Privatization in a Small Open Economy with Imperfect Competition

We look at privatization in a general equilibrium model of a small, tariff‐distorted, open economy. There is a differentiated good produced by both private and public sector enterprises. A reduction in government production in order to cut losses from such production raises the returns to capital and increases the tariff revenue, which are welfare‐improving. However, privatization also leads to lower wages and possibly fewer private brands. This lowers workers’ welfare, which may make privatization politically infeasible. Privatization can improve workers’ welfare with complementary reforms, e.g., attracting foreign investment or trade liberalization.     

Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy in a Model of Imperfect Competition With Transactions Money

This paper examines the effectiveness of fiscal policy in a general equilibrium macromodel with transactions money and an oligopolistic product market. The results suggest that although money may be neutral and play no direct role as a policy instrument, its indirect impact on the effectiveness of fiscal policy can be quite substantial. In particular, when money balances feature as a choice variable in the households' objective function, (i) fiscal policy becomes ineffective as the weight attached to money is reduced; (ii) the fiscal multiplier becomes negative when the elasticity of substitution between money and leisure exceeds unity; and (iii) it is possible that policy effects are in fact enhanced as the product market becomes more competitive.     

Migration Policy in a Small Open Economy with a Dual Labor Market

The paper uses a two–sector efficiency–wage model to analyze the consequences of immigration for a small open economy with a dual labor market. Immigrants are characterized by an (exogenous) return probability. Legal regulations impose preferential hiring of natives or "old" immigrants. As a result, there is sectoral segregation between natives and immigrants, leading to discrimination of the type equal pay for equal work,but unequal "work." In the short run (with sector–specific capital), immigration has a positive first–order impact on natives' welfare if migration policy favors segregation through high return rates or restrictive hiring practices ("guest–worker system"). In the long run, its effect is only determined by factor intensities (2 ¥ 2 model). Finally, the improved integration of migrants yields efficiency gains and improves aggregate welfare of all residents.     

Welfare Analysis of a Fiscal Reconstruction Policy in an Overlapping Generations Economy with Public Investment

Constructing an endogenously growing overlapping generations model with public investment, we examine the welfare effects of a fiscal reconstruction policy. In this paper we define a fiscal reconstruction policy as a policy where the government reduces its spending level without changing the tax revenue and allocates the surplus of the revenue to redeem public debt. We show that if government spending is not productive it is possible that a fiscal reconstruction policy improves the utilities of both the current and future generations, while if government spending is productive it can harm the utilities of both generations. Received February 26, 2002; revised version received July 8, 2002 Published online: February 17, 2003     

Monetary Policy and Exchange Rate Volatility in a Small Open Economy

We lay out a small open economy version of the Calvo sticky price model, and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a simple representation in domestic inflation and the output gap. We use the resulting framework to analyse the macroeconomic implications of three alternative rule-based policy regimes for the small open economy: domestic inflation and CPI-based Taylor rules, and an exchange rate peg. We show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail. We also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy, and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with the suboptimal rules.     

Monetary Policy Games and International Migration in a Small Open Economy

The paper shows that international migration may improve the position of both policymakers and unions in small open economies irrespective of whether they cooperate or not. This result implies that both unions and policymakers in small open economies may welcome a further increase in international labor flow in the future. When allowance is made for real GDP per capital considerations on behalf of the policymaker, it is found that aggressive union behavior may increase the inflationary bias. Aggressive unions may insulate themselves, while soft unions lose. The presence of migration does not necessarily lead to a better outcome.     

Foreign Aid,Wage Inequality,and Welfare for a Small Open Economy with Tourism

While the welfare effect of foreign aid has been extensively analyzed, the impact on the distribution of income has received less attention. At the same time, there has been recent work on tourism where it is complementary to aid in improving welfare. By combining these two strands, this paper concentrates on wage inequality in developing countries. We find that an increase in aid in the form of tied aid can lower the relative price of nontraded goods. The rent extracted from tourists declines, reducing welfare of domestic residents. In addition, the fall in the nontradable price can widen the wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. Thus, increased foreign aid may have detrimental effects on national welfare and the distribution of income. Rising wage inequality is confirmed by numerical simulations.     

Modelling Policy Issues in a World of Imperfect Competition

General equilibrium theory constitutes a sound basis for the discussion of policy issues if firms do not have market power. However, if firms influence prices strategically, the concept of profits loses its meaning due to the price normalization problem. Hence, it is unclear how to model the behavior of oligopolistic firms. In order to provide a conceptual foundation for the analysis of policy issues in the case of imperfect competition, we discuss ways to formulate the objective of a strategic firm. In particular, we investigate the concept of real wealth maximization that is based on profits as well as on shareholders' aggregate demand.     

Two-Part Trade Policy under Imperfect Competition

In this paper we consider the potential gain of a government pursuing a two-part trade policy: an import license for entry, along with a per-unit tariff on imports. The model is a two-stage game of complete but imperfect information. In the first stage, the domestic government sets trade policy, while in the second stage the home and foreign producers behave as Cournot competitors. The paper demonstrates that the optimal trade policy depends upon the number of firms, the degree of heterogeneity in cost functions, and the degree of convexity in cost functions.     

