Money,inflation, and maximizing behavior: The case of many countries

This paper examines a world which is composed of countries each inhabited by a population of farsighted overlapping generations and in which the only assets are the national currencies that grow at constant proportional rates. It is shown that the world economy is unstable in the sense that, away from the steady state, either the real value of each country's stock of money goes to zero or the world monetary system eventually collapses. It is also shown that the dynamic paths of the price level and the real stock of money in each country may move nonmonotonically over time.     

Sustainability in Closed and Open Economies

This paper discusses unilateral sustainability policies for tradable resources in closed and open economies. The effects of sustainability policies are modeled in an intertemporal, competitive framework by applying different sustainability rules which are introduced unilaterally in the domestic country. The paper shows that no sustainability rule will lead to a slower rate of extraction of the resource. Unilateral policies will lead to an "import of sustainability." It is also shown that the foreign country may well gain in terms of consumption and real income from such unilateral sustainability policies but not in terms of sustainability.     

A Common Pool Resource Game with Sequential Decisions and Experimental Evidence

We describe a common pool resource game in which players choose how much of the stock to extract in a sequential manner. There are two choices and one represents taking a larger proportion of the stock than the other. After a player makes a choice, the remaining stock grows at a constant rate. We consider a game with a finite number of alternating moves. It is shown that changes in the larger proportion of the stock that the players are allowed to take and the growth rate affect equilibrium, but have little effect on behavior in the laboratory. In addition to observing more cooperation than predicted, we observe that parameters that are strategically irrelevant affect behavior. The results of this research might help policy makers in developing adequate policies to prevent overexploitation of some natural renewable resources.     

Global Resources and Eco-labels: a Neutrality Result

I evaluate the effectiveness of eco‐labeling programs that are designed to mitigate transboundary environmental problems. A simple two‐country model is considered, where consumers in each country value a common environmental resource. It is shown that, in equilibrium, the level of damage is independent of whether one or both countries have eco‐labeling policies. Hence, the implementation of an existing eco‐labeling program by a second country may have no effect, or a very limited effect, on the stock of the environmental resource. The result highlights potential limitations of eco‐labeling policies in this international context.     

Trade,Growth, and Environmental Quality*

This paper examines linkages between international trade, environmental degradation, and economic growth in a dynamic North–South trade game. Using a neoclassical production function subject to an endogenously improving technology, North produces manufactured goods by employing labor, capital, and a natural resource that it imports from South. South extracts the resource using raw labor, in the process generating local pollution. We study optimal regional policies in the presence of local pollution and technology spillovers from North to South under both non‐cooperative and cooperative modes of trade. Non‐cooperative trade is inefficient due to stock externalities. Cooperative trade policies are efficient and yet do not benefit North. Both regions gain from improved productivity in North and faster knowledge diffusion to South regardless of the trading regime.     

Endogenous property rights regimes, common-pool resources and trade

A model is developed where opening to trade affects a dynamic common-pool resource stock and welfare through a community's voting decision to institute a property rights regime regulating the stock. The model finds that resource stock levels can decline even when a Markov perfect equilibrium path for labor and property rights regimes are chosen to maximize welfare. Thus, opening to trade can be welfare maximizing even when resource stock declines. Experimental results show that under certain conditions, subjects briefly follow a Markov perfect equilibrium path for property rights regime choice but labor allocations are myopically chosen indicating that some resource dynamics may be considered by subjects.     

Stock Market Fluctuations and Money Demand in Italy, 1913–2003

This paper examines the impact of stock market fluctuations on money demand in Italy from a long‐run perspective. The money demand function estimated by Muscatelli and Spinelli (2000) for a long time span is utilized as a benchmark, adding to the specification information on share prices from the Milan Stock Exchange Reform of 1913 to recent years. For a shorter time period (1938–2003), annual observations on stock market capitalization and turnover velocity are also considered. The empirical findings suggest that stock market fluctuations help to explain temporary movements in liquidity preference, rather than its secular patterns. Overall, a positive association emerges between an index of stock market prices that includes dividends and real money balances; however, the estimated long‐run relationship is unstable. In a dynamic, short‐term specification of money demand, the estimated coefficient of deflated stock prices is positive, and therefore compatible with a wealth effect, in the years 1913–1980, while in the last two decades a substitution effect has prevailed and the correlation between money and share prices has been negative. This is likely to reflect a change in financial structure and the increasing role of opportunity costs defined over a wider range of assets. These results are confirmed by data on stock market capitalization. Moreover, in the recent period, stock market turnover and money growth are positively correlated .     

