Conflict,growth, distribution,and employment: a long-run Kaleckian model

This paper presents a Kaleckian growth model in which (i) the rate of capacity utilization, the profit share, and the rate of employment are adjusted in the medium run, and (ii) the normal rate of capacity utilization and the expected rate of capital accumulation are adjusted in the long run. The long-run equilibrium is a continuum of equilibria and is characterized by hysteresis in that the long-run position of the economy depends on where it starts. An increase in the bargaining power of workers lowers the rate of unemployment in both the medium-run and the long-run equilibrium.     

Corruption, growth and ethnic fractionalization: a theoretical model

This paper analyzes the existing relationship between ethnic fractionalization, corruption and the growth rate of a country. We provide a simple theoretical model. We show that a nonlinear relationship between fractionalization and corruption exists: corruption is high in homogeneous or very fragmented countries, but low where fractionalization is intermediate. In fact, when ethnic diversity is intermediate, constituencies act as a check and balance device to limit ethnically-based corruption. Consequently, the relationship between fractionalization and growth rate is also non-linear: growth is high in the middle range of ethnic diversity, low in homogeneous or very fragmented countries.     

Tariffs,trade and unemployment in a disequilibrium model: issues and policies

This paper studies the disequilibrium transition process engaged by increased openness to trade, and the effect of institutions, market behaviors and economic policies on that transition. The issue is analyzed with a simple two country (north and south), two goods model, amended in order to take into account the time dimension of both the production and the decision processes. Investigating the consequences of a tariff decrease by means of numerical simulations, we show to what extent wage and price setting, and the degree of tightness of monetary policy affect the outcome of the disequilibrium process. The main result is that capturing the gains associated with international trade requires market behaviors and economic policies, which are rather different from what is usually prescribed.

Bank structure, capital accumulation and growth: a simple macroeconomic model

Summary. This paper analyzes the equilibrium growth paths of two economies that are identical in all respects, except for the organization of their financial systems: in particular, one has a competitive banking system and the other has a monopolistic banking system. In addition, the sources of inefficiencies, as a result of monopoly banking, and their relationship to the existence of credit rationing are explored. Monopoly in banking tends to depress the equilibrium law of motion for the capital stock for either of two reasons. When credit rationing exists, monopoly banks ration credit more heavily than competitive banks. When credit is not rationed, the existence of monopoly banking leads to excessive monitoring of credit financed investment. Both of these have adverse consequences for capital accumulation. In addition, monopoly banking is more likely to lead to credit rationing than is competitive banking. Finally, the scope for development trap phenomena to arise is considered under both a competitive and a monopolistic banking system. Received: September 20, 1999; revised version: December 3, 1999     

Expectations,substitution, and scrapping in a putty-clay model

The paper presents a framework for analyzing the effect of changing expectations about future prices on a firm's choice of technique, and on its anticipated scrapping of capital equipment. Assuming a putty-clay technology, particular attention is paid to the way in which the scrapping age depends on the degree of ex ante input substitution. Numerical illustrations — based on data for Norwegian manufacturing for the years 1964–1983, an ex ante technology represented by a Generalized Leontief cost function in materials, energy, labor, and capital, and an ARMA representation of the price expectation mechanism — are presented. The results indicate that the price changes in this period may have had a substantial impact on planned scrapping, and on the chosen production techniques.     

Spillovers,product innovation and R&D cooperation: a theoretical model

ABSTRACT

We analyze the impact of post-innovation knowledge spillovers on firms’ decisions to invest and cooperate in R&D, forming a research joint venture (RJV). We study the case of two potential investors involved in a non-tournament stochastic competition for developing a new but imitable product. We propose a theoretical model where cooperation may emerge as a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium of a three-stage game. In the first stage, firms decide whether to cooperate; in the second, they decide whether to invest; and in the third, they compete. We show that firms cooperate in R&D when the spillovers are high enough and the fixed costs associated with R&D activities are low enough; however, our analysis suggests that forming an RJV may not always be socially optimal, and subsidizing R&D cooperation may not be efficient. We propose an optimal scheme of subsidies, which should be designed according to the intensity of the spillovers, the level of the R&D costs, and the probability of innovation success. Finally, we show that in the case of mergers the private incentive to invest is maximized, and firms may not need public subsidies to cooperate. When subsidies are costly, not hindering mergers may be the second-best solution.     

