Exhaustible Resources, Monopolistic Competition, and Endogenous Growth

One of the central analytical findings of the growth literature is that continuous growth is possible even in an economy with exhaustible resources. Based on this result, this paper addresses the question of whether different equilibrium trajectories which lead to a balanced growth path are possible within an endogenous growth model with incomplete competition. Although the Solow-Stiglitz condition is violated due to a monopolistic sector, we nevertheless demonstrate that steady growth in per capita consumption is possible under the condition that the rate of entry of new monopolists exceeds that of the average monopolist's decline in output. As a necessary but not sufficient condition for indeterminacies in a growing economy, this paper demonstrates that the partial production elasticity of capital must be smaller than that of the exhaustible resource.     

Fiscal Stimulus and Endogenous Firm Entry in a Monopolistic Competition Macroeconomic Model

This paper sets up a monopolistic competition model featuring the returns to production specialization. Some novel results are derived from the analysis. First, the effect of a fiscal stimulus on consumption may be positive or negative, depending crucially upon whether the production function is characterized by increasing or decreasing returns to production specialization. Second, following a fiscal expansion, increasing returns to specialization lead to a positive linkage between real wages and aggregate output, while decreasing returns to specialization result in a negative relationship between real wages and aggregate output. Third, a fiscal expansion may raise social welfare, provided that the degree of increasing returns to production specialization is sufficiently large.     

Noncooperative Equilibrium and Chamberlinian Monopolistic Competition

This paper addresses the existence of equilibrium for a nonatomic Bertrand game in a Chamberlinian environment. We reformulate O. Hart′s model (Rev. Econ. Stud. 52, 1985, 529–546) as a nonatomic game and show that under dispersion of tastes and continuity of the tastes density, there exists a pure-strategies ε-equilibrium where prices exceed marginal cost. Unlike Hart′s model there is no need to impose uniformity (or even independence) on the distribution of the m-tuple of differential commodities that consumers care about. Moreover, demand curves are allowed to vary across firms and in equilibrium firms may earn profits. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: B21, D43, L13.     

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.     

Monopolistic Competition and Different Wage Setting Systems

In this paper, we present a disequilibrium unemployment model without labor market frictions and monopolistic competition in the goods market within an infinite horizon model of growth. We consider different wage setting systems and compare wages, the unemployment rate, and income per capita in the long‐run at firm, sector, and national (centralized) levels. The aim of this paper is to determine under which conditions, the inverted‐U hypothesis between unemployment and the degree of centralization of wage bargaining, reported by Calmfors and Driffill [Economic Policy, 6, 14–61, 1988], is confirmed. Our analysis shows that a high degree of market power normally produces the inverted‐U shape for unemployment. Moreover, we also illustrate that this inverted‐U shape can be reversed when the ability of trade unions to internalize the provision of social services is great enough at sector level.     

Immerisizing Growth in a Monopolistic Competition Model

In models of trade with monpolistic competition, firms set prices above marginal cost. An example is provided in this paper in which, because of this, a growth in the labor force lowers welfare per capita.     

垄断竞争、中间产品与城市规模

从分工经济与城市规模之间关系的角度,运用Dixit-Stiglitz模型框架下经济活动的规模收益递增原理,在城市内部最终产品生产企业利润最大化的条件下,系统讨论了投入的中间产品种类数与城市人口规模之间的关系、中间产品之间的替代性对城市均衡人口规模的反馈作用,以及城市内部中间产品专业化水平和互补经济程度之间的关系。在此基础上,利用广东省城市增长的部分数据进行了实证分析。认为:经济活动的集聚形成了城市;在城市体积增长和城市系统随产业的专业化与多样化发展而演进的过程中,城市规模经济的实现除了依赖生产要素流动外,最终产品生产企业对中间产品投入的需求也具有不可忽视的作用。     

资本流入下的政策选择

本文依据应付资本流入的国际经验,分析了流入中国的资本、特点和决定因素,检讨了当前应对资本流入导致的宏观经济过热的政策组合。文章认为,现行的固定汇率加紧缩的政策固然在短期内产生了效果,但要从根本上克服资本流入造成的潜在危机,必须从多方面入手,纠正制度性扭曲。     

Monetary Policy and Capital Inflow*

Capital inflow has been depicted in the model developed by Pentti Kouri and Michael Porter as being determined exclusively by monetary forces, with GNP entering the equation through its impact on the demand for money. If this is correct, disaggregation of GNP should have little effect on the estimates of response parameters in the model. It is found that replacing GNP by investment and non-investment spending has a significant effect on the estimates, suggesting that capital inflows have direct purposes which are not well represented in a purely monetary model. An attempt is made to construct a money policy equation as the second part of a simultaneous system depicting the interplay of monetary policy and capital inflow. In spite of claims to the contrary, it is found that simultaneous estimation gives results which differ considerably from those of single-equation methods.     

