World Interest Shocks, Capital, and the Current Account

Macroeconomic performance in many developing countries is influenced by international credit conditions. This paper considers a developing economy that faces an upward-sloping supply function of debt. It analyzes how a particular foreign shock, a world interest shock, influences such key macroeconomic variables as output, investment, the current account, and the terms of trade in both short-run and steady-state equilibrium. An intertemporal optimizing model is used to study these issues. This approach permits characterization of the intertemporal adjustment of the indebted economy, and shows that a world interest shock lowers overall economic welfare.     

A dependent economy model of public expenditure and the exchange rate

This paper examines the impact of public expenditure shocks on the exchange rate and the external accounts in a macroeconomic model of exchange rate determination. It extends the dependent economy approach to the open economy based on the tradables/nontradables dichotomy by incorporating international capital flows and intertemporal adjustment. Consistent with empirical evidence on exchange rate behavior, yet contrary to a major result of the popular Mundell-Fleming approach, this model suggests that fiscal expansion attributable to increased public expenditure usually causes exchange rate depreciation, not appreciation. However, if the increased public spending is on investment, the exchange rate is neutrally affected.     

Intertemporal choice of marine ecosystem exploitation

Exploitation of the marine ecosystem brings with it an intertemporal choice: there is a choice of catching the fish today, or restrain from fishing with the option of an increase in the benefit from future harvest. In a marine ecosystem under common pool management regime the contribution margin from catching the fish belongs to the fisher, while the benefit from the investment of leaving the fish in the sea will be shared in the common pool. The intertemporal choice therefore creates a driver for short sighted use of the ecosystem. The intertemporal balance of the exploitation is analyzed by applying capital theory to a size-based ecosystem model. The model reveals a need for intertemporal balance with respect to both fish size and harvest volume. The management therefore is, at an ecosystem level, to set target and regulate not only harvest volume but also size.     

Expectations and intertemporal separability in an empirical model of consumption and investment under uncertainty

An intertemporal model of consumption and investment under uncertainty is formulated, and compared with the existing literature; it is argued that an assumption of myopia is necessary for its empirical applicability. It is estimated by maximum likelihood with quarterly British data. A specification search for a satisfactory form of expectations is made, and the estimated model is compared with a static demand system. Strong intertemporal separability is formulated as a nested hypothesis, and strongly rejected by a likelihood ratio test.     

Estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution accounting for stockholder-specific portfolios

This article estimates the elasticity of intertemporal substitution using stockholder actual return experience. The approach is motivated by numerous data sources indicating that the median US stockholder has a portfolio composed of only three or four individual stocks, rather than a well-diversified portfolio as suggested by portfolio theory. Therefore, representing an individual stockholder portfolio by a proxy financial index (the common approach taken in the literature) may be too rough an approximation of investor behaviour and lead to biased results about risk aversion and intertemporal substitution. Eschewing the financial index methodology, our results support the standard representative agent assumption that there is a high degree of homogeneity in the elasticity of intertemporal substitution across stockholders with different wealth levels. Our findings have implications for models that assess the comovement between consumption and return on stocks.     

Polarisation, uncertainty and public investment failure

In a political economy model, the effect of political polarisation on a government's intertemporal choice between redistribution and public investment is shown to be similar to the effect of political uncertainty. Moreover, polarisation and uncertainty reinforce one another in their impact on public underinvestment and may ultimately lead to no investment at all.     

Owning capital or being shareholders: An equivalence result with incomplete markets

Many recent papers in macroeconomics have studied the implications of models with household heterogeneity and incomplete financial markets under the assumption that households own the stock of physical capital and undertake the intertemporal investment decisions. In these models, production exhibits constant returns to scale, households maximize expected discounted utility, and firms rent capital and labor from households to maximize period by period profits. This paper considers the case in which infinitely lived firms, rather than households, make the intertemporal investment decisions. Under this assumption, it shows that there exists an objective function for firms that results in the same equilibrium allocation as in the standard setting with one period lived firms. The objective requires that firms maximize their asset value, which is defined as the discounted value of future cash flows using present value processes that do not allow for arbitrage opportunities.     

