Welfare State, Market Imperfections, and International Trade

Within a two-sector-two-country model of trade with aggregate scale economies and unionisation, a more generous welfare state in one country increases welfare in that country and can have positive spillover effects on the other. Furthermore, synchronised expansions of social security are more welfare enhancing than unilateral ones. Our results counter the fears that a race to the bottom in social standards may result from the ‘shrinking-tax-base’ entailed by international capital mobility. While affecting trade patterns and income distribution, capital mobility interacts with welfare state policies in increasing welfare, even when capital flows out of the country that initiates the shock.

Trade Costs,Trade Balances and Current Accounts: An Application of Gravity to Multilateral Trade

In this paper we test the well-known hypothesis of Obstfeld and Rogoff (NBER Macroeconomics Annual 7777:339–390, 2000) that trade costs are the key to explaining the so-called Feldstein–Horioka puzzle. Our approach has a number of novel features. First, we focus on the interrelationship between trade costs, the trade account and the Feldstein–Horioka puzzle. Second, we use the gravity model to estimate the effect of trade costs on bilateral trade and, third, we show how bilateral trade can be used to draw inferences about desired trade balances and desired intertemporal trade. Our econometric results provide strong support for the Obstfeld and Rogoff hypothesis and we are also able to reconcile our results with the so-called home bias puzzle.

Revenue Effects of Tax Facilities for Pension Savings

Many countries have tax facilities for pension savings. These facilities are often associated with the application of the cash-flow treatment of pensions: pension contributions are tax-exempt, capital income of pension funds is tax-exempt, and pension benefits are taxed, but usually at a relatively low rate. This paper investigates the revenue effects of a cash-flow tax regime for pension savings by full present-value calculations. A comprehensive income tax system is used as a benchmark. We present an empirical analysis for the Netherlands as a typical example of a country with funded pensions. Our calculations show that current taxation of pensions implies a major tax revenue loss. For the year 2003, we estimate a fiscal pension subsidy of 1.4% to 1.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The Barcelona initiative and the importance of NTBs: a dynamic CGE-analysis for Syria

The Barcelona Initiative is the central element of the EU’s Mediterranean policy. We study the implementation of this policy with respect to Syria using a dynamic general equilibrium model with credit constraints and capital market imperfections. Dismantling formal tariffs has only limited effects on the Syrian economy, while reducing non-tariff barriers produces by far larger results. EU association promises broadly positive effects for factor incomes and sectoral outputs, with some temporarily negative effects in agricultural sectors. Nevertheless, we find evidence of severe trade distorting effects making preferential trade policy clearly welfare inferior to multilateral trade liberalization within the WTO framework.

Saving–investment Correlations in Response to Monetary Policy Shocks: New Insights into the Feldstein–Horioka Puzzle?

In this paper, it is argued that the observed high positive correlation between national savings and investment which is found in the data can in part be explained by shocks to monetary policy. This hypothesis, which is established by reviewing some empirical findings, is tested in a two-country DSGE-model framework in the tradition of the New Open Economy Macroeconomics. The simulation results obtained support the idea that shocks to monetary policy might contribute to the explanation of the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle.

Heterogeneity in lending and sectoral growth: evidence from German bank-level data

This paper investigates whether heterogeneity across firms and banks matters for the impact of domestic sectoral growth on bank lending. We use several bank-level datasets provided by the Deutsche Bundesbank for the 1996–2002 period. Our results show that firm heterogeneity and bank heterogeneity affect how lending responds to domestic sectoral growth. We document that banks’ total lending to German firms reacts pro-cyclically to domestic sectoral growth, while lending exceeding a threshold of €1.5 million to German and foreign firms does not. Moreover, we document that the response of lending depends on bank characteristics such as the banking groups, the banks’ asset size, and the degree of sectoral specialization. We find that total domestic lending by savings banks and credit cooperatives (including their regional institutions), smaller banks, and banks that are highly specialized in specific sectors responds positively and, in relevant cases, more strongly to domestic sectoral growth.

