, the good economy must provision all its members with the necessary means of subsistence for them to achieve their human aims.     

An Institutionalist Vision of a Good Economy

The current crisis in global capitalism and the wide-ranging problems that have been caused by the promulgation of a regime of deregulation of goods, services, and labor markets across the globe, but especially in the United States over the past thirty years, may indeed prove to be the end of the neoliberal era. Thus it is an opportune time to reconsider how the global economy could be restructured along more equitable and progressive lines. This paper will present the institutionalist vision of just such a good economy, building on the ideas of Veblen, Ayres, Commons, and Galbraith. The institutionalist vision of a good economy is productive but also non-invidious, democratic but also pragmatic, egalitarian but also efficient. The good economy must therefore be embedded in key social institutions, and be regulated appropriately to preserve the most beneficial social and cultural institutions. The good economy must, furthermore, be a full-employment economy, with jobs available to all who are capable of making productive contributions to their society and to enable those who labor to work in decent conditions. Finally, the good economy must provision all its members with the necessary means of subsistence for them to achieve their human aims.     

Environmental Standards in a Large Open Economy

The small‐country price‐taking assumption of Oates and Schwab is relaxed to consider a large open economy that can influence its net capital return. This creates an incentive for the country to distort its policies. The key question asked is whether this induces inefficient outcomes. The result is that if the country has a dedicated tax on capital and uses this tax optimally, the Oates and Schwab first‐best result still holds. However, efficiency in a large open economy requires that the tax on capital be nonzero, unlike Oates and Schwab where the capital tax must be zero for first‐best efficiency.     

Another Look at Wage Distortion in a Developing Dual Economy

The paper focuses on an endogenous wage distortion in a developing dual economy where an efficiency wage in the urban sector triggers rural-urban migration. Because of the endogenous nature of the distortion, this migration reduces the severity of distortion by creating more jobs and reducing the actual wage differential between the sectors. These results are in sharp contrast to the outcomes of an exogenous wage distortion (minimum wage) where rural-urban migration increases the severity of unemployment and calls for costly policy mechanisms that might be either politically or economically difficult to implement. Furthermore, in contrast to the case of an exogenous distortion, interregional migration with endogenous wage distortion increases urban industrial output and structural transformation works its way into the development process. This structural transformation is maintained even when this dual economy engages in the production of non-traded goods. Although this paper does not engage in policy ranking to bring in zero unemployment equilibrium, it shows that it is possible to achieve socially desirable level of migration by influencing detection rate of shirking or disutility of work effort instead of using costly distributive parameters such as taxes and subsidies.     

Asymmetric Responses of the Underground Economy to Tax Changes: Evidence From New Zealand Data

This paper considers the relationship between taxes and the size of the New Zealand underground economy. Previous studies indicate that a positive relationship exists in this and certain other countries. This paper addresses the question: 'Is the response of the underground economy to an increase in taxes the same as its response to a decrease in taxes?' We find that although the effect on the underground economy of an upward movement in the effective tax rate is numerically greater than that of a downward tax movement, this difference is not statistically significant.     

Knowledge Economy - The Sustainable Development Economy

I.IntroductionGlobalization,the emphasis on ecology,and the emphasis onknowledge are the three big tendencies nowadays.Global-ization means that the economies of the world are graduallybecoming an organic whole.Because of the free trade,all ofthe countries and areas must take the international market'sdemands into account,when they develop their economy.The countries or areas which can meet the demands of theinternational market will realize the values of their productsand get the chance of d…     

知识经济是可持续发展的经济

Reviewing evolution of natural resources utilization mode in different economic formations, the paper elaborates the meanings of knowledge economy, and points out that the cause of unsustainable development is the acute contradiction between the law of ecosystem and the law of economy. It also points out that the essence of sustainable development is the harmonious relation between economy and the ecovstem. Therefore, the resources allocation should be considered from the aspect of the market demand and the aspect of the supply of the ecosystem. That is to say, firstly, the scale and pace of economy growth must be adapted to the supply capability of the ecosystem under the current technology. Secondly, based on the supply ability of the ecosystem, we should make it clear how to make limited resources allocation attains equilibrium between market supply and demand. The paper clarifies that in the mode of knowledge economy; we may transform the way of economy growth,form optimum economy structure, change the base of resource supply, strengthen the supply capability of ecosystem, expand the production-possibility frontier, and finally accomplish the eco-economy coordinated development through the innovation of institution and technology. The essence of sustainable development and the sustainable characteristics of knowledge economy that were discussed above determine that knowledge economy is an economy of sustainable development.     

Effect of Digital Economy Development on Human Capital Structure

Based on the panel data on 276 prefectural-level cities from 2011 to 2018, this paper uses longitudinal fixed effects models, panel threshold effects and instrumental variables to explore the relationship between digital economy development and human capital structure advancement. In addition, this paper examines how the development of the digital economy is related to human capital levels. The results show that digital economy development significantly boosts human capital structure advancement, as well as low-level and high-level human capital. However, the effect of digital economy development on midlevel human capital is not statistically significant. In terms of heterogeneity, we find that digital economy development significantly promotes human capital structure advancement in eastern and central-western regions of China, as well as in core and peripheral cities. Effects on the various levels of human capital show significant differences. Furthermore, digital economy development has a positive effect on human capital structure when industrial structure advancement is low. Past a certain threshold, however, the effect reverses. This paper suggests that each region should accelerate the development of digital infrastructure, rationally promote industrial structure advancement and boost the effectiveness of human resources to achieve high-quality economic development.     

