strategic export policy with foreign direct investment and import substitution abstract the paper examines discretionary and strategic foreign direct investment fdi incentives in the export sector relative to a non interventionist policy the analysis is based on a two country model with both countries seeking to attract fdi countries differ in cost levels and in their levels of tariff protection on intermediate inputs a shift in the trade policy regime toward the strategic promotion of exports results in a decrease in fdi allocated to the low cost country when it has a low level of protection on intermediate inputs and an increase in fdi when it has a high level of protection on intermediates inputs furthermore even if fdi increases with export policy activism relative to non intervention welfare may be lower

trade and protection in vertically related markets abstract we consider home country tariff and subsidy policies in a setting where a home firm is partially dependent on a foreign vertically integrated firm for supplies of a key input the firms are cournot competitors in the home market for the final product we show that a tariff on final product imports may cause the foreign vertically integrated firm to reduce the price charged for the input under circumstances where a simple monopoly supplier of the input would increase its price supply conditions for the input significantly affect whether imports of the input should be taxed or subsidized

reputation in dynamic games abstract we analyze reputation in a game between a large player and a continuum of long lived small players in which state variables affect players payoffs the large player s type is private information we give conditions under which in every nash equilibrium a very patient large player will get almost the largest payoff consistent with the small players choosing a best response in a large finite truncation of the game while our results apply to the time inconsistency problem of optimal government policy we show that for the durable goods monopoly reputation may fail to improve the monopolist s payoff journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c72 c73

examining the link between energy consumption carbon dioxide emission and economic growth in latin america and the caribbean abstract this study aims at exploring the bi directional long run relationship between energy consumption carbon dioxide emission and economic growth in the latin american and caribbean countries the canonical cointegrating regression ccr is used to achieve the goal of this study taking the period of 1980 2008 the study arrived at different results while 60 of the countries have a positive bi directional long run relationship between energy consumption carbon dioxide emission and economic growth the others have mixed results the results of the study motivated the researcher to recommend that these countries should increase their energy efficiency increase the share of green energy from their total energy use and increase energy conservation in order to reduce unnecessary waste of energy

perfect equilibria in a trade liberalization game the credibility of temporary protection is examined in a simple infinite horizon perfect information game of timing in which the domestic government uses the threat of future liberalization to induce the domestic firm to invest all pure strategy subgame perfect equilibria are cyclical and surprisingly one of them implements optimal temporary protection however this equilibrium fails to pass another credibility criterion called renegotiation proof the game has a unique stationary subgame perfect equilibrium in mixed strategies copyright 1990 by american economic association

industrial policy and firm heterogeneity our concern in this paper is with firm specific industrial policy when r d subsidies or taxes are differentiated among firms the question arises as to which firms in an industry should receive such support we analyze a situation where firms differ in their r d technologies in two distinct ways in the costs of performing r d activities and in the output obtained from such activities we find that the optimal firm specific industrial policy is affected differently by the two sources of firm heterogeneity furthermore a change in a firm s r d productivity has an ambiguous effect on the optimal policy towards the firm jel classification o31 l52 f13

political constraints to growth in an economic union abstract this paper studies the political economy of growth in an economic union such as the eu in the spirit of acemoglu aghion and zilibotti acemoglu d aghion p and zilibotti f 2006a distance to frontier selection and economic growth journal of the european economic association 4 1 37 74 acemoglu d aghion p and zilibotti f 2006b growth development and appropriate versus inappropriate institutions mimeo mit as the economy approaches the world technology frontier structural reforms that increase competition in intermediate goods sectors are necessary to boost innovation and productivity growth reforms however raise the opposition of incumbents and therefore are politically difficult to implement when there are important cross border policy spillover effects national governments are more easily captured by vested interests as they fail to internalize the benefits of reforms on the rest of the union in this situation productivity growth may be sluggish and the economy can fail to converge to the frontier on the other hand when policy is chosen by a union government or a collective body that takes into account union welfare the internalization of spillovers raises the perceived benefit of reforms and consequently lowers the ability of lobbies to obtain high levels of protection