Pattern of Trade and Economic Development in a Model of Monopolistic Competition

The paper introduces differences in production and transaction conditions between countries into a model of monopolistic competition. It applies inframarginal analysis to show that, as transaction conditions are improved, the general equilibrium may jump discontinuously across different patterns of trade and economic development. A country may export a good in which it has exogenous comparative disadvantage if its endogenous comparative advantage dominates this disadvantage. Countries will choose a trade and development pattern to utilize their net exogenous and endogenous comparative advantages in production as well as in transactions.     

Monopolistic Competition, Increasing Returns and International Coordination of Entry Policy

This paper presents a new model of monopolistic competition in which firms produce differentiated products under decreasing costs. This model is used to confirm and illustrate the limitations of the excess entry hypothesis, well known in the literature on industrial organization. The validity of the theorem is limited in the sense that it fails to hold in the present model if the properly defined degree of love for variety is sufficiently large. The model is extended to allow for intraindustry trade and to examine the conditions for gains (or losses) from trade in a two-country framework. It is shown how the degree of love for variety affects them. The significance and nature of international coordination of competition policy in the present setting is considered. The degree of love for variety is again shown to be of crucial importance in the characterization of the optimal policy coordination.     

人力资本与人力资本投资理论之比较

本文认为，人力资本投资与人力资本理论是不同的两个概念，人力资本投资理论只是人力资本理论的一部分，舒尔茨的理论贡献在于对人力资本投资的研究而不是对人力资本的系统研究，马克思应是系统研究人力资本理论的第一人。尽管马克思没有提出过人力资本的概念，但他在《资本论》中论述的可变资本与舒尔茨所说的人力资本精神是一致的，同时他还对人力资本的范围、特征、及其对经济增长的贡献等问题进行了系统分析。尤其重要的是，他还引进了制度因素指出了当时资本主义社会的人力资本投资或人力资本的生产与再生产中存在的问题，并指出了未来社会在人力资本生产与再生产中应注意的问题，这对我国今天的教育改革仍有借鉴意义。     

外资流入和人民币自由兑换对货币供给的影响

我国中入WTO之后,随着金融对外开放度的提高,外资流入和汇率波动以及外资银行的进入等都会对本国的货币供给形成冲击。要建立能够适应WTO挑战的货币供给机制,必须考虑资本流动和汇率波动对本国货币提供的影响。本文分析了强制结售汇制度、外汇储备和人民币自由兑换等因素对我国货币供给的影响,并提出了相应的政策措施。     

Perfect Competition and Endogenous Comparitive Advantage

This paper analyzes a dynamic Ricardian model of international trade in which relative differences in technology are endogenously determined by investments in innovation by competitive firms. It considers the impact of these investments on trade patterns and the effect of trade patterns on rates of innovation and growth. The main result is that the dynamic effects of trade need not be positive when both countries specialize investments in the goods in which they have a comparitive advantage. In addition, trade can lead to an inefficient pattern of specialization in innovation and have negative welfare effects.     

Social Status,Labour Market Frictions and Endogenous Growth

This paper develops an endogenous growth model that incorporates wealth‐enhanced preferences for social status and labour market frictions to investigate the role of social status in determining unemployment and long‐run growth. We show that the increase in the desire for social status reduces the unemployment rate, but its effect on long‐run growth is unclear. We then calibrate our model to the US economy and find that an increase in the desire for social status lowers the unemployment rate and enhances the economic growth rate in the long run.     

Collective Labour Supply: Heterogeneity and Non-Participation

We present identification and estimation results for the "collective" model of labour supply in which there are discrete choices, censoring of hours, and non-participation in employment. We derive the collective restrictions on labour supply functions and contrast them with restrictions implied by the usual "unitary" framework. Using the large changes in the wage structure between men and women in the U.K. over the last two decades, we estimate a collective labour supply model for married couples without children. The estimates of the sharing rule show that male wages and employment have a strong influence on bargaining power within couples.     

Tax Progression and Human Capital in Imperfect Labour Markets

Recent contributions to the theory of taxation argue that tax progression raises welfare and employment in the presence of labour market imperfections. This literature takes the endowment of workers with human capital as given. The present paper analyses the effects of tax progression in a model with endogenous human capital formation. We show that the effect of tax progression on human capital investment depends on the deductibility of the cost of human capital formation. With full deductibility, tax progression raises employment and welfare. With incomplete deductibility, in contrast, the effect of tax progression on employment and welfare may be negative.