(In)determinacy, increasing returns, and the optimality of the Friedman rule in an endogenously growing open economy

This paper sets up a monetary endogenous growth model with Benhabib–Farmer production externalities for an open economy, and then uses it to investigate the possibility of indeterminacy. Moreover, the paper examines how the monetary authorities will set its optimal anchor of the money growth rate from the viewpoint of welfare maximization. Several main findings emerge from the analysis. First, when investment does not involve adjustment costs, the monetary equilibrium is locally determinate regardless of the strength of the labor externality and the extent of world capital market imperfections. Second, in the presence of investment adjustment costs, the monetary equilibrium may exhibit indeterminacy when the aggregate increasing returns-to-scale in production is sufficiently strong. Third, in the presence of world capital market imperfections, the Friedman rule of a zero nominal interest rate fails to be optimal. Fourth, in the face of perfect world capital markets, the optimal nominal money growth rate is maintained at the rate that is conformable to the Friedman rule, regardless of whether investment involves adjustment costs or not.     

Optimal monetary policy and economic growth

A question at the center of many analyses of optimal monetary policy is, why do central banks never implement the Friedman rule? To the list of answers to this question, we add neoclassical production (specifically, the Tobin effect) as one possible explanation. To that end, we study an overlapping generations economy with capital where limited communication and stochastic relocation create an endogenous transactions role for fiat money. We assume a production function with a knowledge externality (Romer style) that nests economies with endogenous growth (AK form) and those with no long-run growth (the Diamond model). The Tobin effect is shown to be always operative. Under CRRA preferences, a mild degree of social increasing returns is sufficient (but not necessary) for some positive inflation to dominate zero inflation and for the Friedman rule to be sub-optimal, irrespective of the degree of risk aversion.     

STABILIZATION POLICY AT THE ZERO LOWER BOUND

We construct a monetary economy with aggregate liquidity shocks and heterogeneous idiosyncratic preference shocks. In this environment, not all agents are satiated at the zero lower bound (ZLB) even when the Friedman rule is the best interest‐rate policy the central bank can implement. As a consequence, central bank stabilization policy, which takes the form of repo arrangements in response to aggregate demand shocks, temporarily relaxes the liquidity constraint of impatient agents at the ZLB. Due to a pecuniary externality, this policy may have beneficial general equilibrium effects for patient agents even if they are unconstrained in their money balances.     

Foreign Investment,Technology Transfer and Foreign Capital Impact Function

This paper analyzes the optimal capital accumulation of a small open economy by incorporating the impact of technology transfer that accompanies foriegn ivestment. Assuming that technology transfer depends on the extent of foreign ownership, it is shown that, whenever there is technology transfer through foreìgn participation, the optimal rule suggests that a host country maintain some foreign capital in the steady state. The concept of the foreign capital impact function is introduced to capture possible negative effects in addition to the positive effects of foreign investment. The impact of foreign investment is shown to involve an externality, calling for government intervention for a social optimum. [110]     

When sociable workers pay off: Can firms internalize social capital externalities?

We use an endogenous growth model to contrast the socially optimal allocation of human capital with the decentralized solution, in a context where workers make the choices that determine social capital accumulation. As social capital is expected to increase productivity but is not traded in markets, a positive social capital externality is identified. We discuss the possibility that, in response to this externality, firms subsidize social capital accumulation activities, incurring into additional costs that are recouped through productivity gains. This reaction by firms may be seen as a justification for some corporate social responsibility actions targeted at workers, although a full internalization of the externality does not look achievable in practice.     