Business Formation and Aggregate Investment

The paper proposes an intertemporal equilibrium model of vintage capital and monopolistic competition. Reflecting a tradeoff between the number and capacity of new machines, investment may be extensive or intensive. External gains from specialization and rationalization result in distorted investment decisions. The paper compares the effectiveness of a general investment tax credit with a start-up subsidy that shifts the direction of investment towards a more extensive form. An optimal policy of investment promotion is derived.     

Debt financing of public investment: On a popular misinterpretation of “the golden rule of public sector borrowing”

In this paper I challenge the proposition that the golden rule of public sector borrowing is consistent with the principle of intertemporal allocative efficiency, in the sense that growth-enhancing public investment justifies a structural public deficit. I demonstrate that in the long run the social opportunity cost of debt-financed public investment exceeds the social opportunity cost of tax financed public investments. This result holds if the social rate of time preference is lower than the interest rate on government borrowing. Thus a benevolent government would use taxes to finance public investment. In the short run, debt financing is justified if public investment has a considerable growth effect on private consumption. This requires a corresponding initial undersupply of public capital.     

Rates of return to public and private capital: new estimates using nonlinear Euler equations

Results obtained by Otto and Voss show that public investment undertaken in Australia over recent decades satisfies conditions for intertemporal efficiency. This paper confirms this result, although lower output elasticities and rates of return to private and public capital are obtained. The reason for these results is that the earlier work is extended by estimating the parameter related to the elasticity of intertemporal substitution that was earlier restricted to a specific value. In fact, it is shown here that it is possible to obtain an economically reasonable (and statistically significant) estimate of this parameter by assuming that the stochastic discount factor for the representative firm is the same as for the representative consumer and equal to a gross real interest rate.     

The Welfare of Investment Deductibility Under a Flat Tax

This paper analyses the welfare effects of investment deductibility in a contest of endogenous growth generated by learning–by–doing and knowledge spillovers. We present a model where a set of revenue neutral fiscal policies, each characterized by different degrees of investment deductibility and different uniform tax rates on income, have been introduced. We show that, given the ratio of public expenditures to national product, partial investment deductibility turns out to be welfare enhancing when the intertemporal elasticity of substitution of consumption is sufficiently small. Our result means that a pure consumption tax—although ensuring more saving and faster growth—is not always preferable to a revenue neutral tax system in which both consumption and investment are taxed.     

Modeling intertemporal general equilibrium: An application to Austrian commercial policy

We present a multi-sector CGE model featuring forward looking investiment and savings behavior within an intertemporal optimization framework. Thus, the model captures several of the intertemporal effects of commercial policy that have been stressed by recent literature on current account adjustment. We argue that pursuing a simulation approach in addressing these issues is warranted by certain limitations and ambiguities of the analytical literature. In addition to presenting the details of the model structure, the paper addresses calibration issues relating to intertemporal parameters. The model is calibrated to a microconsistent data set for the Austrian economy. Finally, the paper features an application of the model to a simple tariff liberalization scenario.     

International spillovers,productivity growth and openness in Thailand: an intertemporal general equilibrium analysis

Thailand has experienced economic growth well above world averages from 1960 to the recent crisis. While the controversy over Thailand and East Asian growth has discussed the role of capital accumulation versus productivity, we analyze the general equilibrium interaction between productivity and investment in an intertemporal growth model. The high growth is understood as a prolonged transition path with gradual tariff reduction and endogenous productivity driven by foreign spillover feeding capital investment. Counterfactual analyses show how protection would have reduced growth with productivity and investment slowdown, while shock liberalization would have raised immediate growth with faster convergence to steady state.     