policy rivalry among industrial states what can we learn from models of strategic trade policy the economic theory of international trade has changed dramatically over the last decade by admitting into its mainstream a body of literature that focuses on the implications of monopolistic and oligopolistic elements in international markets by applying the tools of the new industrial organization in an international context two new classes of models have emerged models of intra industry trade and models of strategic trade policy the policy implications of models of strategic trade policy were quite disturbing for the economics profession since these models demonstrated that the classical harmony between national and cosmopolitan welfare maximization does not exist if one assumes opportunities for strategic manipulation of oligopolistic international industries this article reviews two prominent models of strategic trade policy the brander spencer model and the krugman model and relates them to more familiar earlier concepts such as stackelberg s asymmetrical duopoly solution and the venerable infant industry argument for government intervention the primary purpose of this article however is to provide a synopsis of the large literature addressing the question of whether models of strategic trade policy can give guidance for government policy

policies and international trade agreements on technical compatibility for industries with network externalities abstract the paper considers a country home in which consumers have heterogeneous preferences over ex ante incompatible domestic and imported products and benefit from a network externality we analyze the cases with trade under perfect competition and the international duopoly in which both governments strategically use policies toward compatibility but cannot use conventional trade policies in both cases the equilibrium outcome of the non cooperative game depends upon the strength of the network externality effect and involves either an excessively high equilibrium level of compatibility in combination with either too much or too little trade or very low equilibrium levels of both compatibility and trade the paper concludes with the analysis of the international agreements on policies toward compatibility and evaluates the existing provisions in the wto legal system aimed at minimizing the trade inhibiting impact of standards and regulations in the area of technical compatibility

r d policies trade and process innovation we set up a simple trade model with two countries hosting one firm each the firms invest in cost reducing r d and each government may grant r d subsidies to the domestic firm we show that it is optimal for a government to provide higher r d subsidies the lower the level of trade costs even if the firms are independent monopolies if firms produce imperfect substitutes policy competition may become so fierce that only one of the firms survives international policy harmonization eliminates policy competition and ensures a symmetric outcome however it is shown that harmonization is not necessarily welfare maximizing the optimal coordinated policies may imply an asymmetric outcome with r d subsidies to only one of the firms

the relationship between gdp and electricity consumption in 10 asian countries the purpose of this study is to estimate the relationships between gdp and electricity consumption in 10 newly industrializing and developing asian countries using both single data sets and panel data procedures the empirical results from single data set indicate that the causality directions in the 10 asian countries are mixed while there is a uni directional short run causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption and a bi directional long run causality between electricity consumption and economic growth if the panel data procedure is implemented these empirical findings imply that electricity conservation policies through both rationalizing the electricity supply efficiency improvement to avoid the wastage of electricity and managing demand side to reduce the electricity consumption without affecting the end user benefits could be initiated without adverse effect on economic growth the findings on the long run relationship indicate that a sufficiently large supply of electricity can ensure that a higher level of economic growth

environmental quality competition and eco labeling abstract a three stage game of investment environmental quality provision and price competition is developed to study the impact of green technology investment eco labeling in a duopoly model of vertical product differentiation the firms incentives to invest in green technologies depend on their relative cost structure when firms are identical with respect to fixed costs both firms will always invest but if one firm is more efficient in investing then the other firm may or may not invest depending on the level of unit cost of investment quality competition will be tighter when the low quality firm is more efficient and looser when the high quality firm is more efficient in investing socially optimal investment for both firms is always positive but lower than in the duopoly solution in the absence of environmental externalities the quality dispersion chosen by profit maximizing firms may be too high or too low while environmental externalities increase the possibility low quality dispersion that is too low within the market solution finally and importantly ecolabeling can be used as a means of reducing excessive investment and increasing environmental quality that is too low

credibility of protection and incentives to innovate in recent trade policy debates it is often argued that temporary protection stimulates innovation this paper shows that the validity of the argument depends on the perceived credibility of protection policy if it is suspected that temporary protection will be removed early should innovation occur before its terminal date the protected firm invests less in r d than it does under free trade if it is expected that protection will be extended should no innovation have occurred by its terminal date investment falls below the free trade level and eventually to zero as the terminal date is approached

the political economy of declining industries senescent industry collapse revisited many observers have noted a strong tendency for protection once it is instituted to persist over time this paper first shows that persistent protection arises whenever lobbying is an alternative to costly adjustment with endogenous protection the level of tariffs is an increasing function of past tariffs the more an industry lobbies the greater the current protection it receives and the less it adjusts and the less the industry adjusts the more effective it is as a lobby in the future when the costs of lobbying and adjustment are fully variable declining industries contract more slowly over time and never fully adjust however the paper shows that adding a fixed cost of lobby formation or maintenance is sufficient to generate an endogenous collapse of protection such as that predicted by cassing and hillman 1986 american economic review 76 516 523 in which an industry abruptly terminates its lobbying and loses its protection finally the paper examines the well documented bias against growing industries in the lobbying process

