Optimal fiscal policy under monopolistic competition with firm heterogeneity

Government spending is a policy instrument used to sustain economic development and improve social welfare. Empirical observations, however, reveal a significant decrease in the government spending to GDP ratio for the United States. In addition, the United States has been observed to exhibit a rise in firm heterogeneity in productivity in recent decades. This paper shows that the optimal size of government expenditure will decrease as firm heterogeneity increases. We thus indicate that the rise in firm heterogeneity in productivity may serve as a plausible vehicle to explain the decline in the share of government spending in GDP for the United States.     

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.     

内生经济增长理论框架下的市场失效与财政政策

内生经济增长理论认为,知识和人力资本的外部效应与创新带来的垄断势力推动经济增长的同时,也会带来非帕雷托最优的经济增长收入分配的不公平,将阻碍经济增长;加快知识和人力资本积累、促进技术进步以及缓解收入分配不公平的财政政策能纠正市场失效,使长期经济增长达到社会最优.     

Does Environmental Policy Necessarily Discourage Growth?

This paper analyzes the long-run impact of an environmental policy on economic growth. A growth model with vertical innovation is modified by including intermediate goods as a source of pollution. Taxation on pollution reduces profits of intermediate firms as well as final outputs. However, it increases their mark-ups and alleviates profit losses. In this setting, profit losses are offset by the general equilibrium effect; thus, the tax enhances R&Ds which drive economic growth while it reduces pollution. If the government provides an R&D subsidy, the growth rate will be accelerated.     

税收、财政支出与内生经济增长

构建了基于财政支出、税收的内生经济增长模型,并推导出在给定税收、财政支出政策的变化路径时,经济会达到"竞争性分散均衡",税率与经济增长存在"倒-U"型关系,政府投资性支出与经济增长之间正相关。利用中国省际面板数据进行实证检验显示,在我国经济运行中,总产出、消费、投资、政府投资性支出、税率、利息率、工资水平之间存在长期均衡关系。我国宏观税率为28.63%时达到最优值,政府投资性支出对经济增长率存在正向影响,但不同区域间存在较大差异性。     

Fiscal Policy and Long-run Growth in R&D-based Models with Endogenous Market Structure

This paper shows that in a model of endogenous growth that does not exhibit the scale effect, taxes on consumption and labor income and the level and composition of public expenditure have no effect on steady-state growth. The only fiscal instruments that affect steady-state growth are taxes on asset and corporate income. In line with standard intuition, tax rates and public expenditure have level effects on income per capita. These results emphasize that although growth is endogenous, in the sense that it is determined by the model and it is subject to policy action, instruments that work by changing market size do not affect it. Effective growth-enhancing policies operate through the interest rate.     

Oil shocks and fiscal policy procyclicality in Angola: Assessing the role of asymmetries and institutions

The aim of this article is to examine procyclicality in Angola, assess whether it behaves asymmetrically over the oil cycle, and test the hypothesis that institutions and fiscal rules can moderate procyclicality. Received wisdom suggests that in resource‐rich economies, fiscal policy tends to be procyclical albeit improvements in the past decades due to institutional reforms. Similar evidence is available for oil‐rich economies; however, we know little about how procyclicality behaves over the oil cycle; that is, whether spending (and revenue) grows faster during oil‐market booms, than during downturns. Further, evidence on institutions and fiscal rules in oil‐exporting economies is still ambiguous. We bridge both gaps by examining fiscal policy procyclicality in Angola, one of the largest oil‐producers in Africa, and a country that has experienced an intense process of institutional reforms since 2002. Therefore, it is an ideal candidate for our study. We use data for the 2004–2014 period to estimate a threshold vector error correction model that extends vector autoregressive and vector correction methods used up to date. Our results indicate that revenue and spending are generally procyclical to oil shocks, that revenue is more procyclical during booms, and that institutional quality, net inflows, financial openness, and fiscal rules affect procyclicality.     

Regime changes and fiscal sustainability in Kenya

Kenya's fiscal policy landscape is characterized by primary deficit spending forcing the government to rely on debt to meet its objectives. The justification often being that as a developing economy, annual growth rates and future prospects may in the short run justify the uptake of debt to finance infrastructural development. However, given potential fiscal limits, fiscal cycles usually alternates between sustainable and unsustainable regimes and this has a bearing on long run sustainability. This study therefore sought to investigate the nature of fiscal policy regime in Kenya and the extent to which fiscal policy is sustainable in the long run taking into account periodic regime shifts. Markov switching models were used to endogenously determine fiscal policy regimes. Regime switching tests were used to test whether No-Ponzi game condition and debt stabilizing condition were met. The results established that regime switching model was suitable in explaining regime sustainable and unsustainable cycles. An investigation of fiscal policy regimes established that both sustainable and unsustainable regimes were dominant, and each lasted for an average of four years. There was evidence to imply the existence of procyclical fiscal policy in Kenya. Regime switching tests for long run sustainability suggested that the No-Ponzi game condition weakly holds in the Kenyan economy. Regime-based sensitivity analysis indicated that persistence of unsustainability regime for more than 4 years could threaten long-run fiscal sustainability.     