我国人力资本投资对经济增长的贡献

本文在对人力资本与经济增长的文献综述的基础上,利用我国统计年鉴中有关经济、教育数据计算我国人力资本存量与物质资本存量,并利用有效劳动模型和人力资本外部性模型,估计我国人力资本对经济增长的贡献,发现在我国经济增长过程中,物质资本存量的作用更为关键,而且人力资本投资对经济增长的外部性作用明显。     

专用社会资本外部性视阈下的家族企业治理模式

挖掘家族企业的制度内核,破解其制度缺陷,是确定家族企业治理模式的前提。本文在交易成本理论的平台上,通过对家族社会资本专用性属性及其外部性效应的解读,发现家族企业的制度优势来自于对家族社会资本的汲取,而其制度障碍体现为家族社会资本的负的外部性。这个负的外部性在企业范围小于专用社会资本范围时产生。所以,家族企业需要随着发展,扩大专用的家族社会资本的范围。基于此,本文提炼了泛家族化治理、差序家族化治理、网络家族化治理三种模式。     

Money, endogenous fertility and economic growth

This paper analyzes the issue of money superneutrality through an intertemporal optimizing model of capital accumulation with endogenous fertility, i.e. endogenous population growth. Two elements of this setup invalidate money superneutrality: (i) a demand for fertility that depends on real money balances, and (ii) an inverse relation between capital–labor ratio and population growth. Higher monetary growth increases fertility, since it reduces its opportunity cost, and hence diminishes capital intensity, and per capita output. This reverse Tobin effect is matched by an increase in aggregate capital and output growth rates. In this framework, the optimal monetary growth rule is a “distorted Friedman rule”.     

Optimal Intervention Policies for a Small Monetary Economy

We analyze the gains from trade for a small cash-in-advance economy with endogenous labor supply and learning-by-doing in the accumulation of human capital. Contrary to previous findings, we show that free trade is not optimal independently of the relative amount of cash required for the purchase of each good. Furthermore, a monetary rule à la Friedman can eliminate distortions deriving from the cash-in-advance constraint only under segmented financial markets; in any case, it cannot restore the economic optimum. Finally, we identify government intervention policies, such as wage and export subsidies, that can be welfare improving.     

Market and public provision in the presence of human capital externalities

For many goods and services, such as health, education, legal services, police protection, the cost incurred by an individual supplier for providing quality is affected by the human capital of her colleagues. The paper shows that this human capital externality is crucial to determine whether such goods and services should be privately or publicly provided. Public and private provisions give individuals different incentives to acquire human capital, and the paper shows that either may be socially preferable, depending on the nature of the human capital externality: private provision of the final goods and services gives stronger incentives to human capital acquisition (and may therefore be socially preferable) if own human capital and one's colleagues' human capital are substitutes, and if suppliers with high human capital benefit more than suppliers with low human capital from their colleagues' human capital, but not excessively so.     

Transfers and the Samuelson Rule in Stock Externality Provision—Why Do We Need Them Both?

This paper examines the relationship between the Samuelson rule for efficient provision of stock externality and unilateral transfers for equalization of mitigation costs among the agents. Using a generic model of stock externality provisions, we proved that the revised Samuelson rule that allows transfers is a necessary and sufficient condition for efficient provision of stock externalities. In addition, selection of social welfare weights of the agents plays a key role in directions and magnitudes of the transfers. We discuss the implications of the revised Samuelson rule in economic modeling of climate change, an empirical case of stock externality, through numerical simulations in the RICE model.     

OPTIMAL TAX POLICY IN A STOCHASTICALLY GROWING ECONOMY

This paper analyses the optimal taxation of capital in a stochastically growing small open economy in which there is a perfect market for a traded bond. The analysis emphasizes the dependence of the optimal tax structure upon the policy rule guiding the growth of government expenditure, and its impact on the behaviour of private agents. In general three taxes, reflecting three required conditions, are necessary to attain the first-best optimum. The first is to correct for any externality caused by government expenditure; the second is to attain the optimal portfolio share; the third is to ensure that the government budget constraint is met.     

REAL EXCHANGE RATE,MERCANTILISM AND THE LEARNING BY DOING EXTERNALITY

This paper examines the degree to which the learning by doing (LBD) externality calls for an undervalued exchange rate. We obtain mixed results. For an economy where the LBD externality operates in the traded sector, real exchange rate undervaluation may be used to internalize this externality, if the LBD calls for subsidizing employment in the traded sector. If the LBD externality is embodied in aggregate investment, the optimal policy calls for subsidizing the cost of capital in the traded sector, and there is no room for undervalued exchange rate policy.     

