On Transferable Machines

To avoid the intricacies of pure joint production, it is usually assumed that machines cannot be transferred across industries. Salvadori, however, identified a case in which productive systems with transferable machines have the same properties as those with non‐transferable machines. We reinterpret Salvadori's condition and proceed to a comparative analysis of the two types of models, which explains why some properties still hold while others are lost.     

External Linkages and Economic Growth in Colombia: Insights from a Bayesian VAR Model

This paper investigates the sensitivity of Colombian GDP growth to the surrounding macroeconomic environment. We estimate a Bayesian VAR model with informative steady‐state priors for the Colombian economy using quarterly data from 1995 to 2007. A variance decomposition shows that world GDP growth and government spending are the most important factors, explaining roughly 17 and 16 per cent of the variance in Colombian GDP growth respectively. The model, which is shown to forecast well out‐of‐sample, can also be used to analyse alternative scenarios. Generating both endogenous and conditional forecasts, we show that the impact on Colombian GDP growth of a substantial downturn in world GDP growth would be non‐negligible but that the decline still would be mild by historical standards.     

A simple generalization of the singular rent model

Salvadori discovered a new variety of rent, called singular rent, when requirements are functions of income distribution. This note makes a simple generalization of the singular rent model by introducing many agricultural processes. Hence the problem of choice of technique arises. With respect to singular rent alone, it is shown that there may exist more than one cost‐minimizing technique even though joint production is set aside, and there may be no cost‐minimizing technique even though all techniques are feasible. However, in the latter case, at least one system determining intensive rent is feasible and cost‐minimizing.     

经销商"倒戈"行为的博弈分析

根据影响企业关系的各种因素,建立了经销商"倒戈"的基本模型,并以之为基础对经销商的"倒戈"行为进行了博弈分析。结果表明经销商的"倒戈"行为是否发生不仅与经销商自身因素有关,还与生产商的自身实力、合作机制、市场状况及对经销商的约束力度等外在因素有关。经销"倒戈"会给企业带来一系列负面影响,为此,如何保持住经销商并建立长期稳定的交易关系对生产企业具有重要的意义。     

DEMAND POLICIES FOR LONG‐RUN GROWTH: BEING KEYNESIAN BOTH IN THE SHORT AND IN THE LONG RUN?

The idea of demand‐led growth is defended by neo‐Kaleckians and neo‐Keynesians using very specific assumptions. In their models the paradox of costs is always valid in the long run. The central message of this paper is that these specific and strong assumptions are not needed to defend the Kaleckian perspective of a demand‐driven long‐run growth. What is needed is simply a less demanding theory of flexible mark‐ups in an open economy. The formal model developed in this paper shows that long‐run growth may be demand driven even when the paradox of costs does not hold in the long run.     

External Asymmetries in the Euro Area and the Role of Foreign Direct Investment

Soon after the introduction of the common currency, a divide emerged between two groups in the Euro area: one comprised of the North European countries achieving external surpluses and the other of the South European countries with large external deficits. This paper shows that different patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows across the Euro area countries contributed to this divergence. Our theoretical framework shows that if the economy is relatively capital‐intensive in the production of traded (non‐traded) output, FDI will be channelled in greater proportions to the traded (non‐traded) sector, thus improving (deteriorating) the trade balance. Focusing on ten Euro area countries over the period 1980 to 2009, we establish a positive (negative) long‐run effect of FDI inflows on the trade balance in the North (South). In the North, the positive effect stems from the traded sector FDI inflows that were significantly higher in comparison with the South, both before and after the EMU. In contrast, in the South, the increased FDI inflows in the post‐EMU era were dominated by investments in the non‐traded sector. When industry‐level data are employed, a positive (negative) long‐run effect of manufacturing (non‐manufacturing) FDI inflows on the trade balance in the North (South) is further established.     

