POLITICALLY CONTESTABLE RENTS AND TRANSFERS*

A rent or transfer is politically contestable when policy decisions are subject to influence by potential beneficiaries and losers. This paper studies contestablility of rents and transfers when contenders place different valuations on the politically allocated prize. Asymmetric valuation inhibits participation by low-valuation contenders. The model explains the phenomena of small numbers of active participants in contests to exercise political influence and low lobbying and other influence-seeking outlays relative to the value of politically allocated prizes.     

CAPITAL ADEQUACY REQUIREMENTS AND THE FINANCIAL ACCELERATOR CAUSED BY BANK CAPITAL

This paper develops a computable dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous banks, a portion of which may be constrained by capital adequacy requirements and the remainder of which may not, in order to examine what effects the capital requirements and bank capital induce in the macroeconomy. Applying the parameterized expectations algorithm, the model economy shows that binding bank capital constraints induce the financial accelerator, the hump‐shaped dynamic behaviour of output, and ineffectuality of monetary policy, and that all the results are derived from the individual banks’ cross‐sectional asymmetric responses that are consistent with the empirical evidence.     

再生资源产业发展的国际经验与启示

通过对一些发达国家和地区再生资源产业发展的现状进行分析可以得出,再生资源产业的发展不仅需要一个良好的外部环境,包括完善的法律法规、有效的经济政策和科学的管理体制等,而且必须建立完备的再生资源产业体系。这给我国的启示是:我国不仅要建立和完善再生资源产业法律法规保障体系,制定再生资源产业的政策激励措施,改革和完善我国再生资源管理体制,而且要用产业化的思维,加强再生资源产业体系建设,做强做大再生资源产业。     

A TALE OF TWO REVOLUTIONS: INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL FLOWS 1789–1819 *

One of the phenomena that accompanied the advance of the French Revolution and its armies throughout the European Continent in the 1790s was the flight of capital. Merchants and guild artisans, as well as aristocrats, had to turn to merchant bankers and use the existing international capital markets to remove the liquid part of their property beyond the reach of Revolutionary arms. There is good reason to believe that they were successful to a much greater degree than previously suspected, largely because the international capital markets of the time were larger and better organized than previously thought. Moreover, these capital movements from the Continent to Britain explain succinctly why the British Industrial Revolution took place during this period despite the large pressures of war expenditures and British government subsidies to Continental allies taking place at the same time. The repatriation of capital to the Continent from England after peace also helps explain the depression of British industry and incomes from 1815 through the financial crisis of 1825, although the role of British speculators was important too.     

WAGES,PROFITS AND CAPITAL FLIGHT*

We model capital flight as the outcome of a non-cooperative differential game between workers (who control the wage share) and capitalists (who control investment at home and abroad). There are three equilibria for such a game. Along the interior equilibrium, the domestic economy becomes “decapitalized” as investors build up their holdings of foreign assets, in a situation reminiscent of the experience of several developing countries.     

HUMAN CAPITAL AND CONVERGENCE: A PRODUCTION‐FRONTIER APPROACH*

Using nonparametric, production‐frontier methods, we decompose labor productivity growth into components attributable to technological change (shifts in the world production frontier), technological catch‐up (movements toward or away from the frontier), and physical and human capital accumulation (movements along the frontier). We find that (1) technological change is decidedly nonneutral, (2) productivity growth is driven primarily by physical and human capital accumulation, (3) the increased international dispersion of productivity is explained primarily by physical capital accumulation, and (4) international polarization (the shift from a unimodal to a bimodal distribution) is brought about primarily by efficiency changes (technological catch‐up).     

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY WITH TWO REGIONS: CAPITAL ACCUMULATION AND ECONOMIC STRUCTURE*

This paper proposes a compact two-region economic model with endogenous capital accumulation. The system produces one industrial commodity and service. Each region consists of one industrial sector and one service sector. The model describes the interaction between capital accumulation, the regional distribution of capital and labour, the division of labour, the capital distribution within each region, land rents, regional service prices and commodity prices over time and space. Accepting some simplifying assumptions, we show a way to integrate economic geography. equilibrium theory and neo-classical growth theory. We analyse how differences in regional resources such as land and amenities and the preference structure of the population may affect the equilibrium structure of economic geography.     

INTERNATIONAL TRADE BARGAINING AND THE MOST-FAVORED-NATION CLAUSE*

This paper advances a model of multilateral trade negotiations to analyze the effects of the most-favored-nation clause (MFN) on international trade agreements. Negotiations are modeled in a three player, non-cooperative, dynamic bargaining framework that admits the possibility of both bilateral and multilateral agreements. The central result is that bargaining in the presence of MFN results in Pareto efficient, mutually advantageous, multilateral trade agreements. The free-rider problem commonly attributed to the presence of MFN does not arise, and, under a condition of symmetry, each country receives equal gains (or reciprocity) from the agreement. In the absence of MFN, many of these properties may not hold. Examples are given in which at most two of the three countries benefit from agreement. These results suggest that many of the criticisms levied against the MFN clause are misplaced; moreover, attempts to replace unconditional MFN with conditional MFN may sacrifice many of the long-held values of the GATT.     

INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND COURNOT EQUILIBRIUM: EXISTENCE,UNIQUENESS AND COMPARATIVE STATICS *

This paper proves the existence and uniqueness of Cournot equilibrium in models of international trade under oligopoly. The existence of Cournot equilibrium is established without the usual assumption that profit functions are concave. Instead the proof uses a weaker‘aggregate concavity’condition. A simple proof is used to establish the uniqueness of the equilibrium. And, the paper considers the implications of the assumptions, used to prove the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium, on the comparative static results.     

HUMAN CAPITAL ACCUMULATION,HOME PRODUCTION AND EQUILIBRIUM DYNAMICS*

In this paper, we construct a three‐sector endogenous growth model in which long‐run growth is propelled by human capital accumulation. We show that although the addition of a home sector to the standard two‐sector endogenous growth model preserves the well‐behaved balanced growth equilibrium properties, it generates new transitional dynamics around the balanced growth path. It is shown that, when there is a positive shock to physical capital, our model is more likely to exhibit paradoxical growth than are standard multisector endogenous growth models that exclude home production. Our analysis adds new results to those from the related literature on leisure.     

INTERNATIONAL AND INTRA‐NATIONAL TRADE: A CONTINUUM APPROACH*

We build up a Ricardian trade model with multiple regions within a nation and examine how international trade determines interregional patterns of production and specialization. We show that the degree of interregional concentration of economic activities moves in different directions in two trading nations. The role of “absolute advantage” becomes crucial in dictating the course of income disparity across regions. We discuss cases with varying degrees of labour mobility and reconfirm the result on post‐trade interregional concentration and dispersion. Later we explore the impact of “scale factor” in this model and show how principle of comparative advantage and economies of scale interact to determine the pattern of specialization and volume of trade.     

TYPES OF PUBLIC CAPITAL AND THEIR PRODUCTIVITY IN JAPANESE PREFECTURES*

Several researchers have studied the productivity of public capital in Japan but most have not paid attention to the types of public infrastructure or differences in production technology between prefectures. We estimate prefectural production functions with differently aggregated public capital. Through the model selection process, we examine the types of productive public capital. The empirical results show the production technologies used and how types of productive public capital differ between prefectures.