The environmental Porter hypothesis: theory,evidence, and a model of timing of adoption

The Porter hypothesis postulates that the costs of compliance with environmental standards may be offset by adoption of innovations they trigger. We model this hypothesis using a game of timing of technology adoption. We will show that times of adoption will be earlier if the non-adoption tax is higher. The environmental tax will turn the preemption game with low profits into a game with credible precommitment generating higher profits (pro-Porter). If there is a precommitment game without environmental taxes, the introduction of a tax will lead to lower profits (anti-Porter). An evaluation of the empirical literature indicates that the Porter hypothesis will hold even for profit-maximizing firms under multiple market imperfections such as imperfect competition, X-inefficiency, and agency costs. These are more likely to be present in sectors with large firms. In many case studies that we have evaluated, though, we detected an element of explicit or implicit subsidies for environmentally friendly behaviour, which is in line with Pigovian policies.     

Green technical innovation, environmental expenditure, and the environmental Kuznets curve： a dynamic s model

The relationship between the emission of pollutant and economic growth has attracted a lot of attention in the environmental debate of the recent decades. Based on some theoretical and empirical research on environmental Kuznets curve （EKC）, this paper introduces the environmental technical innovation and environmental investment into Salow growth model to discuss the relationship between GDP per capital and the emission of pollutant By the dynamic simulation and parameters analysis, the results of the model indicate： （1） when ＂green＂ technical progress and environmental investment are fixed, the relationship between GDP per capital and the emission shows the linear relationship; （2） ＂green＂ technical progress can lead to the positive growth rates with a decreasing level of emission, which is compatible with an EKC; （3） the proportion of the environmental investment can lead the different growth rates and level of emission. These results can explain that developing countries are ＂too poor to be green＂.     

Pricing, learning, and strategic behavior in a single-sale model

Summary. We analyze an infinite horizon model where a seller who owns an indivisible unit of a good for sale has incomplete information about the state of the world that determines not only the demand she faces but also her own valuation for the good. Over time, she randomly meets potential buyers who may have incentives to manipulate her learning process strategically. We show that i) the seller's incentives to post a high price and to experiment are not necessarily monotonic in the information conveyed by a buyer's rejection; and ii) as the discount factors tend to one, there are equilibria where the seller always ends up selling the good at an ex-post individually rational price. Received: January 6, 1999; revised version: July 15, 2000     

Adaptability, productivity, and educational incentives in a matching model

We study the connections between the labour market and the education sector in a matching framework with ex-post wage bargaining. Workers have multidimensional skills and the search market is segmented by technology. Education is a time-consuming activity and determines jointly the scope - or adaptability - and intensity - or productivity - of individual skills. We establish three main results. First, unemployment provides incentives to schooling by raising the need for adaptability. Second, private returns to productivity are below social returns, but no hold-up phenomenon is involved. Third, due to wage and congestion externalities, private returns to adaptability exceed social returns. As a consequence, both over- and under-education may take place in equilibrium.     

Bargaining power, effective demand and technical progress: a Kaleckian model of growth

Following the Kaleckian tradition, this paper presents a demand-ledgrowth model in which the distribution of income is fully endogenised.This is done by introducing claims on income by workers andfirms. The bargaining power of these two groups affects, throughdistribution, the patterns of accumulation and inflation. Inturn, the bargaining power of workers is affected by the rateof change of employment. The paper discusses the model's static and dynamic implications,including the effects of exogenous and induced technical progress.The model confirms all the typical Kaleckian results, includingthe fact that increases in real wages may lead to acceleratingaccumulation as well as inflation. It also produces a new result:it is possible that an increase in the rate of change of labourproductivity may not lead to an increase in the rate of changeof employment.     

文化产业园区创新要素、创新环境与创新绩效：一个有调节的中介作用模型

文章基于产业集聚的观点,以创意人才为研究对象,探讨文化园区创新要素对创新绩效的影响机制,并探究创新环境的中介作用,检验政策配置的调节作用。建立基于文化产业园区创新要素与创新绩效的调节中介作用模型,运用问卷调查进行实证分析。结果表明：(1)创新要素对创新环境具有显著正向影响,但创新要素的三个维度中,社会网络、个人成长对创新绩效影响不显著;(2)创新要素中的信息共享与知识溢出维度和创新绩效直接显著,而个人能力通过创新环境中介作用影响创新产出;(3)政策配置在创新环境和创新绩效的中介效应中起到正向调节作用,政策支持力度越高对创新产出的影响越大。因此,政府应该引导建立以创新为导向的要素集聚,通过营造良好的创新氛围,完善社会网络结构,降低区域的创新阻力,进而提升文化创造力的集聚与外溢能力。     

Replacement,adoption and economic dynamics: lessons from a canonical creative destruction model

In this paper, we provide a first inspection into how structural technology adoption costs affect economic fluctuations. To this end, we choose a simple extension of a canonical creative destruction model. We analytically characterize the optimal replacement–adoption policies, and study numerically the induced dynamics. Our model predicts that the countries supporting the highest adoption costs are those which display the longest and sharpest business and employment fluctuations, and the lowest convergence speeds to their steady state equilibria. Moreover, as the position of the workers in the labor market weakens, the fluctuations are shown to get even sharper.     