imports as competitive discipline the role of the productivity gap abstract this paper addresses the impact of foreign competition on the competitive advantage of domestic firms and the role of trade policy in an endogenous growth framework it shows that the impact of foreign competition on r d and productivity depends on the industry s relative position trade liberalization promotes innovation and enhances welfare in mature industries but hinders growth and leads to market exit in infant industries with a large productivity gap in the latter case temporary protection promotes the survival of the firm and increases welfare at the margin hence we integrate the old argument for the temporary protection of infant industries with the notion that foreign competition fosters innovation and productivity

is the wto passe the wto has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements ptas should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand off where the wto has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage and is now passing the baton to ptas to finish the job this paper surveys a growing economics literature on international trade agreements and argues on this basis that the wto is not passe rather and subject to some caveats this survey of research to date suggests that the wto warrants strong support while a more cautious view of ptas seems appropriate

did us safeguards resuscitate harley davidson in the 1980s abstract this paper examines us safeguards applied to the motorcycle market in the 1980s after receiving temporary protection by means of a maximum tariff of over 45 harley davidson sales recovered dramatically simulations based on structural demand and supply estimates indicate that while safeguard tariffs did benefit harley davidson they only account for a fraction of its increased sales this is primarily because consumers perceived that harley davidson and japanese large motorcycles were poorly matched substitutes for each other our results provide little evidence that safeguard provisions triggered restructuring in harley davidson

economic growth and energy consumption the energy environmental kuznets curve for latin america and the caribbean abstract this paper investigates the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption using the hypothesis postulated for the energy environmental kuznets curve which assumes an inverted u shape relationship between income and energy consumption panel data for 22 latin american and caribbean countries for the period 1990 2011 were used absolute energy consumption was chosen as an environmental pressure indicator because energy consumption is the major contributor of emissions pollutants the results obtained in the estimations show that the hypothesis postulated for the energy environmental kuznets curve is not supported for the region on the contrary the results show an exponential growth as gross value added grows also notable differences are shown between the analyzed economies

rain agriculture and tariffs this paper examines whether and how rainfall shocks affect tariff setting in the agricultural sector in a model of strategic trade policy the authors show that the impact of a negative rainfall shock on optimal import tariffs is generally ambiguous depending on the weight placed by the domestic policy maker on tariff revenue profits and the consumer surplus the more weight placed on domestic profits the more likely it is that the policy maker will respond to a rainfall shortage by reducing import tariffs these findings are robust to alternative assumptions about market structure and the timing of the game using detailed panel data on applied tariffs and rainfall for 70 nations the authors find robust evidence that rainfall shortages generally induce policy makers to set lower tariffs on agricultural imports

behavioral responses to inheritance tax evidence from notches in france abstract for the first time we exploit quasi experimental variation to investigate the impact of inheritance taxation on wealth accumulation using bunching and difference in differences methods we directly estimate several behavioral responses during lifetime rather than relying solely on observations at death our empirical findings shed new light upon wealth accumulation and bequest motives taken together the small responses to inheritance tax estimated cannot be supported by the desire to retain control over wealth

equilibrium pollution taxes in a two industry open economy abstract this paper involves strategic implications of environmental policy in case of two international oligopolies when countries take part in an international environmental agreement and have agreed on national target levels for a global pollutant this set up permits an analysis of the design of optimal emission taxes across domestic producers by differentiating taxes between industries with different abatement cost demand and number of domestic firms governments are in a position to raise national net foreign rents it is argued that a single national emission trading programme encompassing all domestic producers cannot provide the equivalent strategic policy design

labor adjustment and gradual reform when is commitment important we analyze a model in which a government uses a second best policy to affect the reallocation of labor following a change in relative prices we consider two extreme cases in which the government has either unlimited or negligible ability to commit to future actions we discuss the factors that determine the importance of commitment ability and provide numerical examples the degree of commitment ability can alter the equilibrium policy both quantitatively and qualitatively in both extreme cases the dying sector is protected during the transition to a free market in order to decrease the amount of unemployment