Growth,Employment and Taxation with Distortions in the Goods and Labour Market

Abstract. This paper analyses taxation in the presence of distortions in goods and labour markets in an endogenous growth model. The government disposes of capital, labour and consumption taxes. It is shown that the market solution leads to suboptimally low levels of growth and employment. However, available tax instruments are sufficient to attain the first‐best growth path in this economy. The paper further explores the relative distortion of capital and labour taxes. For plausible parametrisations of the model, lowering capital taxes dominate reductions in labour taxes in welfare terms.     

Monetary–fiscal policy interactions and fiscal stimulus

Increases in government spending trigger substitution effects—both inter- and intra-temporal—and a wealth effect. The ultimate impacts on the economy hinge on current and expected monetary and fiscal policy behavior. Studies that impose active monetary policy and passive fiscal policy typically find that government consumption crowds out private consumption: higher future taxes create a strong negative wealth effect, while the active monetary response increases the real interest rate. This paper estimates Markov-switching policy rules for the United States and finds that monetary and fiscal policies fluctuate between active and passive behavior. When the estimated joint policy process is imposed on a conventional new Keynesian model, government spending generates positive consumption multipliers in some policy regimes and in simulated data in which all policy regimes are realized. The paper reports the model's predictions of the macroeconomic impacts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's implied path for government spending under alternative monetary–fiscal policy combinations.     

The effect of firm size and firm activities on CSR practices of selected Chinese-Filipino-owned MSMEs in Metro Manila

Socially-responsible business and ethical behavior of companies have been of interest to academia and practice for decades, but the focus has almost exclusively been on large corporations, while small and medium-sized enterprises （SMEs） have not received as much attention （Hammann, et al., 2009）. Worthington, et al （2006） recognized the need to encourage socially-responsible business practices among the 90 per cent or more of the world＇s businesses that are classified as SMEs. Perrini, et al （2007） found that size explains the differences in firms＇ willingness to define and implement such specific corporate social responsibility （CSR） strategies, while Murillo and Lozano （2006） concluded that it still remains to be explored whether manufacturing companies tend to apply CSR more extensively, or whether businesses oriented to other business have a tendency to incorporate CSR into their management patterns to a higher degree. Moreover, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in her 7 June, 2002 speech, recognized the importance of Chinese-Filipinos in helping improve the Philippine economy, and yet, not much research had been done on this sub-sector. Thus, this paper focuses on the effect of finn size and finn activities on the social responsibility practices of selected 30 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises （MSMEs） in Metro Manila which are owned by Chinese-Filipinos. Survey questionnaires and interview were used for gathering data, while a correlations test was used to analyze the data and to conclude whether finn size and finn activities have an effect on the sampled companies＇ CSR practices.     

基于新疆经济增长的财政支出最优规模估算

财政支出规模反映了政府对经济的干预程度,然而财政在支出过程中有个量的把握,即占GDP的比重存在一个最优值。在最优值以内,财政部门为私人企业提供公共产品以及弥补外部性等,提高财政支出能够提高经济增长率,当财政支出超过这个最优值时,税收的扭曲作用会不断加强,增加财政支出对经济增长起阻碍作用。将财政支出纳入生产函数模型中,通过实证分析,估算出新疆的最优财政支出规模。     

Structural shifts in aid dependency and fiscal policy in developing countries

Foreign aid is a sizable source of government financing for several developing countries and its allocation matters for the conduct of fiscal policy. This article revisits the fiscal effects of shifts in aid dependency in 59 developing countries from 1960 to 2010. It identifies structural shifts in aid dependency and uses treatment effect methods to assess the fiscal effects of aid. It finds that shifts in aid dependency are frequent and have significant fiscal effects in developing countries. In addition to the traditional evidences of tax and investment displacement and ‘aid illusion,’ we show that upward shifts and downward shifts in aid dependency have asymmetric effects on fiscal accounts in developing countries. Large aid inflows undermine tax capacity and public investment while large reductions in aid inflows tend to keep recipients’ fiscal behaviour intact. Moreover, the tax displacement effect tends to be temporary while the impacts on expenditure items tend to last. Finally, we find that the undesirable fiscal effects of aid are more pronounced in countries with low governance score and low absorptive capacity.     

The effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy responses to twin crises

We study how effective fiscal and monetary policy responses are during a twin crisis. Using the dataset provided by Laeven and Valencia (2008 Laeven, L and Valencia, F. (2008) Systemic banking crises: a new database. IMF Working Paper No. 08/224 [Google Scholar]), we identify 57 episodes of twin crises. Following the methods proposed in Baldacci et al. (2009 Baldacci, E. 2009. Gupta, S. and Mulas-Granados, C., How effective is fiscal policy response in systemic banking crises?, IMF Working Paper No. 09/160 [Google Scholar]) and Hutchison et al. (2010 Hutchison, M. 2010. Noy, I. and Wang, L., Fiscal and monetary policies and the cost of sudden stops, Journal of International Money and Finance, 29, 973–87 [Google Scholar]), we construct the variables measuring the duration and output cost of a twin crisis. We find that fiscal policy does not seem to be associated with the shortening of a twin crisis. Regarding monetary policy, we find that monetary tightening is associated with the lengthening of a twin crisis duration, consistent with the result in Hutchison et al. (2010 Hutchison, M. 2010. Noy, I. and Wang, L., Fiscal and monetary policies and the cost of sudden stops, Journal of International Money and Finance, 29, 973–87 [Google Scholar]) dealing with a sudden stop crisis. In addition, our results show that while a mild monetary expansion is effective in reducing a twin crisis duration, over-expansionary monetary policy loses its effectiveness.     

Global capital markets,housing prices,and partisan fiscal policies

In recent years, global imbalances have channeled the excess savings of surplus countries toward the real estate markets of deficit countries. By consequence, the deficit countries that attracted lots of foreign capital experienced large run‐ups in house prices, whereas most surplus countries that exported capital exhibited flat or slow house price growth. We first use new house price data and a novel instrumental variable design to show the causal relationship between housing prices and capital inflows, particularly through debt bonanzas. We then argue that international capital flows affect the fiscal policy preferences of both voters and political parties by way of their impact on housing prices. Where capital inflows are large and housing prices are rising, we expect voters to respond by demanding both lower taxes and less publicly‐provided social insurance because rising house prices allow homeowners to self‐insure against income loss. In contrast, declining house prices produce greater demands for social insurance, particularly among those most exposed to housing market risk. We present evidence from two cross‐national surveys that supports these claims, as well as a “before and after” analysis of the housing crash in Eastern Europe. We also show that the connection between house prices and social policy also manifests itself in government spending outcomes, mediated by partisan control.     

Debt, Growth and Budgetary Regimes

Within the Barro (1990) model of productive public services, but with the inclusion of public debt, we derive and characterize on the balanced growth path, a set of welfare‐maximizing fiscal rules under two budgetary regimes – one with only the standard dynamic government budget constraint, and the other involving the golden rule of public finance. We demonstrate analytically that the optimal fiscal policy differs in the two budgetary regimes considered. We also analyse two cases within the second regime: one, where the ratio of current spending to tax revenues is parametrically given, and another, where this ratio is optimally chosen by the government.     

Entry,growth, and survival: The new learning on firm selection and industry evolution

This paper tries to shed some light on the seeming paradox posed by the findings in the industrial organization literature that (1) the bulk of firms in an industry are not only very small, but also sufficiently small so that they are operating at a sub-optimal scale of output, and (2) entrepreneurs are apparently not deterred from starting new firms even in industries where scale economies play an important role. A dynamic view of the process of firm selection and industry evolution is that new firms typically start at a very smal scale of output. Because this level of output may be sub-optimal, the firm must grow in order to survive. The empirical evidence supports such a dynamic view of the evolutionary nature of industries. Viewed through a dynamic lens, the often-observed asymmetric size distribution of firms becomes more understandable. The persistence of an asymmetric firm-size distribution skewed towards small enterprises presumably reflects a continuing process of entry into industries and not necessarily the survival of such small and suboptimal enterprises over a long period of time.     

Financial cycles and fiscal multipliers

We show that fiscal multiplier estimations may be biased by movements in asset and credit markets, as they facilitate spurious correlations of changes in cyclically adjusted revenues and spending with output growth via an identification bias and an omitted variable bias, thus overstating episodes of expansionary consolidations and downplaying contractionary consolidations. When controlling for asset and credit market movements in otherwise standard approaches to identification, we find multipliers to increase on average by 0.3–1 units. Fiscal consolidations are thus more likely to be contractionary and more harmful to growth than expected by some strands of the existing literature.     

Market power and fiscal policy in OECD countries

We compute average markups as a measure of market power throughout time and study their interaction with fiscal policy and macroeconomic variables in a VAR framework. From impulse-response functions, the results, with annual data for a set of 14 OECD countries, show that the markup (i) depicts a pro-cyclical behaviour with productivity shocks and (ii) a counter-cyclical behaviour with fiscal spending shocks. We also use a PVAR, increasing the efficiency in the estimations, which confirms the country-specific results.     

Financial markets and firm size: The role of employment protection laws and barriers to entrepreneurship

This article provides evidence on the institutional determinants of firm size for the period 1980–1998. Using a comprehensive longitudinal database across 29 industrial sectors in 15 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, we study how labour regulations and barriers to entrepreneurship (BE) affect industrial organization in the presence of capital market frictions. We show that strict employment protection laws (EPL) and high BE negatively affect firm size in sectors that are more dependent on external funds. Our findings demonstrate that the interaction between market regulations and financial market imperfections help to explain some of the differences in firm structure across countries.