Insurance demand and country risks: A nonlinear panel data analysis

This paper investigates the impact of country risks, including political, financial, and economic risks, on the income elasticity of insurance demand. Using the panel smooth transition regression model, we find that there is a significant regime-switching effect concerning the impact of country risks on the income elasticity of insurance demand. A full-sample analysis shows that the income elasticity of insurance demand decreases when country risks diminish. In a subsample analysis based on income level, legal origin, and restriction on banks' participation in insurance activities, we find that the elasticity diminishes in general when economic risk drops. When political risk is lower, the elasticity decreases in countries with high-income, common law origin, and insurance activities permitted by banks, whereas a clear pattern cannot be identified in the case of financial risk.     

The global rise of corporate saving

The sectoral composition of global saving changed dramatically during the last three decades. Whereas in the early 1980s most of global investment was funded by household saving, nowadays nearly two-thirds of global investment is funded by corporate saving. This shift in the sectoral composition of saving was not accompanied by changes in the sectoral composition of investment, implying an improvement in the corporate net lending position. We characterize the behavior of corporate saving using both national income accounts and firm-level data and clarify its relationship with the global decline in labor share, the accumulation of corporate cash stocks, and the greater propensity for equity buybacks. We develop a general equilibrium model with product and capital market imperfections to explore quantitatively the determination of the flow of funds across sectors. Changes including declines in the real interest rate, the price of investment, and corporate income taxes generate increases in corporate profits and shifts in the supply of sectoral saving that are of similar magnitude to those observed in the data.     

Growth and volatility

Growth and volatility correlate negatively across countries, but positively across sectors. Analytically, whether or not sectoral growth and volatility are correlated positively is irrelevant in the aggregate. Cross-country estimates identify the detrimental effects of macroeconomic volatility on growth, but they cannot be used to dismiss theories implying a positive growth-volatility coefficient, which appear to hold in sectoral data. In particular, volatile sectors command high investment rates, as they would in a mean-variance framework.     

Market share and price rigidity

Survey evidence shows that the main reason why firms keep prices stable is that they are concerned about losing customers or market share. We construct a general equilibrium model in which firms care about the size of their customer base. Firms and customers form long-term relationships because consumers incur costs to switch sellers. In an environment with sectoral productivity shocks, we show that cost pass-through is a non-monotonic function of the size of switching costs. Specifically, prices tend to become more stable as the fraction of repeat customers increases and the elasticity of the customer base falls.     

Bilateral Export Trade,Outward and Inward FDI: A Dynamic Gravity Model Approach Using Sectoral Data from Malaysia

In light of a change in the foreign direct investment (FDI) landscape such as the rapid growth of outward FDI from Malaysia since 2007, this article ascertains the possible impact of inward and outward FDI on Malaysia’s bilateral export trade at the sectoral level, using a dynamic gravity approach. The findings reveal that both inward and outward FDI are complementary to bilateral export trade in the services, mining, and manufacturing sectors. Furthermore, the distance elasticity and the real effective exchange rate have a different negative impact on different sectors. Overall, the sectoral bilateral exports could not insulate against external events.     

陕西、宁夏、四川三省城镇居民消费结构比较分析

本文运用扩展线性支出系统（ELES）模型对2009年陕西、宁夏、四川三省城镇居民按收入水平分组的消费结构数据进行回归分析,根据回归结果对其边际消费倾向、基本需求支出、收入弹性、价格弹性进行比较分析,并对其消费结构进行了分析。     

Barriers and the transition to modern growth

This paper argues that barriers affect both the beginning date and the subsequent pace of modern growth, and taking into account this fact enriches our knowledge of cross-country income differences. The model matches the observed inverted U-shape of cross-country income differences, which implies that a substantial fraction of current income differences is transitional. Hence, the model requires smaller barriers to account for current income differences relative to models that focus only on steady states. Empirically, I find that differences in the beginning dates of modern growth explain large differences in incomes.     

Growth, Income Inequality, and Fiscal Policy: What Are the Relevant Trade-offs?

We develop an endogenous growth model with elastic labor supply, in which agents differ in their initial endowments of physical capital. In this context, the growth rate and the distribution of income are jointly determined. We then examine the distributional impact of different ways of financing an investment subsidy. Policies aimed at increasing the growth rate result in a more unequal distribution of pre-tax income, consistent with the positive correlation between income inequality and growth observed in the recent empirical literature. However, there is no conflict between efficiency and equity if inequality is measured in terms of the distribution of welfare.     