The Evolving Role of China and India in the Global Financial System

Three main features characterize the international financial integration of China and India. First, while only having a small global share of privately-held external assets and liabilities, these countries are large holders of official reserves. Second, their international balance sheets are highly asymmetric: both are “short equity, long debt.” Third, China and India have improved their net external positions over the last decade although neoclassical models would predict them to be net borrowers. We argue that domestic financial policies are key to understanding these patterns and the future role of China in the international financial system.

Structural breaks and the twin deficits hypothesis

Recent theoretical and empirical analyses of the relation between the current account and the government budget balance suggest that the “twin deficits” relation is subject to structural changes. Most previous empirical analyses impose the change point without resorting to econometric testing. In this paper we utilize time series data to evaluate the impact of structural breaks on the long- and short-run relation between current account, government balance and investment in 22 OECD countries. We found that when allowing for the possible existence of structural breaks of unknown date, the data reveal more clearly the long-run relation between the current account and its determinants. Moreover, the empirical results show that the degree of financial integration is generally increasing in most OECD countries, including the leading non-EU economies. This contrasts some recent evidence on the persistence of the so-called Feldstein–Horioka puzzle.

Connecting National Safety Nets: The Dialectics of the Basel II Contracting Process

Basel II consists of supervisory guidelines negotiated by representatives of central banks and national regulatory commissions that were members of the Basel committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). The BCBS is itself a regulatory response to globalization, which is connecting national safety nets in market-driven ways. A country’s financial safety net is a social contract established by short-lived agents for principals in long-lived economic sectors. Restraints placed on the authority of the BCBS members to contract for their principals by domestic politics explains: why Basel II authorizes individual countries to implement the agreement in markedly different ways; why US implementation of Basel II ran into so much doubt, controversy, and delay; and how the implementation debate set small and large banks and the Federal Reserve and other federal regulators against one another.

International Risk Sharing and Government Moral Hazard

This paper analyzes incentive problems caused by international risk sharing. They arise because international risk sharing contributes to the insurance of domestic consumption and thus lowers governments’ incentives to increase output. We show that the resulting distortions can lead to substantial efficiency losses. Complete risk sharing is, therefore, undesirable and the optimal degree of risk sharing may be low. Furthermore, we show that households’ risk sharing decisions are socially inefficient and are effectively maximizing government moral hazard. As a result, financial innovation and integration may reduce welfare by increasing households’ risk sharing opportunities.

Foreign Transfers and Real Exchange Rate Adjustments in a Financially Constrained Dependent Economy

This paper investigates the role of the real exchange rate in determining the effects of foreign transfers. If capital is perfectly mobile between sectors, a pure transfer has no long-run impact on the real exchange rate. A decline in the traded sector occurs because the transfer, being denominated in traded output, substitutes for exports in financing imports. While a pure transfer causes short-run real exchange appreciation, this response is temporary and negligibly small. Transfers allocated to productivity enhancement do generate permanent real exchange rate adjustments in response to the sectoral reallocation of productive factors. The analysis, which employs extensive numerical simulations, emphasizes the tradeoffs between real exchange adjustments, long-run capital accumulation, and economic welfare, associated with alternative forms of transfers.

Do Patent Protection and Technology Transfer Facilitate R&D in Developed and Emerging Countries? A Semiparametric Study

This paper examines if patent protection and technology transfer facilitate R&D in a sample that includes both developed and emerging countries. A semiparametric model is used to estimate the relevant parameters using country level data from 21 countries, of which six are emerging, for the period 1981–1997. The results suggest thresholds in patent protection and technology transfer: patent protection has a positive effect which weakens at high levels of protection, and FDI has a positive effect only if the country depends heavily on FDI.

Ability, Openness, and Managerial Decision Making

Impact of the ability and the degree of openness of a manager on decision making is studied. Whether a more able manager increases or decreases the effort of a subordinate depends on the relative quality of information. Greater openness is a two-edged sword: it increases the likelihood that more information will be employed, but it reduces the manager’s incentive to expend effort on obtaining better information. A more open manager is more desirable when the position is relatively more important or the prior information is not very accurate.

