Optimal macroeconomic policies in a financial and economic crisis: a case study for Slovenia

In this paper, we study different and, in particular, “optimal” reactions of fiscal (and to some extent monetary) policies to the financial and economic crisis of 2007–2009 in Slovenia, a small open economy that is part of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Using an econometric model of the Slovenian economy, we simulate the effects of the global crisis under the assumption of no-policy reactions, i.e. assuming that macroeconomic policies are conducted without attempting to deal with the effects of the crisis. Next, we study the possibilities of fiscal policy reducing or even annihilating the effects of the crisis. We also investigate the optimal reaction of fiscal policies based on the assumption that Slovenian policy-makers behave as though they were optimizing an objective function. We show that optimal policies call for only a very modestly active countercyclical role of fiscal policies. There are strong trade-offs between countercyclical fiscal policies and the requirements of fiscal solvency.     

COMET: A medium-term macroeconomic model for the European economic community

COMET is a macroeconomic medium-term model for the European Economic Community. It basically consists of eight similarly specified country models which are linked by bilateral trade equations and equations specifying the formation of import and export prices. The medium-term nature is reflected in the role played by the degree of capacity utilization. Section 2 discusses the basic (structural) assumptions of the model, section 3 the performance of the model as a whole.     

Human capital and economic growth: A macroeconomic model for Pakistan

The paper presents a small macro model for Pakistan economy focusing the impact of investment in human capital on the key macroeconomic variables. The demand side is modeled along the Keynesian lines while the supply side is modeled as per neoclassical theory of production. This framework allows analyzing the effects of investment in human capital on supply side variables (like labor, physical and human capital) and demand side variables (like consumption and investment) at the same time.The model has small forecasting horizon in which three alternative scenarios regarding government spending on education are evaluated from 2012 to 2016. The model shows that the link between human capital and labor market is weak however a change in education spending affects output through enhancing productivity and through multiplier-accelerator principle. Though the model is small in size and forecasting horizon, it can help in evaluating the future paths of key macroeconomic variables associated with education spending.     

A simple model of macroeconomic policy

This paper develops a simple model of macroeconomic policy in which the government minimizes a loss function with inflation and unemployment as arguments, subject to a Phillips curve constraint. The model is solved and a discrete time approximation taken. The model's empirical predictions are derived and some test results are presented.     

A macroeconomic model of Russian transition

We present a model in which capital assets can only be owned by members of a relatively small politically connected elite (‘the oligarchs’), each member of which faces a given risk of being expropriated, and we investigate the implications of such an imperfection of property rights for the transition to a market economy. At the start of the transition, the oligarchs are long on local capital assets but short on safe deposits abroad. This causes a depression phase characterized by acute liquidity constraints and large capital outflows at the same time. As the oligarchs acquire enough safe deposits, the economy enters a recovery phase, still accompanied by capital outflows. The model can parsimoniously explain both the steep decline suffered by the Russian economy in the first stage of its transition to a market economy and the subsequent turnaround. The decline could be avoided by allowing foreigners to own some domestic capital assets, but home‐country oligarchs may not be able credibly to collectively commit to such a reform.     

A macroeconomic model for Nigeria, 1958–1974

The Nigerian economy has been modelled with special emphasis on the aggregate demand side. The set of “administered” interest rates have been accommodated in the usual IS/LM analysis, with the extra assumptions that the equilibrium income is attained when the disequilibrating forces in the product and the money markets are equal in magnitude but opposite in signs. The model has been tested with the available data, found to be stable, and indicate, among other things, that an increase in the crude petroleum price would improve the balance of trade barely up to three years and after that, would become adverse.     

Wage formation during economic transformation: macroeconomic facts and firm survey evidence from Slovenia

This article provides macroeconomic stylised facts on wage comparisons and microeconomic evidence on how institutional changes, competitive pressures in firms' output markets, human capital and efficiency wage payment affect wage formation during the early stages of transformation. Wages in Slovenia are higher than in other transition Central and Eastern European countries and higher than labour productivity. We use a firm survey panel dataset of Slovenian enterprises to investigate labour cost adjustment and its policy relevance. The results reveal that transformation was not a uniform process as it has induced different labour cost adjustments and wage responses to transformation shocks over time. The hypothesis that labour productivity and competitive pressures in firms' output markets were important for wage formation was not supported. We confirm that rent seeking increased wages in insider, management and employee-owned enterprises in anticipation of privatisation. The effect of human capital was modest and efficiency wage payment was found not to be significant. The hypothesis of unionisation in Slovenian enterprises was not supported.     

A macroeconomic two-country model with price-discriminating monopolists

I am indebted to J. Frijns, R. de Groof, S. Kuipers, F. van der Ploeg, V. Okker, A. van Schaik and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer of course applies.     

A macroeconomic model for open economies with pegged exchange rates

Most traditional analyses of the internal-external adjustment problem has been based upon a model with only two assets, money and bonds. In this paper real capital is explicitly introduced. As a logical consequence also the investment function is assumed to be different from standard specifications. With this model the effects of monetary and fiscal policy are then shown to be substantially different from traditional results.     