Uncovering Unobserved Economy: A General Equilibrium Characterization

This paper builds a three‐sector DSGE (Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium) model, considering explicitly the interactions among regular, underground and criminal sectors. We generated quarterly data for unobserved variables for Italian economy over the sample 1974:01–2011:02, through Monte Carlo simulations, and we found that underground economy is about 20 per cent of GDP, whereas criminal economy is 11 per cent. The dynamic behavior of the model shows that (1) regular production has a greater relative volatility with respect to unobserved production, (2) an efficient law enforcement activity is able to weaken unobserved activities and (3) unobserved sectors' variables exhibit a negative correlation with the corresponding ones of regular economy.     

Balance‐of‐payments‐constrained cyclical growth with distributive class conflicts and productivity dynamics

This study builds a dynamic balance‐of‐payments‐constrained model that incorporates the endogenous determination of the economic growth rate, conflictive wage/price distribution and employment rate. The wages, commodity prices and employment rate are determined by the profit squeeze effect and labour‐saving technical change. The relative strength of these two effects generates different outcomes for the transitional dynamics and comparative statics analysis. Particularly, the model shows stability, instability and cyclical nature, the latter of which concurs with the evidence reported by previous empirical studies.     

Transparency and Regional Integration in the Asia Pacific

We show in this paper that increasing the transparency of the trading environment can be an important complement to traditional liberalisation of tariff and non‐tariff barriers. Our definition of transparency is grounded in a transaction cost analysis. We focus on two dimensions of transparency: predictability (reducing the cost of uncertainty) and simplification (reducing information costs). Using the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies as a case study, we construct indices of importer and exporter transparency for the region from a wide range of sources. Our results from a gravity model suggest that improving trade‐related transparency in APEC could hold significant benefits by raising intra‐APEC trade by approximately US$148 billion or 7.5 per cent of baseline trade in the region. Action to improve transparency measures examined could be undertaken in many forms, including within the current APEC framework or future talks on a Free Trade Area in the Asia Pacific.     

Productivity Versus Employment: Quantifying the Economic Effects of an EU–Japan Free Trade Agreement

The European Union and Japan recently entered into negotiations over a bilateral free trade agreement intended to stimulate growth and create wealth. Since customs duties are already low, the success of the liberalisation process hinges on the elimination of non‐tariff barriers. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on two possible liberalisation scenarios: a less ambitious liberalisation and a comprehensive liberalisation. In contrast to classic studies, our paper builds on the modern trade literature, accounting for the dominance of intra‐industry trade in both economies and the existence of heterogeneous firms. Furthermore, we model a search‐and‐matching labour market, allowing us to quantify employment effects of trade liberalisation. We find that a comprehensive liberalisation increases Japanese GDP by 0.86 per cent, whereas the EU experiences only an additional 0.21 per cent of real GDP growth. Most of the growth in real GDP is due to firms' efficiency gains, whereas unemployment is reduced by only a small amount. Other world regions experience small reductions of GDP due to trade diversion effects.     

The common sources of business cycles in Trans‐Pacific countries and the US? A comparison with NAFTA

This paper uses both a non‐structural and a structural approach to investigate the drivers of the business cycles in the US and 15 Trans‐Pacific (TP) countries. Our non‐structural analysis, based on a principal component methodology, reveals the shares of variation in macroeconomic variables that are due to factors common to both the US and the TP region, and factors that are region‐specific. We obtain similar measures by using a structural model (an estimated two‐country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model) that allows for common and correlated shocks across the two regions. The clear and common finding from our analyses is that common shocks explain a substantial amount of macroeconomic variation. Comparison with the NAFTA region, along this dimension, reveals that the US economy is more similar to the TP region (a wider region that also includes Mexico and Canada) than its two neighbours.     