Fiscal Policy in a Growing Economy with Financial Frictions and Firm Heterogeneity

This paper constructs a tractable model of endogenous growth with financial frictions and firm heterogeneity. We introduce factor income tax, consumption tax as well as the government consumption into the base model and explore the growth effect of fiscal policy. We show that from the qualitative perspective, the long‐run effects of fiscal actions in our model are similar to those obtained in the representative agent models. However, the quantitative impacts of fiscal policy on long‐run growth in our setting can be substantially different from those established in the model where agents are homogeneous and there is no financial frictions.     

Ambiguous Social Welfare Effects of Price Regulation Under Imperfect Competition

Conventional wisdom is that a binding price ceiling increases output and so increases social welfare if imposed on an imperfectly competitive market. However, this paper shows that a price ceiling can be harmful to social welfare even though it increases industry output and consumer surplus. This model can be applied to the pharmaceutical industry under price control in many countries, e.g., U.K., Canada, Germany and Japan.     

能源节约中的财税政策选择

本文从财税政策与能源节约的关系出发,阐述了政府财税政策在能源节约领域的作用边界和范围,结合辽宁能源利用现状及存在的问题,有针对性地提出了财政税收政策在辽宁当前的能源节约战略中可采取的主要措施.     

Catching-up and Regulation in a Two-Sector Small Open Economy

Deregulation is often aimed at reducing mark-up pricing in technologically stagnant sheltered sectors. The paper shows that this may decrease the process of catching-up and welfare since it shifts resources away from R&D-intensive tradables sectors. Catching-up and deregulation are analyzed in an R&D-based growth model that allows for international capital mobility, trade, and spillovers. Knowledge spillovers raise the productivity of R&D in the exposed sector which results in catching-up. In the long run, the economy grows at the exogenous world growth rate. Capital mobility speeds up convergence. Temporary shocks have long-lasting effects as the economy exhibits hysteresis.     

Equilibrium Growth in a Small Economy Facing an Imperfect World Capital Market

A growth model of a developing economy facing an upward-sloping curve of debt is analyzed. Equilibrium is characterized by transitional dynamics in which consumption, capital, and debt converge to a common growth rate. The adjustment is through the debt-capital ratio, which drives the borrowing rate to a level at which growth rates are equalized. The economy is subject to two externalities: a production externality associated with government expenditure, and a financial externality associated with the upward-sloping supply of debt. The tax structure that enables the decentalized economy to attain the first-best equilibrium is characterized.     

Environmental Policy in Open Economies and Monopolistic Competition

This paper analyses the implications of international trade for non-cooperative environmental policy in the case of local production externalities. A particular focus is on the potential effects of regulations on the variety of goods and the resulting international spillover caused by trade. A tougher domestic standard negatively affects the utility of the households abroad, since such a policy reduces their variety of imports (due to fewer domestic product inventions) or their consumption of each imported brand (due to higher import prices). Ignoring the negative spillover, non-cooperative governments implement inefficiently strict standards in equilibrium. In contrast to this clear-cut inefficiency result, the impact of international trade on the state of the environment is ambiguous.     

开放经济下我国财政政策的有效性分析

笔者通过对开放经济条件下财政政策有效性检验变量的确立,借助协整和因果检验方法,考察了财政政策整体及其构成措施的效力,并根据其表现和特点概括出现阶段我国财政政策执行的效果和原则。     

财政政策波动性与财政规则:基于开放条件DSGE模型的分析

本文定量测度了中国财政政策波动性,构建了开放条件下的动态随机一般均衡模型,研究中国财政政策波动性的宏观影响与微观机理,并从降低财政政策波动性的负面影响视角考察财政规则的影响。结果表明:中国财政政策存在较大波动性;财政政策波动性冲击通过预期渠道导致总产出、消费、投资、出口和劳动雇佣等下滑及价格上涨;封闭条件会低估财政政策波动性的负面影响,开放条件下财政政策波动性的负面影响更大;金融摩擦会降低财政政策波动性冲击的影响;在不同的财政规则下,财政政策波动性对总产出、投资和私人消费均产生负效应。不同财政规则下的财政政策波动性影响程度存在差异,从总产出和私人消费角度看,在基准财政规则下,财政波动性的负效应最小。     

Growth and the Current Account in a Small Open Economy

The authors provide a framework with which to analyze growth in a small economy with perfect capital mobility. The framework provides a diagrammatic representation of steady states that differs in interesting and important ways from the usual closed-economy Solow-Swan diagram. The authors use the key diagrams to illustrate the effects of changes in parameters such as the saving rate and productivity growth on steady-state values of macroeconomic aggregates. They compare the steady-state results for the open economy with those obtained using the more familiar closed-economy model. They illustrate the possibility of endogenous income growth.     

Imperfect Competition and Growth with Entrepreneurial Risk

Abstract. This paper analyzes an overlapping generations endogenous growth model of occupational choice under risk in a two-sector economy with intermediate and final goods. Agents choose between business ownership in the monopolistically competitive intermediate goods industry or employment as a worker in this sector. Firm-specific profits are stochastic. Occupational choice under risk endogenizes the number of firms and products in the intermediate goods industry. The analysis shows that economic performance and growth both depend on the entrepreneurship rate and are inefficiently low compared with an economy with perfect markets for pooling risks. Monopolistic competition partly offsets the negative income effects from a too low level of entrepreneurial risk-taking.