Deficit financing,liquidity, and the government budget constraint

This article presents a macroeconomic model in which government deficits are bond financed and the stock of bonds may affect both expected income and liquidity. If either of these effects exists, then comparative statics analysis requires the government budget to be balanced. Temporary divergences from a balanced budget and changes in the maturity structure of the government debt may be analyzed in terms of changes in the stock of bonds. It is shown that traditional fiscal and monetary policies may have a perverse effect; that to ensure effective policy, deficit financing and open market operations should be avoided; and that only policies involving a balanced budget or the financing of deficits or surpluses through changes in the stock of money should be undertaken.     

The economics of oil,biofuel and food commodities

We study the effects on the food price of introducing biofuels as a substitute for fossil fuel in the energy market. Energy is supplied by a price-leading oil cartel and a competitive fringe of farmers producing biofuel. Biofuel production shares a finite land resource with food production. A positive relationship results between energy and food prices. We establish that the equilibrium price of food will be growing as long as the oil stock is being depleted, and beyond if demand is growing. An analysis of the effects of the productivity of land use in either the food or the biofuel sectors is carried out. It is shown that, with a highly inelastic demand for food, an increase in the productivity of land in agriculture will decrease the price of food in the short-run, only to increase it in the long-run as the stock of fossil fuel is depleted.     

The economics of oil,biofuel and food commodities

We study the effects on the food price of introducing biofuels as a substitute for fossil fuel in the energy market. Energy is supplied by a price-leading oil cartel and a competitive fringe of farmers producing biofuel. Biofuel production shares a finite land resource with food production. A positive relationship results between energy and food prices. We establish that the equilibrium price of food will be growing as long as the oil stock is being depleted, and beyond if demand is growing. An analysis of the effects of the productivity of land use in either the food or the biofuel sectors is carried out. It is shown that, with a highly inelastic demand for food, an increase in the productivity of land in agriculture will decrease the price of food in the short-run, only to increase it in the long-run as the stock of fossil fuel is depleted.     

Fishing Technology and Optimal Distribution of Harvest Rates

This paper examines the problem of the optimal management of a joint-ownership fishing exploitation, where agents use different fishing gears. We consider a model in which the fishing activity may affect resource growth, not only through the harvest function but also through the natural growth rate of the resource. This allows us to capture the fact that some fishing gears alter the natural growth rate of the resource. We find that when the natural growth of the resource is altered by the fishing technology, the optimal stock is not independent of how harvest quotas are distribute among the agents. As a result, a fishing policy that firstly determines the optimum stock and, secondly, decides how to distribute the harvest among the different agents, will not be efficient. We also analyze the joint determination of optimal stock and harvest quotas and show that positive harvest quotas will only be optimal when countries are characterized by certain asymmetries.     

Exhaustibility and Risk as Asset Class Dimensions: A Social Investor Approach to Capital-Resource Economies

This paper develops a framework in which asset class dimensions are extended to include both risk and exhaustibility for explaining the evolution of shadow prices of marginal units of exhaustible natural resources in capital-resource economies. It is shown that the pricing kernel function required for socially valuing marginal units of exhaustible resource, hereafter called the Exhaustion-Stochastic Discount Factor, combines a factor that discounts for risk and another factor that discounts for resource exhaustion over time. The social rate of return on the marginal unit of resource stock adds to the risk-premium an exhaustion premium that accounts for the resource depletion over time. In this setting, the principle of no-arbitrage holds by extending asset-class dimensions to include not only a risk dimension but also an exhaustibility dimension.     

