Real business cycle models and money: A survey of theories and stylized facts

Real Business Cycle Models and Money: A Survey of Theories and Stylized Facts. — This article presents a survey of real business cycle theory, with special attention to the role of money. This role is mainly associated with cash-in-advance constraints, liquidity effects and aspects of financial intermediation. Apart from reviewing the literature, stylized facts about the comovements of output and prices versus monetary aggregates and interest rates over the cycle are assembled and discussed for eight industrial countries, including the G5-countries, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. The paper concludes that further developments in monetary real business cycle theory could benefit from taking into account a broader set of stylized facts about prices than has been done thus far, as well as from introducing non-Walrasian elements and endogenizing monetary policy.     

The Feldstein-Horioka puzzle: The IS-LM model with optimal policy

The high correlations between saving and investment, which suggest a small variability of the current account, is explored within an IS-LM framework. While Feldstein and Horioka interpret this evidence to imply a low degree of capital mobility, the pattern of shocks to the model is also important. If the monetary authorities are pegging domestic rates to foreign returns, then we would expect the Feldstein-Horioka evidence even under high mobility. We explore whether such a rule is optimal when policymakers wish to avoid income variability where fiscal and monetary policy are coordinated and where monetary policy must act alone. We suggest that the Voicker Federal Reserve switched to the latter stance and created a dramatic exception to the Feldstein-Horioka paradox.     

New trade theories and industrial location in the EU: a survey of evidence

'New' trade theories and the 'new economic geography' theoriesmake a number of predictions about the characteristics of theindustries we should expect to become geographically concentratedand the characteristics of the countries where these locate.This paper surveys empirical studies that have evaluated thesenew trade theories in the light of the EU's experience. Consistentwith new trade theories, empirical studies suggest that geographicallyconcentrated industries are subject to scale economies and havea high proportion of intermediate inputs in final production;and they concentrate in countries that have access to largemarkets.     

The pattern of trade in individual products: A test of simple theories

Zusammenfassung Der Handel mit einzelnen Produkten: ein Test einfacher Theorien. — Der Zweck dieses Aufsatzes ist es, die Leistungsf?higkeit von drei einfachen Theorien zur Prognose des Handels mit einzelnen Produkten zu testen. Wenn wir diese Theorien nacheinander prüfen, so stellen wir fest, da\ die Skalenertrags-Hypothese nichts erbringt, aber sowohl die Faktorproportionen-Hypothese als auch die Neotechnologie-Hypothese signifikante und konsistente Erkl?rungen für die Wahrscheinlichkeit des Exports einzelner Produkte liefern. Die Arbeit zeigt auch, da\ die beiden erfolgreichen Hypothesen sinnvoll zu einer kombinierten Hypothese verbunden werden k?nnen, in der die Exportwahrscheinlichkeit sowohl von neo-technologischen Aspekten als auch von Faktorproportionen abh?ngt. In diesem kombinierten Erkl?rungsansatz beeinflu\t die Kapitalintensit?t — sei sie aggregiert oder in physisches und Humankapital disaggregiert — den Handel nur, wenn es sich um standardisierte Produkte mit einfacher Technologie handelt.

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Résumé La structure de commerce extérieur avec des biens individuels: un test des théories simples. — Le but de cet article est de tester la performance de trois simples théories qui prédisent le commerce extérieur avec des biens individuels. En testant ces théories, pour la même période, nous trouvons que les approches des proportions de facteur aussi bien que les approches néo-technologiques donnent une explication significative et consistante de la probabilité d’exporter les biens individuels pendant que l’approche des économies d’échelle ne la donne pas. Cet étude aussi trouve que les deux explications couronnées de succès peuvent être productivement combinées dans une approche composite, dans laquelle la probabilité d’exportation dépend des considérations néo-technologique et des proportions de facteur. Dans cette approche explicative l’intensité de capitaux, ou bien agrégée ou bien desagrégée dans l’intensité de capitaux humaine et physique, influence le commerce extérieur seulement avec des produits standardisés et de technologie basse.

