Market, Trade and Welfare in General Equilibrium

This paper develops a tractable general equilibrium model of an economy with an arbitrary number of industries under increasing returns to scale and imperfect competition. The market structure of the model economy is expressed by two basic sets of parameters: the degree of competition, and the markup ratio prevailing in each industry. The government is supposed to control the degree of competition through antitrust policy and the markup ratio through entry policy. Using this model, I re-examine the results of traditional competitive equilibrium analysis and explore the effects of competition policies on economic welfare and international trade.
JEL Classification Numbers: D43, D50, F11, F12, L13, L41.     

Work Schedules, Wages, and Employment in a General Equilibrium Model with Team Production

This paper provides a prototype general equilibrium model of team production. Team production refers to production processes which require that the work schedules of heterogeneous workers be closely coordinated. The key innovation in the framework is that the work schedules, wages, and employment of heterogeneous workers are endogenously determined in the presence of team production. I demonstrate the potential importance of modeling team production through a quantitative example.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: E23, J20.     

Changes in Technology and Preferences: A General Equilibrium Explanation of Rapid Growth in Trade

We use a computable general equilibrium model in an explanation of the recent rapid growth in Australia's trade, particularly intra-industry trade. Relative to previous studies of trade growth based on multiple regression analysis, our approach allows us to: (i) work at a detailed industry level; (ii) use primary variables to represent changes in technology and preferences rather than proxies; and (iii) use a framework based on explicit microeconomic foundations. We find that most of the growth in Australia's trade relative to GDP is explained by changes in technology and preferences.     

Economic Development, Trade and Wages

We present models that allow the use of unskilled and skilled labor as well as capital and land. Thus agriculture, important in developing countries, can be included as well as two types of labor and a single (or two) type(s) of physical capital. The models are related to the simple 3×2 specific factors structure by means of what is called the linear neighborhood structure, wherein no activity uses more than two factors, and the two types of labor work in separated sectors, using in common a type of physical capital. We discuss how wage rate changes are related when endowments change, when agriculture becomes traded and prices rise, and when unskilled labor becomes educated and joins the ranks of skilled workers.     

Trade,Wages, and Specific Factors*

In this paper, we use a multisector specific‐factors model with sector‐specific capital and two mobile factors, skilled and unskilled labor, to examine the effects of trade, technology, and factor endowments on the skill premium in US manufacturing industries. Based on this model and data for the US manufacturing sector from 1958–96, we calculate changes in the skill premium and then carry out a decomposition to identify the changes caused by product price changes (trade), technological progress, labor, and capital endowment changes. The decomposition reveals that trade effects, working through product price changes, caused the skill premium to increase moderately. Changes in capital endowments (new investments) had a positive effect on the skill premium, with the strongest impact during the 1980s, while the effect of technological change on the skill premium varied over time. Finally, changes in relative labor endowments had a negative effect on the skill premium.     

Trade and Indeterminacy in a Dynamic General Equilibrium Model

This paper introduces sector-specific externalities in the Heckscher-Ohlin two-country dynamic general equilibrium model to show that indeterminacy of the equilibrium path in the world market can occur. Under certain conditions in terms of factor intensities, there are multiple equilibrium paths from the same initial distribution of capital in the world market, and the distribution of capital in the limit differs among equilibrium paths. One equilibrium path converges to a long-run equilibrium in which the international ranking of factor endowment ratios differs from the initial ranking; another equilibrium path maintains the initial ranking and converges to another long-run equilibrium. Since the path realized is indeterminate, so is the long-run trade pattern. Therefore, the Long-Run Heckscher-Ohlin prediction is vulnerable to the introduction of externality. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E13, E32, F11, F43.     

Trade and Wages: a Deeper Investigation

A new presentation of the specific factors model shows how labor fares under international trade by considering how the price elasticity of the nominal wage rate responds to the terms of trade as well as factor endowments. The key empirical implication is that under a standard assumption about tastes it is straightforward to decompose the gains to labor into measurable terms of trade effects and production bias effects. This provides the basis for suggested time series studies contrasting the specific factors model with the Heckscher–Ohlin model. We then perform a new theoretical analysis of the specific factors model to compare how labor fares under autarky and free trade.     

Trade Reform and Informal Wages

When trade reform contracts protected formal sectors in developing countries and the formal workers move to the informal sector for employment, does that reduce informal wages? Using a 2 × 2 Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson (HOS) structure with formal–informal production organization for the same commodity, we show that a tariff cut in the import‐competing sector increases both informal wage and employment under very reasonable assumptions. An increase in the price of the export commodity will also increase informal wages, although aggregate informal employment unambiguously falls even if the informal export sector is labor intensive. Furthermore, the formal–informal segmentation of each sector opens up an interesting, hitherto unexplored, possibility that the informal export sector may contract despite a price increase in this sector. Change in the overall size of the export sector is also ambiguous and conditional on the relative strengths of changes in these two segments.     

Trade Unions in an Open Economy: A General Equilibrium Analysis*

This paper derives a general equilibrium demand-for-labour schedule within the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model of a large open economy, and then introduces an economy-wide labour union that maximizes its utility subject to this demand schedule, thereby determining the real wage and hence total employment A parametric shift's comparative-static effects on the equilibrium levels of unemployment and welfare are analyzed within this fully unionized economy.     