A FIRST‐ORDER BSPDE FOR SWING OPTION PRICING: CLASSICAL SOLUTIONS

In a companion paper, we studied a control problem related to swing option pricing in a general non‐Markovian setting. The main result there shows that the value process of this control problem can uniquely be characterized in terms of a first‐order backward stochastic partial differential equation (BSPDE) and a pathwise differential inclusion. In this paper, we additionally assume that the cash flow process of the swing option is left‐continuous in expectation. Under this assumption, we show that the value process is continuously differentiable in the space variable that represents the volume in which the holder of the option can still exercise until maturity. This gives rise to an existence and uniqueness result for the corresponding BSPDE in a classical sense. We also explicitly represent the space derivative of the value process in terms of a nonstandard optimal stopping problem over a subset of predictable stopping times. This representation can be applied to derive a dual minimization problem in terms of martingales.     

Durable Goods and Switching Costs

A simple two–period switching cost model is developed and analyzed assuming durable output. The analysis indicates that many of the conventional managerial implications of the switching cost literature need not hold if products are durable. In particular, the model indicates that managers of durable goods firms that lease or rent output may wish to decrease their customer base (provide service to only a subset of the experienced customers) in future periods, in contrast to the non–durable goods case where the number of customers served is the same. Moreover, the model shows that the optimal behavior of sellers of durable products depends critically upon their commitment ability with buyers, and outlines the conditions under which a manager selling output may rationally expand their customer base (i.e. sell to new customers in a future period).     

THE PUBLIC SECTOR IN A MODEL OF GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION À LA PASINETTI: EXISTENCE OF ONE‐ OR TWO‐CLASS ECONOMIES

This paper explores the implications of different regimes of taxation and fiscal policies on the existence of a one‐ or two‐class economy in the Kaldor–Pasinetti approach of growth and income distribution. A simple model and its diagrammatical representation provide a complete taxonomy of the possible steady state equilibria and synthesize some early and recent contributions. It shows that the distribution among factors and the personal distribution among socio‐economic classes depend on the fiscal policy of the government, the behavioural parameters of actors and technology; but, provided that some conditions are fulfilled, the Cambridge Theorem and its distributional implications hold.     

A NON‐SUBSTITUTION THEOREM WITH NON‐CONSTANT RETURNS TO SCALE AND EXTERNALITIES

An input–output model with non‐constant returns to scale and externalities is presented, and it is shown that in this model the non‐substitution theorem is still valid. More precisely, the quantity side of the theorem, i.e. the proposition on efficiency, remains valid, while there can be no equilibrium prices independent of final demand.     

A Structuralist Inflation Curve

This paper presents a structuralist model of inflation and applies it to the US economy. The model uses a mark‐up rule to specify inflation as a function of income distribution and capacity utilization, as usual in structuralist macroeconomics, but it also includes inflation expectations, the government's inflation target and cost pressures from non‐labor inputs as explaining variables. The model shows how inflation and income distribution, measured by the wage share of income, are connected through an inflation curve in the long run.     

A SIMPLIFIED, ‘BENCHMARK’, STOCK‐FLOW CONSISTENT POST‐KEYNESIAN GROWTH MODEL

Despite being arguably one of the most active areas of research in heterodox macroeconomics, the study of the dynamic properties of stock‐flow consistent (SFC) growth models of financially sophisticated economies is still in its first steps. This paper attempts to offer a contribution to this line of research by presenting a simplified SFC Post‐Keynesian growth model with well‐defined dynamic properties and using it to shed light on the merits and limitations of the current heterodox SFC literature.     

Long‐period Positions in Multi‐sectoral Cobb–Douglas Economies

The present paper considers a constant returns to scale non‐joint production economy with one primary factor (labour). It follows from the non‐substitution theorem that macroeconomic variables are completely determined by the wage–profit distribution in a long‐period position. We investigate the special case in which production in each sector as well as consumption are characterized by means of Cobb–Douglas functions. Despite the non‐linearity, this parametrization allows us to compute sectoral and macroeconomic variables in simple and intuitive equations. As noted in earlier literature, many variables behave differently than would be expected on basis of a one‐sectoral Solow growth model.