低碳经济与黑龙江省经济发展机遇

温室效应引起的气候变化正使人类遭受越来越严重的损失,这是人类有史以来共同面对的最严重的危机。低碳经济正逐渐成为世界引导型经济发展模式,其实质是高能源效率和清洁能源结构问题,核心是能源技术创新和制度创新。围绕低碳经济的能源和产业新技术开发应用,无疑为黑龙江省改变高消耗、高排放、低效益的社会经济发展模式提供了难得的机遇。     

Efficiency in an Economy with Fixed Costs

It is by now well known that in an economy with increasing returns, first-best efficiency may be impossible to attain through an equilibrium concept based on market prices, even if firms are regulated to follow marginal cost pricing. We examine the efficiency issue in a special but important class of economies in which the only source of nonconvexities is the presence of fixed costs. Even in this context, it is possible that none of the equilibria based on marginal cost pricing are efficient (unless additional, strong assumptions are made). We argue that available results on the existence of an efficient two-part tariff equilibrium rely on very strong assumptions, and we provide a positive result using a weak surplus condition. Our approach can also be used to establish the existence of an efficient marginal cost pricing equilibrium with endogenously chosen lump-sum taxes if the initial endowment is efficient in the economy without the production technology.     

民营经济的金融困境与融资次序

民营经济的发展对中国的渐进改革与经济增长至关重要 ,但近年来却面临着严重的金融困境。作为渐进改革的一种内生现象 ,民营经济的金融困境源于国有金融体制对国有企业的金融支持和国有企业对这种支持的刚性依赖。民营经济一时无法在国家控制的金融体制中寻求到金融支持 ,其要害在于 ,它与国有金融体制处于不同的信用联系之中。国有银行向国有经济提供信贷的纵向信用逻辑也就不能套用于民营经济。从理论上讲 ,依托于国有银行的纵向金融支持固然可以实现民营经济的短期增长 ,但却要以损害其长期增长机制尤其是资本结构为代价 ,并由此影响整个经济的民营化与市场化进程。本文认为 ,解除民营经济金融困境的根本出路既不在于改变国有银行的信贷行为与资金投向 ,也不在于由政府出面发育多少外生性的中小金融机构 ,更不在于给其提供进入股票市场的方便 ,而在于营造内生性金融制度成长的外部环境 ;只有内生性金融制度的存在和发展才不至于损害民营经济可贵的内源融资基础。     

The Political Economy of Fiscal Consolidations

In the context of recent research in political economy, this paper addresses the policy problem of fiscal consolidation in terms of three types of issues: i) the macroeconomic effects of alternative strategies to consolidate; ii) the institutional setups conducive to a consolidation; and iii) the best strategy for implementing a consolidation in order to maximize its political feasibility. One methodological feature of this survey is an emphasis on policy feasibility. One methodological feature of this survey is an emphasis on policy issues in order to bridge the gap between the level of abstraction of politico-economic models of fiscal policy and the issues faced by a policymaker when attempting a fiscal consolidation.     

Distributional Effects of Public Education in an Economy with Public Pensions*

We study how the allocation of government expenditures between two major outlays—education and pay‐as‐you‐go social security—affects human capital distribution in an economy with heterogeneous agents. We consider an overlapping generations economy where the government maintains both programs, and allocates tax revenues to finance them. In our model, human capital is one of the factors of production. It is itself produced as a combined result of public inputs and private inputs. Parents' decisions to invest time and material resources in education of their children are motivated by altruism, heterogeneous in its strength across the population, which leads to heterogeneity of incomes. We investigate the effect of an increase in public funding for education on the human capital distribution. We show that in this framework, contrary to some earlier results, increased spending on public education may lead to higher inequality. Our results depend crucially on the interaction of education funding with the social security budget and on the elasticity of substitution in the learning technology.     

Social Security Systems,Human Capital,and Growth in a Small Open Economy

We consider a small open economy in which the level of public education funding is determined by popular vote. We show that growth can be enhanced by the introduction of pay‐as‐you‐go pensions even if the growth rate of aggregate wages falls short of the interest rate. The reason is that the pay‐as‐you‐go (PAYG) system allows future retirees to partially internalize positive externalities of public education due to the positive effect of higher future labor productivity on their pension benefits. The majority support for education funding will be especially strong when the PAYG benefit formula is flat, i.e., progressively redistributive. If a flat benefit PAYG pension system is in place then the economy will achieve the highest growth rate relative to the alternative pension system designs. While such PAYG pension system may be opposed by the majority of working individuals due to inferior returns to their pension contributions relative to a funded scheme, it is likely to be politically sustained by a coalition of older individuals and lower income workers.     

中国海洋经济预测研究

海洋经济发展目标的确定是制定国家海洋发展战略、国家级海洋经济发展规划和沿海地方海洋经济发展规划中必须解决的问题之一。因此,海洋经济预测是海洋经济研究领域不可回避的问题之一。对适于进行海洋经济预测的灰色系统模型、趋势外推法、成长曲线法、组合预测法等进行深入探讨,对组合预测结果的最有效性给出可靠的数学证明,并运用所建立的模型对2015年和2020年我国海洋经济和主要海洋产业发展水平进行预测。     

流域经济宏观运行机制探讨

流域经济发展和运行状况关系到国民经济的增长、社会进步和发展。分析流域经济发展运动过程 ,探讨其宏观运行机制 ,从宏观的角度把握流域经济运行规律 ,有利于推动流域经济的综合开发利用和协调发展。