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Resumen El perrón de commercio en productos individuales: un test de teorías simples. — El propósito de este estudio es investigar el desempe?o de tres teorías simples para predecir el comercio de productos individuales. Probando estas teorias, una tras otra, encontramos que mientras la explicación de las economías de escala no es satisfactoria, las explicaciones de proporciones de factores y neotecnológica, respectivamente, proveen una explicación significativa y consistente de la probabilidad de exportar productos individuales. En este estudio también se encontró que las dos explicaciones satisfactorias pueden combinarse exitosamente en una explicación compuesta, en la que la probabilidad de exportación depende de consideraciones neo-tecnológicas como también de consideraciones de proporciones de factores. En esta explicación compuesta, la intensidad de capital, agregada o desagregada en intensidad de capital física o humana, influencia el comercio solo de productos estandarizados de baja tecnología.

     

Inventory accounting and earnings/price ratios: A puzzle*

Abstract. Economic intuition indicates that each dollar of current pretax cash flow should lead to higher accounting earnings, higher tax payments, and lower stock price under the FIFO rather than the LIFO method of inventory costing. Hence, the earnings/price ratios of the FIFO firms should be higher than those of the LIFO firms. However, the empirical study in this paper provides evidence to the contrary. To search for confounding factors, I examine the possible impacts of size, risk, industry classification, other accounting methods, and expectations of future earnings growth. None of these factors seems to affect the conclusion significantly. Because I have not established a complete causal link between accounting information and stock valuation, I refrain from drawing strong inferences and treat it as a puzzle. This puzzle should stimulate more research in this area in the future. Résumé. L'intuition économique veut que chaque dollar de flux d'encaisse actualisé avant impôt doive produire des bénéfices comptables supérieurs, des impôts à payer plus élevés, et des prix plus faibles des actions si l'on utilise la méthode d'épuisement successif (PEPS) plutôt que la méthode d'épuisement à rebours (DEPS) dans l'establissement du coût des stocks. Les ratios cours/bénéfices des entreprises qui utilisent la méthode PEPS devraient done être plus élevés que ceux des entreprises qui utilisent la méthode DEPS. Toutefois, l'étude empirique effectuée par l'auteur l'amène à des conclusions contraires. Cherchant des facteurs qui tendraient à renverser la situation, il examine l'incidence possible de la taille, du risque, de la classification du secteur, d'autres méthodes comptables et de perspectives de croissance éventuelle des bénéfices. Aucun de ces facteurs ne semble influer sur sa conclusion de façon significative. L'auteur n'ayant pas établi de lien de causalité définitif entre l'information comptable et l'évaluation des actions, il s'abstient de tirer des conclusions fermes et aborde plutôt la question sous forme de puzzle. Un puzzle qui devrait éventuellement stimuler la recherche dans ce domaine.     

Sharecropping was sometimes efficient: sharecropping with compensation for improvements in European viticulture†

There is no consensus among specialists in agricultural contracts over whether the long‐term inefficiencies that classical economists attributed to sharecropping actually exist. This article maintains that they do exist and are partly caused by the fact that sharecropping is hardly compatible with the tenant being compensated for improvements, viticulture being the main historical exception. In line with recent contributions to the sharecropping literature, the article contends that the widely held belief among scholars of agricultural contracts that sharecropping was very frequent in Europe's vineyards is incorrect. However, it also provides evidence of an issue whose importance has gone largely unnoticed: prior to the twentieth century, many of the European vineyards worked by sharecroppers had been created by the sharecroppers themselves, through contracts which entitled them to compensation. Those contracts abounded while viticulture depended basically on two inputs, land and labour. When viticulture became a heavy consumer of capital, they were rapidly abandoned, but not in Catalonia, with a paradoxical result: the Catalan rabassa morta contract, which for centuries had made it possible to eliminate both the long‐ and short‐term inefficiencies of sharecropping, ended up becoming an obstacle to overcoming the short‐term inefficiencies. The article discusses why that happened.     