Market dynamics, dynamic resource management and environmental policy in the context of (strong) sustainability

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between market dynamics, dynamic resource management and environmental policy. In contrast to static market entry games, this paper draws attention to the effects of market dynamics on resource dynamics et vice versa, because (1) we show that feedback processes are necessary for obtaining a better understanding of what drives the dynamics between the evolution of common-pool resources and the number of harvesters and more importantly, (2) this analysis provides an environment discussing sustainability in an appropriate inasmuch dynamic way. The paper makes the following points: based on a co-evolutionary model, which incorporates resource and market dynamics simultaneously, it is shown that an increasing number of harvesters does not necessarily imply a lower stock of the common-pool resource in the long run. Further it is shown that a tax-scheme establish an output-sharing solution for coping with the overuse of common-pool resources. This results is in contrast to the prevailing literature, which mainly discusses tax-schemes and out-sharing as substitutes rather than as complements for solving the commons-problem. This conclusion holds even if we additionally assume harvesting-cost-reducing technological progress. On the other side if policy interventions ceased, strong resource sustainability in the sense of resource conservation is not possible, given technological progress is a relevant issue.     

Global warming: Efficient policies in the case of multiple pollutants

This article investigates efficient policies against global warming in the case of multiple greenhouse gases. In a dynamic optimization model conditions for an efficient combination of abatement activities are derived. It is shown how this solution can be decentralised by a system of emission charges. Since the determination of the charge rates should be based on a long time horizon, the impact of sequential planning methods is explored. The parameters of the model are specified with respect to the main greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons) and a scenario for an efficient charge system is calculated. For the main emission sources the tax base and the likely range of tax rates is derived. The results illustrate that efficient policy measures against global warming will not only affect the use of fossil fuels but will also impose a considerable burden on modern agriculture specialising in livestock and in intensive farming techniques.     

Optimal Management of Soil Quality Stocks and Long-Term Consequences of Land Degradation for Smallholder Farmers in Malawi

While soil degradation has long-term consequences, static models which form the bulk of studies on this topic in Africa, do not account for the inter-temporal dimensions of optimal resource management. This paper used an inter-temporal optimisation framework, which considered soil in a time-dependent resource extraction perspective. We have demonstrated that soil degradation is causing an enormous reduction in productive value of smallholder land in Malawi. Current user cost of soil quality among smallholder farmers, which represents annual loss in productive value of land, was estimated to be US$21 per hectare. Based on this value and land area under smallholder agriculture in Malawi, economic costs of soil degradation among smallholder farmers were estimated to amount to 14% of the agricultural GDP for Malawi. Although smallholder farmers’ current practices are sub-optimal to Steady State solutions, they are above static solutions. This demonstrates that smallholder farmers have some private incentives to invest in the soil quality stock. Smallholder farmers internalise some of the dynamic costs of soil degradation under the current practices. However, a sensitivity analysis on a slightly higher discount rate indicates that SS solutions closely resemble the prevailing smallholder farming practices. This suggests that smallholder farmers may be overexploiting soil quality stock because they have a high time preference. That is, they value the current consumption more than their future consumption and wellbeing. High levels of poverty in Malawi and serious lack of viable alternatives to subsistence farming may be influencing such behaviour. Promoting more viable land use alternatives than subsistence farming and formuling policies that help transform smallholder agriculture into a profitable enterprise will not only increase the cost of degrading the soil, but also encourage farmers to invest in the soil quality stock.     

Systems valuing of natural capital and investment in extensive pastoral systems: Lessons from the Patagonian case

