Optimal taxation and redistribution in an OLG model with unemployment

This paper concerns redistribution via nonlinear income taxation in an overlapping generations model with two ability-types. We assume that the wage rates are determined by bargaining between unions and firms, meaning that the equilibrium is characterized by involuntary unemployment. We show that the policy instruments that are used to calculate the marginal labor income tax rate for each ability-type give rise to intertemporal tax base effects. In addition, since the relationship between the employment and the capital stock implies intertemporal production inefficiency at the second best optimum, imperfect competition in the labor market may itself justify capital income taxation.      

An investment-function-based measure of capacity utilisation.: Potential output and utilised capacity in the Bank of Italy's quarterly model

Measures of potential output and the output gap are increasingly being developed and used to concisely quantify and monitor the risk of price accelerations stemming from rises in aggregate demand that are not met by a corresponding increase in supply. They often play a prominent role in the price determination mechanisms of macroeconometric models. In this paper we build a measure of potential private-sector value added for the Italian economy that is consistent with the capital accumulation process in the Banca d'Italia's Quarterly Model — and more generally with the rest of the supply-side block of that model. More specifically, we exploit the fact that the investment function can be thought of as a relationship transforming desired gross additions to capacity output into capital accumulation by means of a conversion factor (the optimal capital/output ratio). Thus, if one removes the component of investment decisions that stems from changes in the relative price of the production factors, (i.e. in the optimal capital/output ratio), then a measure of the desired gross addition to capacity may be constructed. The results draw a cyclical picture of the degree of capacity utilisation for the period 1970–1997 that is roughly in line with those produced by the Wharton and Hodrick–Prescott filter approaches, as well as with the pictures resulting from the ISAE, IMF, European Commission and OECD measures of the output gap. Our investment-function-based measure appears to be a promising indicator of the pressure exerted on prices by demand accelerations. Its empirical properties are, on the whole, acceptable and plausible.     

最优货币政策规则参数的估计和中国货币状况指数的测度

本文从宏观经济的一般均衡模型出发,融入了股票价格和房地产价格变动,考察我国中央银行货币政策调控在经济增长和通货膨胀之间的目标规则,分析了影响货币政策规则参数变化的主要因素及潜在机制。本文的实证结果显示中央银行最优货币政策参数为0.144055,央行货币政策是逆周期操作,也意味着中央银行在制定货币政策时,赋予通货膨胀目标更高的权重;同时我国货币政策是逆房地产市场周期、顺股市周期的。进一步,本文从最优货币政策的角度考察了我国货币状况指数的权重。根据最优货币政策规则,货币状况指数权重为0.302876,即利率上升1%相当于汇率下降0.30%,意味着利率变动的效果要小于汇率变动的影响。     

Measuring the unmeasurable: an application of uncertainty quantification to Treasury bond portfolios

We extract from the yield curve a new measure of fundamental economic uncertainty, based on McDiarmid’s diameter and related methods for optimal uncertainty quantification (OUQ). OUQ seeks analytical bounds on a system’s behaviour, even where aspects of the underlying data-generating process and system response function are not completely known. We use OUQ to stress test a simple fixed-income portfolio, certifying its safety—i.e. that potential losses will be ‘small’ in an appropriate sense. The results give explicit tradeoffs between: scenario count, maximum loss, test horizon, and confidence level. Unfortunately, uncertainty peaks in late 2008, weakening certification assurances just when they are needed most.     

定西地区农业生态系统结构优化的对策

本文通过定西地区农业生态系统结构与功能分析,认为：生态系统结构不完善,生产力和经济功能低下。据此从农业可持续发展的角度出发,提出了优化农业生态系统结构和提高其功能的对策。     

Disability insurance and optimal income taxation

This paper studies the design of disability insurance scheme when agents differ in their privately known productivity. We extend the Diamond and Mirrlees (1978) two period model to allow for agents differing ex-ante in their productivity and characterize the optimal nonlinear tax transfer that maximizes a utilitarian welfare function when per-period earnings and age are observable while individuals’ productivity and health status are not observable. We show that the induced tax/benefit scheme should exhibit a marginal income tax that decreases with age for some agents. A marginal subsidy on the young high productive income may be desirable. While the disability scheme always involves the old low productive agents to be indifferent between working and claiming disability benefits, this result is not always true for the old high productive agents. JEL Classification H55 · H23 · E62     

Theory and practice of monetary policy

Summary. We consider an optimally managed renewable resource with stochastic non-concave growth function. We characterize the conditions under which the optimal policy leads to global extinction, global conservation and the existence of a safe standard of conservation. Our conditions are specified in terms of the economic and ecological primitives of the model: the biological growth function, the welfare function, the distribution of shocks and the discount rate. Our results indicate that, unlike deterministic models, extinction and conservation in stochastic models are not determined by a simple comparison of the growth rate and the discount rate; the welfare function plays an important role.Received: 20 October 2004, Revised: 28 February 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: D90, O11, O41, Q32.Santanu Roy: Correspondence toResearch on this paper was completed when the second author visited Cornell University in July, 2003. We thank the Center for Analytic Economics and the Department of Economics at Cornell University for making this research visit possible. The current version has gained considerably from the comments made by an anonymous referee.     

投标人平行串谋与最优公开保留价博弈分析

本文将投标人平行串谋问题与招标人公开保留价定价策略相结合,研究了第二价格密封招标方式下投标串谋联盟的串谋报价及利润分配机制,分析了串谋联盟的存在对非串谋联盟中成员的投标策略和期望利润的影响,揭示了串谋联盟成员人数与串谋联盟总收益之间的关系,探讨了招标人公开保留价定价策略、串谋联盟成员人数与招标公开保留价之间的关系,指出了招标人应通过降低公开保留价的方式来防止或减少投标人平行串谋行为的发生。     

Gains from international monetary policy coordination: Does it pay to be different?

In a two country world where each country has a traded and a non-traded sector and each sector has sticky prices, optimal independent policy in general cannot replicate the natural-rate allocations. There are potential welfare gains from coordination since the planner under a cooperating regime internalizes a terms-of-trade externality that independent policymakers overlook. If the countries have symmetric trading structures, however, the gains from coordination are quantitatively small. With asymmetric trading structures, the gains can be sizable since, in addition to internalizing the terms-of-trade externality, the planner optimally engineers a terms-of-trade bias that favors the country with a larger traded sector.