Public Spending Management and Macroeconomic Interdependence

This paper studies the domestic and international effects of “public competition policies” aimed at improving the efficiency of public spending. Such measures are modeled as an increase in the price elasticity of public consumption. The paper finds that public competition policies significantly affect macroeconomic interdependence across countries, both through the impact of the international elasticity of substitution and of mark-up effects. The paper also develops an extension in which fiscal shocks are stochastic. In welfare terms, countries with a larger government sector have an incentive to promote global public competition policies regardless of whether fiscal policy is modeled as deterministic or stochastic.

The Contribution of Sectoral Productivity Differentials to Inflation in Greece

This paper estimates the magnitude of the Balassa-Samuelson effect for Greece. We calculate the effect directly, using sectoral national accounts data, which permits estimation of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the tradeables and nontradeables sectors. Our results suggest that it is difficult to produce one estimate of the BS effect. Any particular estimate is contingent on the definition of the tradeables sector and the assumptions made about labour shares. Moreover, there is also evidence that the effect has been declining through time as Greek standards of living have caught up on those in the rest of the world and as the non-tradeables sector within Greece catches up with the tradeables.

Can the HOSS framework help shed light on the simultaneous growth of inequality and informalization in developing countries?

Using simple, modified versions of the factor proportions framework, and focusing on structural features within developing economies, this paper attempts to reconcile puzzling developments observed in many post-reform, post-liberalization countries whereby increasing income inequality has emerged side-by-side with informalization of the economy. Measures undertaken to enhance public sector efficiency and attract investment in an import-intensive export sector may increase rental–wage and skilled–unskilled wage gaps, contra the predictions of the simple Heckscher–Ohlin–Stolper–Samuelson (HOSS) framework regarding skill- and capital-scarce countries. The common thread generating our interesting results is the presence of sectors that are even more labor-intensive than those producing traded goods.

Political regime and FDI from advanced to emerging countries

We investigate the effect of the political regime on bilateral FDI flows from advanced to emerging countries in the period 1992–2004. We control for country size, per capita income and privatization proceeds in the host country, and use a random-effect Tobit model to exploit information from zero entries. Our results suggest that democracy does have a positive effect on the amount and probability of FDI flows from developed to emerging countries. Moreover, we find that the effect of democracy on FDI also works through the total factor productivity channel, not only the political risk one as suggested in the literature.

Implications of Monetary Union for Catching-up Member States

We examine the implications of monetary union for macroeconomic stabilization in catching-up participating countries. We allow member states’ supply conditions to differ, especially with regard to sectoral characteristics. Sectoral productivity shocks of the type associated with the Balassa–Samuelson effect tend to hamper the stabilization properties of a currency union. In the face of aggregate supply disturbances, the stabilization costs of renouncing monetary autonomy diminish with a steeper supply curve (as induced by higher trade openness) and—barring idiosyncratic shocks—with a larger reference country size, more homogeneous supply slopes and a higher preference for price stability.

Do Campaign Contributions and Lobbying Expenditures by Firms Create “Political” Capital?

We examine the relation between a firm’s campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures and its Tobin’s q. We follow other studies that use q to measure the value of the firm’s intangible capital (e.g., the value of advertising, R&D, or environmental performance). Researchers have found a positive and significant relation between intangible assets and q. If political capital exists, it is an intangible asset. However, we find little relation between q and political contributions, suggesting that campaign contributions may not have long term effects on political markets. This is consistent with the view that contributions are done by firms as a response to a short term opportunity not as a way of building long-term political capital.

Productivity response to reduction in trade barriers: evidence from Turkish manufacturing plants

We examine the effects of trade policy changes on the evolution of productivity in the Turkish manufacturing industry. Plant level productivities are estimated for the 1983–1996 period following the procedure of Olley and Pakes. Industry averages indicate that productivity gains are largest in import-competing industries with highest gains reaching 8% per year during periods of rapid decline in protection rates. We find that productivity improvements resulting from declining protection rates are statistically significant and economically important, especially in import-competing sectors. More importantly, productivity improvements due to declining protection rates increase with the plant size.