In Patagonian (Argentina) wool production systems, historical performance records, observed landscape changes, and long-term demographic modeling of sheep flocks, indicate that non-sustainable ecological and economic dynamics have developed during recent decades. In order to elucidate possible causes of these trends, a dynamic model of the wool production system including basic ecological and economic feedback mechanisms was applied to the analysis of alternative investment policies. The values of the various components (ewes, forage, soil) of natural capital (NC) involved in the production systems were estimated in this study through a systemic approach and their losses during wool production cycles were incorporated in their financial analysis. Our results indicate that external investment in increasing the ewe stocks (a common practice in these systems) is not sustainable in time unless a simultaneous external investment in forage NC is performed. More specifically, external investment to increase in 20% the ewe stocks would be expected to generate positive net cash flows during 6-8 years, if due account is taken from the losses of NC produced. Successive investments of the same sort would generate increasingly shorter periods of positive cash flows or even negative results after 15-25 years. Re-investment of a fraction of the net revenues obtained through wool sales in the reposition of forage resources also proves to be a non-sustainable policy. External investment on forage resources at about a 10:1 ratio with respect to investments in the ewe stock would produce positive net cash flows sustainable in time. It is concluded that sustainable investment policies in extensive range systems of Patagonia should consider the ecological-economic relations and feedbacks existing between forage consumption by ewes and ewe natality/soil erosion controls exerted by forage and market behavior. The structure of analysis of investment policies on extensive pastoral systems of the Patagonian Monte here proposed seems valuable to be extended to other regions with similar ecological-economic characteristics.     

Exhaustible resources,technology choice and industrialization of developing countries

How should the world economy adapt to the increased demand for exhaustible resources from countries like China and India? To address that issue, this paper presents a dynamic model of the world economy with two technologies for production; a resource technology, which uses an exhaustible resource as an input and an alternative technology, which does not. I find that both the time path of resource extraction and the adoption of the alternative technology depend on the optimal allocation of capital across the technologies, and on the size of the capital stock in relation to the resource stock. In particular, if the capital stock is low, only the resource technology is used initially and the alternative technology is adopted with a delay. Next, I use the model to analyze the effects of industrialization of developing countries on the extraction of oil and technology choice for energy production. As a result of industrialization, the alternative technology for energy production is adopted earlier.     

ENDOGENOUS ECONOMIC POLICY AND THE STRUCTURE OF PRODUCTION: THEORY AND EVIDENCE

This paper develops and tests a model that predicts a positive relationship between absolute levels of capital stock and how favourable are policies toward capital. The theoretical model we use is a model of campaign contributions and electoral competition, extended to consider the implications for factor mobility and hence the structure of production. There are two main predictions. First, countries with more capital stock tend to implement more pro‐capital policies. Second, in a two‐country model, the country that initially has more capital will be able to attract capital inflows from the other country. Given additional assumptions on the production side, this yields the prediction that the more different are countries' policies, the more different will be the set of goods that they produce. These predictions of the model are confirmed using panel data on cross‐state differences in policies and economic outcomes in India.     

(Monopolistic) resource extraction and limit pricing: The market penetration of competitively produced synfuels

This paper analyzes the market penetration of a competitively produced synfuel, e.g., solar energy, in a market that is initially dominated by a resource extracting monopoly. The availability of the renewable substitute depends not only on the price/cost ratio but also on the installed capacities, which reflect historical investments. As a consequence, the resource monopoly faces a discontinuous residual demand schedule. The dynamic interactions between the resource cartel and the synfuel industry are modelled as a differential game; the (open loop) Nash equilibrium is applied to this game. It will be shown that the commodity price will exceed the production costs of the backstop and that the transition from the periods of resource dependence to the backstop technology will be gradual.     

产业政策如何影响企业绩效：不同政策与作用路径是否存在影响差异?

文章将产业政策分成供给型、需求型与环境型,依托中国战略性新兴产业分析了不同政策通过政策资源的直接配置以及企业间配置两种作用路径对企业(产业)绩效的影响。研究发现：与供给型政策相结合的补贴行为通过以上两个路径抑制了企业绩效提升;产业政策对不同大小企业的影响存在差异,供给型政策资源的配置在小企业间并未呈现显著的集中特征,但在大企业间政策资源更为集中;供给型政策主要通过政策资源在企业间的配置路径降低大企业绩效,而通过补贴直接配置路径抑制小企业绩效提升;整体看环境型政策对投资、补贴等行为没有显著影响,但对大企业而言,其对政策资源在企业间的分散配置具有负向作用,而这一影响在小企业中则为促进作用。研究还发现,需求型政策有利于资源再配置,供给型政策则尚未显示出积极的资源再配置作用。