Ethnic divisions and the effect of appropriative competition intensity on economic performance

This paper features a growth model with an appropriative contest and a common-pool investment game between politically organised rival ethnic factions. I determine how the long-run equilibrium coalition shapes incentives to invest, show the existence of a unique steady state, and investigate how the ease to capture rents affects economic performance. The use of numerical simulations concerning a global sample of countries demonstrates that contest intensity can sometimes be beneficial, despite wasteful grabbing behaviours, due to a mechanism related to the concentration of power. When rents become easier to capture, dominant groups have an incentive to expand their influence further. This adjustment can be beneficial as these groups contribute most to capital accumulation.     

The Austrian roots of the economics of institutions

This paper presents an analysis of the way the Austrian theory of institutions evolved from Menger’s main works. It also tries to advance the idea that the economics of institutions, when it deals with the emergence and evolution of rules and norms from interacting individuals, is inspired by Menger’s work and more generally by the Austrian analysis of the emergence and evolution of institutions. Recent works in the economics of institutions build on this earlier Austrian work to make it more formalized and testable.

How effective are level-based R&D tax credits? Evidence from the Netherlands

This article examines the impact of the R&D fiscal incentive programme on R&D by Dutch firms. Taking a factor demand approach, we measure the elasticity of firm R&D capital accumulation to its user cost. Econometric models are estimated using a rich unbalanced panel of firm data covering the period 1996 to 2004 with firm specific R&D user costs varying with tax incentives. Using the estimated user cost elasticity, we perform a cost–benefit analysis of the R&D incentive programme. We find some evidence of additionality suggesting that the level based programme of R&D incentives in the Netherlands is effective in stimulating firms’ investment in R&D. However, the hypothesis of crowding out can be rejected only for small firms. The analysis also indicates that the level based nature of the fiscal incentive scheme leads to a substantial social deadweight loss.     

The Stability of the Demand for Money in Monetary Unions: Some Empirical Evidence from WAEMU

Previous studies of the stability of the demand for money have been largely conducted in the context of individual countries. To the extent that these countries have control over their monetary policies, such an approach is well justified. However, for monetary unions, where the control over monetary policy is usually vested in a central or outside authority, it is more appropriate to examine the stability of the money demand for the union as a collective entity. This paper follows this approach with respect to a West African monetary union, the WAEMU, whose monetary policies are largely dictated by the French authorities. Using cointegration theory and CUSUM stability tests, we find evidence that the demand for broad money is stable in this union. Given the empirical results, the paper draws inferences regarding their implications for the formulation of optimal monetary policy for the WAEMU.     

Disability insurance and unemployment insurance as substitute pathways

In this article, we estimate the degree of substitution between enrolment into Disability Insurance (DI) and Unemployment Insurance (UI) in the Netherlands. Starting in the 1990s many policy measures aimed at reducing DI enrolment, and increase labour force participation. We quantify whether these policy measures have led to a reduction in hidden unemployment in DI. A side effect of the reforms may be increased pressure on UI. Therefore, we simultaneously estimate reverse substitution, that is, hidden disability in UI. To this end, we employ a sample of firms in the Dutch AVO database from the period 1993 to 2002. Using instrumental variables in a bivariate Tobit specification, we identify the hidden components in both respective schemes. The estimation results indicate that about 3% of all dismissals took place through DI, which implies that about one quarter of the DI enrolments observed in our sample in fact consists of hidden unemployment. We find no evidence for reverse substitution of disabled persons ending up in UI.     

THE PRICE OF SILENCE: MARKETS FOR NOISE LICENSES AND AIRPORTS*

This article presents a market design for the management of noise pollution created by aircraft traffic around airports. A local market for noise licenses allows noise generators to compensate noise victims and to meet social acceptability. We show that the market allows the market designer to implement the social planner's optimal allocation of flights as long as the latter does not put too high a weight in his/her objective function on firms' profits compared to the disutility of noise pollution. The fact that local representatives of noise victims may be strategic players does not fundamentally alter this finding. Because of the market auctioneer's information constraints, noise licenses are likely to distribute windfall gains to residents, which alters the urban structure in the long run.     

FINANCIAL OPERATIONS AND MONETARY STATISTICS: IMPROVED CONCORDANCE IN THE FRENCH NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

National accounts are a powerful means of coordinating different statistical systems. The better their classifications are adapted to the basic statistics or the information blocks one wishes to use, the better the national accounts play their part. This statement explains why, taking the opportunity of revising the whole system, French national accountants tried to improve the concordance between financial operation tables and monetary statistics. Other reasons leading to this attempt can be found in the dissatisfaction of users having to face different and inconsistent financial information such as the monetary statistics on one hand and the financial aggregates of the national accounts on the other; and even more reasons appear in the organizational field since those two statistical systems are issued by two neighbour services of the Banque de France, often depending on the same sources. Further, many propitious factors are converging at the same time: the French financial system is undergoing profound transformations originating as much in the behaviour of economic agents as in the law, and the statistical operations have to adapt to these changes. The national accounts will in the near future include balance sheets in which financial asset holdings are directly comparable to the money supply aggregates. In its first part our paper sets forth the detailed reasons for our attempts, the conditions in which it took place and the present results. We have reached a much better degree of consistency between the two systems, even if the final scheme has not yet been adopted in either the monetary field or in the field of national accounts. But an important question remains open about the durability of the harmonization: we think that it could be relatively uncertain because of the differences in the goals pursued by the two systems and the constraints which they face. That is why in the second part of the paper we tried to review the way such a pragmatic undertaking as ours could call into question the way in which financial operations are described in the system of national accounts. If one agrees with the present boundary between the real and the financial sphere, the articulation must remain somewhat elementary. But if one wants to revise the usual so-called dichotomy between financial and non financial phenomena, we think that a complete rebuilding of the conceptual framework of the accounts has to be done; this would necessitate a considerable amount of theoretical and practical work.     

Optimal fertility along the life cycle

We explore the optimal fertility timing in a four-period OLG economy with physical capital, whose specificity is to include not one, but two reproduction periods. It is shown that, for a given total fertility rate, the economy exhibits quite different dynamics, depending on the timing of births. If all births take place in the late reproduction period, there exists no stable stationary equilibrium and the economy exhibits cyclical dynamics due to labor growth fluctuations. We characterize the long-run social optimum and show that optimal consumptions and capital depend on the optimal cohort growth factor, so that there is no one-to-one substitutability between early and late fertility. We also extend Samuelson’s Serendipity Theorem to our economy and study the robustness of our results to: (1) endogenizing fertility timing, (2) assuming rational anticipations about factor prices, (3) adding a third reproduction period.