Deflationary policy under digital and fiat currency competition

I examine the implications of digital and fiat currency competition on optimal monetary policy according to the Friedman rule (a standard deflationary policy) in a Fernández-Villaverde and Sanches (2016) framework, with no search friction. Consistent with the existing literature, first, I find that monetary equilibrium under a purely private arrangement of digital currencies will not deliver a socially efficient allocation. Second, I place restrictions on the available supply of digital currencies and find that a socially efficient allocation is possible only if the upper bound on digital currency circulation is equal to the rate of time-preference, albeit some degree of government intervention is required to curb the profit-maximizing incentive of the miners. Third, I find that optimal monetary policy at the Friedman rule will be socially inefficient when digital currencies compete with government-issued fiat money. Finally, I show that the Friedman rule is a socially desirable policy only in a purely fiat monetary regime.     

PRICE DISPERSION,INFLATION, AND WELFARE*

We examine the implications of inflation for both price dispersion and welfare in a monetary search economy. In our economy, if the degree of buyers' incomplete information about prices is fixed, both price dispersion and real prices are increasing in inflation. As the inflation rate approaches the Friedman rule, both price dispersion and welfare losses vanish. If households choose the number of prices to observe, then the optimal inflation rate may exceed the Friedman rule as inflation induces search and, up to a point, raises welfare by eroding market power.     

Monetary policy,heterogeneous population and inflation

Adding heterogeneity to an otherwise simple model results in a deviation from the Friedman rule. We show that a central bank concerned with inequality delivers an outcome below the Pareto frontier. Our results may shed light as to why central banks around the world do not follow the Friedman rule and instead deliver positive inflation rates. On the other hand, the calibrated model indicates that the implied optimal inflation rates are much higher than those observed in the data. One possible interpretation of our results is to question the recent wisdom of thinking of inequality as part of central banks’ concerns.     

财政政策的供给效应与经济发展

本文分析了发展中国家公共投资对私人资本积累的动态响应。针对公共资本的拥挤性特征 ,同时考虑财政投资可能引起的风险。在不考虑公共投资风险的分权经济中 ,由于公共资本和私人资本都处于短缺状态 ,企业争夺拥挤性公共资本而扩张私人资本的投资行为虽然使经济超常增长 ,但是存在过度投资和过度拥挤。在集中优化模型中 ,如果考虑到公共投资的风险 ,政府通过税收方式弥补公共投资风险 ,同时将企业投资产生的拥挤效应内部化 ,就能消除企业的过度投资和过度拥挤现象 ,使经济保持合理持续的增长。对中国这样的发展中国家 ,需要重视财政的供给效应 ,在经济起飞初期保证一定数量的政府资本性支出是必要的 ,但随着经济的不断发展和政府资本性支出累积的风险增加 ,财政转型十分必要。     

HETEROGENEITY,REDISTRIBUTION, AND THE FRIEDMAN RULE*

We study monetary models with nondegenerate stationary distributions of money holdings. We find that the Friedman rule does not typically maximize ex post social welfare. An increase in the rate of growth of the money supply has two effects: the standard distortionary, or rate‐of‐return, effect makes money a less desirable asset for all moneyholders. A second, redistributive effect, creates a transfer from one type of agent to the other. An increase in the rate of growth of money away from the Friedman rule can produce a rate‐of‐return effect that dominates the standard effect.     

Human Capital and Overinvestment in R&D*

We introduce a negative effect of technological development on human capital accumulation in a growth model with endogenous innovation and accumulation of human capital. This implies a negative externality of R&D in human capital accumulation. Some calibration exercises suggest that this distortion may be sufficiently strong not only to offset the usual effects of spillovers and of returns to specialization but also to induce overinvestment in R&D.