Joint Production of Goods and Knowledge: Implications for Tax Reform

This paper examines the welfare impacts of tax reformin the context of a perfect-foresight two-sector model with linearendogenous growth, where new knowledge is a byproduct of productionactivities. A calibrated version of this model is used to obtainnumerical estimates of the welfare impact of equal-yield unanticipatedtax changes through transitional analysis. Simulation resultsindicate that the size of the welfare effects of income tax reformdepends crucially on the sectoral composition of final consumptionand investment demand, and on the interplay between output complementaritylinkages and factor intensities.     

Bank-based versus market-based financial systems: A growth-theoretic analysis

We study bank-based and market-based financial systems in an endogenous growth model. Lending to firms is fraught with moral hazard as owner-managers may reduce investment profitability to enjoy private benefits. Bank monitoring partially resolves the agency problem, while market-finance is more ‘hands-off’. A bank-based or market-based system emerges from firm-financing choices. Neither system is unequivocally better for growth, which crucially depends on the efficiency of financial and legal institutions. But a bank-based system outperforms a market-based one along other dimensions. Investment and per capita income are higher, and income inequality lower, under a bank-based system. Bank-based systems are also more conducive for broad-based industrialization.     

Effects of Macroeconomic Policies on Sectoral Prices

The effect of macroeconomic policies on the relative pricesof internationally traded and domestic goods has been the subjectof extensive study. Analysis of the way in which these policiesthen affect prices at the sectoral level is complicated by theheterogeneity of sectoral production: even the prices of singleproducts usually are determined by both domestic and tradedcomponents. We present a framework which first traces the influenceof macropolicy on the relative prices of exports, imports, andhome goods. It then accounts for each sector's degree of "tradability,"which is based on the importance of trade in sectoral income,and the influence of macroeconomic policy on sectoral prices.To illustrate the use of this approach, it is applied to a simulationof trade liberalization in Argentina. Our results suggest thateconomywide policies had substantial negative effects on boththe real exchange rate and the incentives to agricultural exports.     

Revenue Elasticities in Complex Income Tax Structures: An Application to Spain*

This paper derives analytical expressions for the revenue elasticity of complex income tax systems, as applied to tax units and in aggregate. Among the complexities considered are the schedular nature of income tax systems and the role of central and regional governments, along with the existence of a range of intricate tax credits and eligible expenditures and deductions. Empirical estimates are obtained for the case of Spain using a cross‐sectional data set, which enables a number of important ancillary elasticities (relating to allowances and tax credits, and different income sources) to be estimated. It is found that there is considerable variation among tax units in the revenue elasticity, with highly positively skewed distributions. The nature of the distributions varies among regions of Spain, and the aggregate elasticities for each region were found to display some variation associated with income distribution differences. The national aggregate is found to be around 1.3.     

湖南省税收收入与经济增长的相关分析

运用协整检验和误差修正模型,以湖南省1970～2004 年的数据为样本,对湖南省税收收入与经济增长相关性进行的实证分析表明:湖南省经济增长与税收增长基本协调,但是,在湖南省税收收入高增长的同时,也存在税收收入的弹性相对偏低的问题.这一方面说明税务部门征收管理工作的进步,另一方面也说明非税收入的规模过大,挤占了税收增长的空间.为此,应继续加强征收管理;优化收入结构,强化非税收入管理;优化产业布局,大力发展制造业和服务业.     

老龄化、消费结构与服务业发展

老龄化程度加深和产业结构变迁是经济发展过程中的普遍现象。本文研究了老龄化对服务业发展的影响,发现随着人均收入提高,一个经济体老年抚养比与服务业比重的关系由负相关转为正相关。本文在多部门一般均衡模型中引入人口年龄结构,提出由于不同年龄群体消费偏好的需求收入弹性和替代弹性存在差异,老龄化通过收入效应和价格效应两个渠道影响消费需求结构,进而影响服务业发展。当老龄化在收入效应渠道上的影响为负、在价格效应渠道上的影响为正时,模型可以解释跨国特征事实。本文结合跨国数据校准了模型参数,之后定量评估了不同环境下老龄化对服务业比重的影响,发现这一影响还取决于老龄化程度和产业间相对生产率。改变产业部门消费率和劳动力转移成本等因素后,定量结果仍保持了较高的稳健性。本文从人口年龄结构视角发展了产业结构转型研究,发现“未富先老”不利于服务业发展,并以此就我国应对老龄化和发展服务业进行了政策讨论。     

A Cross-Section Analysis of the Income Elasticity of Housing Demand in Spain: Is There a Real Estate Bubble?