Macroeconomics,finance, commodities: Interactions with carbon markets in a data-rich model

This article assesses the transmission of international shocks to EUA spot, EUA futures, and CER futures carbon prices using a broad dataset that includes 115 macroeconomic, financial and commodities indicators with daily frequency from April 4, 2008 to January 25, 2010 totalling 463 observations. The framework adopted is a Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregression model with latent factors extracted from the dataset, as proposed by Bernanke et al. (2005). The main results can be summarized as follows. First, based on impulse responses, we show that carbon prices tend to respond negatively (between ? 0.2 and ? 1.2 standard deviation) to an exogenous shock that reduces global economic indicators by one standard deviation. Second, we find evidence that the responses are heterogeneous among the different kinds of carbon prices: CER futures prices tend to react much more significantly than EUA spot and futures prices. Third, the factors explain about 50% of the total variance of all variables in the dataset. The largest contribution is accounted for by the factor correlated with commodities markets, which explains about 28% of the total variability.     

Growth and income inequality: a canonical model

Summary. We develop an endogenous growth model with elastic labor supply, in which agents differ in their initial endowments of physical capital. In this framework, the growth rate and the distribution of income are jointly determined. The key equilibrating variable is the equilibrium labor supply. It determines the rate of return to capital, which in turn affects both the rate of capital accumulation and the distribution of income across agents. We then examine the impact of various structural shocks on growth and distribution. We find that faster growth is associated with a more unequal, contemporaneous distribution of income, consistent with recent empirical findings.Received: 7 October 2004, Revised: 18 February 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: O17, O40.Cecilia García-Peñalosa: Correspondence toGarcía-Peñalosa would like to acknowledge the financial support received from the Institut d’Economie Publique (IDEP), Marseille. Turnovsky’s research was supported in part by the Castor endowment at the University of Washington. The paper has benefited from seminar presentations at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Kansas, as well as from the comments of an anonymous referee.     

AFDC and illegitimacy ratios: a vector-autoregressive model

The expansion of the government programme of Aid to Families of Dependent Children (AFDC) plays a major role in theoretical explanations of the sharply rising trend in US illegitimacy ratios–the proportion of births occurring to unwed mothers. To date, this role has not been supported by empirical evidence. The present study uses a new approach: time-series data and Granger causation. A series of tests shows robust causal impacts of AFDC on non-white illegitimacy ratios. A counterfactual simulation reveals that about half the increase in non-white illegitimacy ratios over the past two decades can be attributed to an ‘AFDC effect’.     

Decomposing household,professional and market forecasts on inflation: a dynamic factor model analysis

A dynamic factor model with stochastic volatility is used to investigate the relationships between three alternative measures of inflation expectations. The results show evidence of both a common time-varying trend and a common transitory component between inflation and short-term inflation expectations from households, professionals and markets. While the common time-varying trend has declined in both level and volatility since the early 1980s, it was found that consumer expectations are disproportionately influenced by the visibility of prices of select few goods. Roughly speaking, a 1% point increase in food and energy prices leads to about 1/3% point increase in consumer forecasts of inflation. In terms of policymaking, this finding suggests that stability in highly visible prices can moderate inflation in a meaningful way.     

Sun,sand and September 11: a model of tourism demand for the Maldives

Tourism is a key source of income for many small island economies, and so it is important to understand its determinants in such countries. We estimate a tourism demand model for the Maldives’ five main source markets and find that, in addition to the usual foreign income and own price variables, the cost of travel and of visiting alternative destinations (often missing from studies of this nature) almost always have a significant role. In addition, the country’s own marketing efforts prove effective at influencing demand. Finally, we find evidence the War on Terror has persistently depressed demand from some markets.     

Industrial invention: a supply and demand model for the UK, 1961–1989

A supply and demand model of industrial invention is presented paying particular attention to the impact of past advances on present advances in knowledge. The model is estimated using a recent span of UK data: a good fitting specification is found, which passes a battery of diagnostic tests, and possesses sensible long-run properties and an interpretable lag structure. The specific results found should be of potential interest to governments wishing to encourage the flow of inventions by fiscal means.