On the (de)stabilizing effects of news shocks

This paper shows that news shocks amplify macroeconomic volatility in any purely forward-looking model, whereas results are ambiguous when including a backward-looking component. We also investigate numerically the volatility effects of news shocks within the Smets and Wouters (2003) model.     

Please bring me the New York Times

Richard Musgrave was one of 200 academic economists who emigrated from Germany when Fascism came to dominate the country. This memorial lecture traces the German and European roots of Richard Musgrave’s oeuvre, trying to shed light on his family background as well as on the political and scientific factors that influenced his education as an economist. Particular emphasis is given to the development of his notion of public goods.     

Complete,perfect, and maximal controllability of discrete economic systems

Summary The purpose of this paper is to discuss three different concepts of controllability of discrete economic systems. Necessary and sufficient conditions for complete, perfect and maximal controllability are presented. The author demonstrates the logical interconnections between the dynamical and static theories of economic policy and shows that the concept of maximal controllability is of special interest for the theory of economic policy. Applications of the theoretical results to a macroeconomic decision model are presented at the end of this paper.The author wishes to thank Professor Dr. Helmut Kuhn, Göttingen, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments.     

Foreign direct investment, political resentment and the privatization process in eastern Europe

Foreign direct investment has been disappointingly low in eastern Europe, which has been reluctant to make existing assets available to foreign investors. To mitigate any such resentment, we propose a participation model in which foreign investors compete for joint venture contracts. Host governments contribute existing assets and receive non-voting stocks. Foreign investors, contributing capital and know-how, receive voting shares and control of operational decisions.{}This has several advantages over the cash sale of assets to foreigners. First, stock flow problems are eased, raising both asset prices and FDI flows. Second, by retaining some stake in the firm, transition countries share in the risk premium. Third, governments can hand over their shares to households, creating private collateral to foster new small businesses. Fourth, and crucially, compared to cash sales the auction of participation contracts offers higher privatization revenues in cases where governments cannot assess investors' knowledge and abilities. This reduces the risk of selling the family silver too cheaply, and should alleviate the host countries' resentment.     

Capital income taxation,depreciation allowances and economic growth: A perfect-foresight general equilibrium model

Conclusions The results indicated in Table 1 show that incomplete depreciation allowances reinforce the distortions in the equilibrium growth path brought about by an ideal capital income tax. A reduction in the deductible share of economic depreciation, like an increase in the tax rate, raises the current level of consumption, but reduces the steady state levels of consumption and capital per efficiency unit of labour.The reason for these distortions is that the tax law is able to drive wedges both between the rate of time preference and the market rate of interest, and between the latter and the marginal productivity of capital. The first wedge is created through capital income taxation as such and its size is directly related to the tax rate. The second wedge is created by the incomplete deductibility of depreciation. Its size is directly related to the tax rate and inversely to the deductible share of depreciation. For the distortion in the growth path of the economy it is the sum of the two wedges that counts. Therefore it is plausible that incomplete depreciation allowances reinforce the effects of capital income taxation.Knowing the determinants of the two wedges one can easily derive the influence of a tax reform on the marginal productivity of capital, the market rate of interest and the rate of time preference (cf. Table 2). In the short run, the system of these three interest rates is anchored by the marginal productivity of capital, and hence any measure that widens a wedge is translated into a reduction in the rate or those rates below the wedge. In the long run the system is anchored by the rate of time preference and an increase in the width of a wedge is translated into an increase in those rates or that rate above this wedge.The paper was written in association with the Sonderforschungsbereich 5 (Staatliche Allokationspolitik im marktwirtschaftlichen System).