Much attention has been given to claims that real estate prices in Spain are overvalued in relation to income and how plummeting house prices can jeopardize the economy (The Economist, 2003 and IMF, 2004). The measure of income elasticity on housing expenditure is often of considerable interest to applied researchers and policy makers in real estate economics, but the problem of omitted variables in some estimation techniques can lead to severe biases. In this paper we estimate the income elasticity of the demand for housing in Spain based on the cross-section of prices and income in fifty Spanish provinces from 1996 to 2002. In comparison to long-run equilibrium models fitted with time-series data, our results show a much weaker role of income growth as a vehicle for house price increases in the long run. According to our estimates, the rate of growth of house prices in Spain between 1998 and 2003 points to a real estate bubble with prices above the long-term equilibrium level.     

Globalization, returns to accumulation and the world distribution of output

This paper examines the extent to which the process of globalization can explain the observed widening in the cross-country distribution of output-per-worker. On the theoretical front the model highlights why, when the labor market is subject to a holdup problem, the opening up of trade will cause an increase in the dispersion of income across countries similar to that observed in the data. The increase in dispersion in the model arises due to the emergence of a discrepancy between the private and social returns to capital accumulation that favors capital abundant countries. On the empirical front, we document the relevance of the model by examining whether growth patterns, decomposition exercises and specialization patterns support the model's predictions. Overall we find that over 50% of the recently observed increase in income dispersion across countries can be accounted for by the mechanism exemplified by the model.     

Inflation,wealth and interest rates in an intertemporal optimizing model

This paper analyzes the relationship between the growth of the money supply and capital accumulation in a monetary optimizing model. Under certain conditions we show that a large intertemporal elasticity of substitution makes the nominal rates of interest undershoot its long-term value, that a low elasticity gives rise to overshooting, while a unitary elasticity is shown to make the nominal rate of interest a constant. These considerations plus explicit attention paid to the income and substitution effects induced by the changes in the nominal rates of interest provide us with an understanding of the correlation between growth of money and capital accumulation.     

Progression and revenue effects of income tax reform

Usually, only initial revenue effects of personal income tax reforms are considered. However, a tax reform characterized by base broadening in exchange for rate reduction can reduce the income elasticity of tax revenue. In that case, the increase in revenue after income growth will be relatively smaller: the tax reform has a negative effect on revenue in the second period. Using the microtax model of the Central Planning Bureau we simulated the effects of the Dutch Oort reform 1990 on revenue elasticities and, consequently, on tax revenue. The income tax revenue elasticity declined by 17 percent which caused an additional revenue loss of 0.6 percent in 1990, rising to 3.8 percent in 1993.     

International Pricing in a Generalized Model of Ideal Variety

We examine international markups and pricing in a generalized version of an "ideal variety" model. In this model, entry causes crowding in variety space, so that the marginal utility of new varieties falls as market size grows. Crowding is partially offset by income effects, as richer consumers will pay more for varieties closer matched to their ideal types. We show theoretically and confirm empirically that declining marginal utility of new varieties results in: a higher own-price elasticity of demand (and lower prices) in large countries and a lower own-price elasticity of demand (and higher prices) in rich countries. The model is also useful for generating facts from the literature regarding cross-country differences in the rate of variety expansion.     

Endogenous TFP and cross-country income differences

Using a class of endogenous growth models that exhibit international spillovers, we show that most of the cross-country differences in output per worker are explained by barriers to the accumulation of rival factors (physical and human capital) rather than by barriers to the accumulation of knowledge. This is shown theoretically, by comparing models with exogenous and endogenous TFP, and quantitatively by using a carefully calibrated version of the model. The main finding is that barriers to the accumulation of physical and human capital explain up to 64% of income gaps relative to the US.