The monetarist experiment in Chile: A critical survey

Chile constitutes the most outstanding case of implementation of an extreme market economy model. During nine years, between 1973 and 1982, a model was implemented that for its ‘pureness’, deepness and extension induced a drastic transformation of the Chilean economy. The main features of the model are examined, focusing on the anti-inflationary policy, the reform of the financial system, and the external opening. Then the global results concerning output, income distribution and saving-investment are studied. The paper shows that the balance of the results was clearly negative during the 1973–1981 period: output stagnated, the concentration of wealth was spectacular, and saving and investment rates fell significantly. The characteristics themselves of the model and the weakening of the productive apparatus that they originated, additionally explain that the international recession was multiplied during 1982 within the domestic economy. The paper concludes with an attempt to interpret the main causes of the failure of this ‘experiment’.     

Globalization and wage inequalities: A synthesis of three theories

Globalization and Wage Inequalities: A Synthesis of Three Theories. — The theoretical insights of Heckscher and Ohlin, Feenstra and Hanson, and Tang and Wood provide a plausible explanation of the effects of globalization on wage inequalities in developed and developing countries. In combination, these three theories can explain, among other things, why inequality has fallen in some developing countries but risen in others. Improved travel and communications facilities raise the relative wages of highly skilled Northern workers, but in both the North and the South have mixed effects on wage gaps between medium-skilled and unskilled workers, sometimes reinforcing and sometimes offsetting the effects of falling barriers to trade.     

The distribution of income: Evidence,theories and policy

Summary This Tinbergen Lecture begins by reviewing empirical evidence about trends in income inequality in a number of Western countries. There is considerable diversity of experience across countries. The first quarter century after the Second World War was not generally characterised by a steady downward trend in inequality, but by episodes of inequality reduction at different dates. More recently, several OECD countries have seen a rise in inequality, but the rates of increase differed and in around half of the countries shown there was no significant upward trend over the 1980s. The differing experiences, and the episodic nature of changes, have implications for the explanations of inequality considered in Sections 2 and 3 of the Lecture. I begin with the mechanism which Tinbergen described in Chapter 6 of hisIncome Distribution: the race between technological development and education. It is argued that behind the supply and demand model there lie a variety of factors, and that the explanation we give may be important in determining whether what we are observing are wagedifferentials or wageinequality. Moreover, we need to consider non-labour income, and Section 3 examines the determination of state transfers and of capital income. Finally, in Section 4, I consider some of the policy implications, focusing on one particular set of policy proposals in which Jan Tinbergen was interested: the idea of a basic income.Ninth Tinbergen Lecture delivered on September 29, 1995 at De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam for the Royal Netherlands Economic Association.     

The Concept and measurement of subsistence: A survey of the literature

Subsistence is a widely-used concept. But most of the time, its precise meaning is not property stated. This study attempts to provide an appropriate exposition of the concept by examining the manner in which it is used and the role it plays in different theoretical analyses and policy formulations. It has been shown that contrary to the conventional notion of a minimum standard of physical needs only, subsistence is an absolute minimum standard of physical and mental survival and productive efficiency. The lowest standard of social desirability is given by the needs of physical and mental survival. In addition to these, the standard of subsistence includes the needs of physical and mental efficiency for productive living in the society.The attainment of a certain minimum of physical, mental, and social magnitudes provides the standard of subsistence. Commodities or their characteristics are the needs of this standard. Income, by providing the command over these needs, affords an individual the capability to attain it. Hence income is used to characterize subsistence.Three different methods of subsistence determination have been identified. The most commonly used methods—the social and the scientific ones—are found to be arbitrary. The determination of subsistence from the analysis of the agents' declaration or behavior seems to be a better method. While the declaration or expenditure-based studies suffer from various limitations, studies based on the behavior of income earning offer a better direction.