FDI,Technology Spillovers,and Wages

This study distinguishes multinational firm (MNE) technology‐spillover from learning effects. Whenever learning takes time, the model predicts that foreign investors deduct the economic value of learning from wages of inexperienced workers and add it to experienced ones to prevent them from moving to local competitors. Hence, the national wage bill is unaffected by the presence of MNEs. In contrast to learning, technology spillover effects occur whenever a worker with MNE experience contributes more to local firms' than to MNEs' productivity. In this case, experienced MNE workers are hired by indigenous firms and the host country obtains a welfare gain from the presence of MNEs.     

Equilibrium, Trade, and Capital Accumulation

The paper summarizes the author's principal contributions to economic theory: (1) one of the first rigorous proofs of the existence of competitive equilibrium; (2) existence of competitive equilibrium with weakened assumptions; (3) the minimum income approach to demand theory; (4) tatonnement stability with weak gross substitutes; (5) a general theory of comparative advantage; (6) factor price equalization with attention to factor supplies; and (7) turnpike theory allowing for von Neumann facets and neighbourhood convergence.
JEL Classification Number: B10     

Gains From Trade in a Cournot–Nash General Equilibrium

It is shown that, in a context of Cournot–Nash general equilibrium, free trade is potentially gainful for each trading country. No restrictions are placed on the numbers of products, factors of production or countries, or on the nature of returns to scale. Moreover, preferences, techniques and factor endowments can differ from agent to agent.
JEL Classification Numbers: F10, F12, F13, F15.     

Tariffs and Wages in Trade Theory

The theory of production and trade is motivated in large part by the effects of tariffs on wages. General equilibrium models that examine these effects include constant costs, factor proportions, specific factors, imperfect competition and noncompetitive factor market. The present paper reviews the effects of tariffs on wages in small open economies across this broad range of trade theory. From this wide perspective, tariffs support wages only under narrow sets of assumptions. There should be no presumption that tariffs support wages.     

Simulating A Multifactor General Equilibrium Model Of Production And Trade

This study builds and simulates a high dimensional general equilibrium model of production and trade with inputs of capital and eight separate skilled groups of labor. Constant returns to scale cannot be rejected in any sector as a null hypothesis. International capital flows and labor migration are found to have very small effects on income redistribution, a result which is called near factor price equalization. Protectionism, on the other hand, has more substantial effects. Elasticities describing the income redistribution due to protection in manufacturing, agriculture, and services follow a pattern suggested by factor intensities. [410]     

Liberalizing Services Trade In APEC: A General Equilibrium Analysis with Imperfect Competition

The paper studies services-sector trade liberalization in the Asia–Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) Forum using a global, multicountry, multisector applied general equilibrium model with an imperfectly competitive service sector. Reducing the service sector's nontariff barriers is modeled by eliminating the possibility for oligopolistic firms to price-discriminate between client countries within APEC and lowering the fixed costs of the firms doing service exporting business. The results suggest that services trade liberalization reinforces existing sectoral trade balances. Increase in demand for intermediate services tends to reinforce rather than counteract the role of primary factors in determining sectoral comparative advantage. The western APEC members received the greatest welfare gains from services trade liberalization, while the developing economies gained more if only tariffs were eliminated.     

The 1990 Trade Liberalisation Policy of Turkey: An Applied General Equilibrium Assessment

I use a static multi-sector, multi-labour, multi-household Applied General Equilibrium (AGE) model for Turkey to show that the trade policy implemented by Turkish policy-makers in the 1990s is not trade diverting. Aggregate welfare rises by 0.6% of the consumer income. Most importantly, since agriculture and traditional the rural income), while urban groups are worse off (-0.5% of the urban income). It is also shown that overall income inequality declines by 1.1-1.7%, and that its main source is the inter-income inequality between urban and rural areas, which decreases by 8.9- 14.7%. [D58, F14, F17]     

论APEC服务贸易的自由化进程——不完全竞争条件下的一般均衡分析

原文出处:本文译自作者于1997年9月向美国国际贸易委员会经济学办公室提交的工作论文:Liberalizing APEC Trade in Services:A General Equilibrium Analysis with Imperfect Competition一、引言(一)服务贸易服务业在每一个国家都是一个重要的行业,在大多数国家它都占到GDP的50%到80%。集体而言,由于服务业是几乎所有国家中最大的行业,所以,把服务业说成是其他行业生产中重要的中间投入也就不奇怪了。服务业还在国际贸易中起着日益重要的作用。虽然,在过去,服务曾经被认为是不可交易的,但现在,国际服务贸易已成为世界贸易中发展最快…     

Trade and Real Wages: a Macroeconomic Model*

We offer a new paradigm to understand the effects of trade on factor rewards. It utilizes the classical‐Keynesian model, and shows that normally a country’s trade deficit hurts labor by lowering the real wage, but benefits the owners of capital. The effects of tariffs on factor rewards and employment are opposite to those of the trade deficit, which falls with a rise in the tariff rate. Countries with trade shortfalls unambiguously benefit from their tariffs, because laborers far outnumber capitalists, who suffer from the declining interest rate. Thus, tariffs lead to a rise in social welfare in trade‐deficit countries.