Voucher privatization: implications for macroeconomic policy1

This paper analyses the impact of voucher privatization schemes on the behaviour of households and the consequences for macroeconomic policy. The stylized facts of the voucher privatization scheme are described for the Czech case. The consumption as well as portfolio decision of households during the voucher scheme are modelled within the framework of a consumption function and a system of demand functions for financial assets. The envelope theorem is used to modify the standard Almost Ideal Demand (AID) system. The empirical results are presented. The paper concludes that the interdependence between privatization and macroeconomic stability should be better understood by policy-makers in transitional countries that are going to adopt a similar approach to privatization to that applied in the Czech Republic.     

A DSGE-VAR model for forecasting key South African macroeconomic variables

The paper develops a Small Open Economy New Keynesian DSGE-VAR (SOENKDSGE-VAR) model of the South African economy, characterised by incomplete pass-through of exchange rate changes, external habit formation, partial indexation of domestic prices and wages to past inflation, and staggered price and wage setting. The model is estimated using Bayesian techniques on data from the period 1980Q1 to 2003Q2, and then used to forecast output, inflation and nominal short-term interest rate for one-to eight-quarters-ahead over an out-of sample horizon of 2003Q3 to 2010Q4. When the forecast performance of the SOENKDSGE-VAR model is compared with an independently estimated DSGE model, the classical VAR and six alternative BVAR models, we find that, barring the BVAR model based on the SSVS prior on both VAR coefficients and the error covariance, the SOENKDSGE-VAR model is found to perform competitively, if not, better than all the other VAR models.     

A macroeconomic rationing model of the belgian economy

This paper presents a small macroeconometric model that allows explicitly for the existence of rationing on the goods and labour markets and clearly distinguishes the three well-known regimes: Keynesian unemployment, classical unemployment and repressed inflation. The basic structure of the model contains two equations that can be estimated by single equation techniques. Estimation on Belgian postwar data establishes both the feasibility and the usefulness of the quantity rationing approach. Empirical results also reveal after 1972 an increasing discrepancy between the amount of labour supplied and the potential employment level determined by existing production capacities.     

A macroeconomic model of aggregate supply and demand for the UK

In this paper we publish for the first time the econometric model of the UK economy recently developed at City University Business School (CUBS). The differentiating feature of the CUBS model is its concern with the ‘supply side’ and its attempt to estimate an aggregate production function. The model distinguishes between markets in goods and services, labour, capital, money and foreign exchange.     

A macroeconomic model and stability analysis by parameters

This article focuses on the New Keynesian multiple-equations small-open-economy macroeconomic model to illustrate deeper relations among model parameters. These relations are more important than the basic values of the parameters because it shows how the system behaves when some changes in the economy occur. The first stage of the analysis introduces a theoretical model. The second stage of the analysis estimates the states and parameters of the model on the quarterly data of the Czech economy. The third stage of the analysis focuses on the transfer function of this model and makes a deeper behavior analysis. In the final stage, the article demonstrates the stability of the model, shown through the impulse functions of the model. This shows response of the macroeconomic model to unanticipated shocks. This paper is part of the research activities for the grant project of GA CR Number 402/02/0393.     

A waste management model for optimal recycling-landfilling policies under macroeconomic conditions

This research provides a waste management model in the presence of macroeconomic conditions. An optimal control problem which integrates the recycling-landfilling decision with industry supply-demand dynamics is designed to achieve the value-maximizing objective. The model simultaneously considers idiosyncratic technical and aggregate demand shocks, while the stoppage time for landfill use is assumed to follow a Cox process with the intensity function of a firm's total waste collection. The closed-form solution of the optimal recycling ratio is also derived. The results suggest that when macroeconomic effects are neglected, optimal recycling ratios tend to be underestimated.     

HM treasury macroeconomic model 1986

This paper describes HM Treasury's Macroeconomic Model as at the beginning of 1986. It outlines the key relationship in the large (1 200 variables) model and relates them to the IS/LM model. The behavioural hypothesis underlying the main sectors of the model eg price determination, supply, and the domestic financial sector of the model are explained using a stylized representation of the main model. Some of the key econometric estimates are provided. Overall model properties are illustrated by means of model simulations.     

A disequilibrium macroeconomic model of the Belgian economy : The Maribel II model of the Planning Bureau

This paper describes the Maribel II model, a model used by the Belgian Planning Bureau for analysing and simulating macroeconomic changes in the Belgian economy. Its main feature is that it is a disequilibrium model (for both the product and the labour market). During the construction of the model considerable attention was given to its theoretical underpinning. The steady state properties show that the mechanisms are mainly classical with a strong dependence on foreign influences. The multiplier analysis confirms the relatively small multipliers in Belgium and also shows the richness that a disequilibrium model provides for analysing particular policies.