Markovian Social Security in Unequal Societies

In this paper, we develop a dynamic political‐economic theory of social security. We analytically characterize a Markov perfect equilibrium and find that the interaction between Markovian tax policy and tax distortion on private investment in human capital shapes an intertemporal policy rule, linking taxes positively over time. By allowing current taxpayers to influence their own future social security benefits, the positive intertemporal tax linkage provides political support for social security. Moreover, this positive tax linkage leads to a negative correlation between wage inequality and the size of a nation's social security system, consistent with the empirical pattern observed across OECD countries.     

On the Peaking of Consumption with Exhaustible Resources and Zero Net Investment

We investigate an intertemporal model with an exhaustible resource inflowwhich exhibits a single peak in consumption on the path of development. Thepeak follows the date at which net investment is zero. The ``top' ofconsumption is higher and flatter and peaks later when the discount rate islower. ``Low' endowments of the exhaustible resource stock (and ``high'discount rates) are associated with strictly declining consumption paths.     

Anti-Stagflationary Tax Cuts and the Problem of Investment*

If prices are affected by both cost-push and demand-pull factors then a change in the policy mix towards fiscal ease can improve output, employment and the balance of trade without the price level rising. However the policy change may reduce investment and so affect the intertemporal allocation of resources. This paper derives conditions for tax cuts to ameliorate inflation and unemployment without a sacrifice of future output. Numerical examples suggest that one can have no presumption that the conditions are or are not likely to hold in general. The discussion is related to Corden's recent analysis of a 'free lunch'.     

Book Reviews

This paper reformulates Kalecki's investment models based on 'the principle of increasing risk'. First, it is shown that in his model risk can be interpreted as a conditional probability of bankruptcy of a firm, or the 'hazard rate' in reliability theory. Secondly, a simple static Kaleckian investment model is developed based on this interpretation. In the model, a slightly modified Kaleckian optimality condition for investment holds. It is also shown that, as Kalecki correctly pointed out, the principle of falling marginal efficiency of capital (or investment) is not required to obtain a finite level of investment. Finally, I consider sequential investment in an intertemporal model. In this model, a modified version of the Kaleckian optimality condition determines investment. In addition, as Kalecki emphasized, his increasing risk limits the level of investment even without increasing and convex adjustment costs associated with investment, by which the finite rate of investment is derived in the macroeconomics literature.     

Dynamic effects of an anticipated switch from destination- to origin-based commodity taxation

This paper investigates the macroeconomic and welfare effects of an anticipated future switch from destination- to origin-based commodity taxation. We set up an intertemporal representative-agent model of an open economy and study especially consumption, investment, and trade-balance responses to the commodity-tax reform. The anticipation effects on the macroeconomy are significant, whereas their welfare implications are not.     

Growth and finance: An intertemporal model

Frequently, intertemporal models, for example, Uzawa's (1969) work on growth, are based on the separation of investment and the financing decisions of firms. Finance variables are disregarded. In contrast, along the lines of the theory of imperfect capital markets, the present paper allows for cross-effects between firms' financial structure and the value of firms. A steady-state analysis gives empirical predictions on the relation of investment, finance and debt, and Hopf-Bifurcation analysis establishes the possibility of cyclical paths.     

LIFETIME AND VERTICAL INTERTEMPORAL INEQUALITY, INCOME SMOOTHING, AND REDISTRIBUTION: A SOCIAL WELFARE APPROACH

Between and within-households intertemporal inequality indices are proposed to highlight the vertical and lifetime (i.e. cyclical) components of overall intertemporal inequality. Comparison with the classical static inequality indices is made. Income redistribution and smoothing (i.e. stabilization) are conveniently defined as the public policy impact on welfare, by means of the relative increase in intertemporal vertical and cyclical equity, respectively. The issue is important as many public policies are aimed at both (vertical and cyclical equity) objectives. Our approach provides a more appropriate evaluation of the desirability of public reforms aimed at achieving a greater vertical and cyclical equity, within a social welfare framework.