the impact of energy consumption and economic development on ecological footprint and co2 emissions evidence from a markov switching equilibrium correction model abstract reducing the impact of air pollution and global environmental degradation on human health and quality of life for qatari citizens represents the most important objective of the qatar national vision 2030 with respect to this vision this study investigates the effects of economic growth energy consumption trade openness urbanization and financial development on environmental degradation by using the markov switching equilibrium correction model with shifts in both the intercept and income per capita slope for the period 1970 2015 unlike existing studies and in addition to the co 2 emissions pollutant this paper uses the total ecological footprint and ecological carbon footprint as new proxies of environmental degradation empirical results show strong evidence for cointegration with markov shifts in particular our results show that the non control for breaks can hide the true relationship among variables the results show also that when controlling for breaks the environment kuznets curve ekc hypothesis holds for the co 2 emissions and ecological carbon footprint pollutants and the u shaped behavior holds for the total ecological footprint moreover the results show that these two behaviors ekc and u shaped are regime dependent regarding the other explanatory variables the results show that trade openness and urbanization worsen ecological footprint however the electricity consumption and financial development are positively related to the ecological footprint and negatively related to ecological carbon footprint and co 2 emissions finally we found evidence for the growth hypothesis for both pollutants based on these results a detailed economic energy and environmental policy is proposed and discussed for the case of qatar

time consistent protection with learning by doing abstract can a government induce efficiency gains in his domestic industry by protecting it against foreign competition would such trade protection be time consistent the present paper builds a dynamic equilibrium model that accounts for learning by doing effects that link firms strategies over time the model shows that the existence of dynamic economies of scale suffices to overcome the traditional government s lack of commitment of its tariff policy this paper compares the infinite horizon markov perfect equilibrium of this game with the dynamic equilibrium under commitment as well as the static nash equilibrium equilibrium strategies are derived in closed form by solving a linear quadratic differential game optimal trade policy involves higher tariff levels than in the static setup in order to account for future gains in efficiency under reasonable assumptions the unique stable mpe is characterized by a domestic price and tariff that decrease as experience accumulates thus supporting the future liberalization of trade as an equilibrium feature of this dynamic game

foreign direct investment with unemployment and endogenous taxes and tariffs it is well known that high tariffs can induce foreign direct investment or tariff jumping this paper analyzes tariff jumping in the context of a host government which can set specific tariffs and taxes subject to the credibility constraint that the chosen levels be optimal once capital is irreversibly in place the foreign multinational is assumed to choose its location and level of investment strategically taking into account the induced tax and tariff levels in the presence of unemployment the optimal tariff exceeds the optimal tax for any given level of capital investment leading to foreign direct investment

new evidence on altruism a study of tiaa cref retirees this paper investigates the role in household wealth accumulation of saving for bequests it employs data from a 1988 survey of tiaa cref annuitants designed to measure pension and other net worth as well as lifetime earnings about half of the households in the data plan to leave estates and the authors find that their behavior conforms with theoretical altruistic models for the same families the amount of wealth that the authors attribute to estate building is large nevertheless altruism towards one s children does not seem to be the major explanation of saving in the overall sample copyright 1996 by american economic association

eco dumping capital mobility and international trade a small open economy s optimal environmental policy is studied in a model with international capital mobility and local pollution the country produces traded as well as non traded goods is it in the country s interest to engage in ecological dumping by choosing generous pollution allowances for the traded good sector the answer depends decisively on the policy regime in use dumping is not optimal if the country ensures that the implicit rent on pollution is completely appropriated within the country however if the implicit factor reward on pollution leaves the country because it accrues to foreign owners of mobile capital the local welfare maximizing government tends to discriminate against the traded good sector the opposite of ecological dumping

analysis of south korea s economic growth carbon dioxide emission and energy consumption using the markov switching model abstract recently many countries have been making an effort to reduce their carbon dioxide co2 emission and as part of such effort the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc adopted the kyoto protocol in 1997 south korea is very likely to be included in the second batch of countries that must reduce their greenhouse gas emission after the end of the implementation of the kyoto protocol in 2012 reducing the country s co2 emission however can have an impact on the economy therefore in this study the correlations between south korea s economic growth co2 emission and energy consumption were analyzed the analysis period was from q1 1991 to q4 2011 and the analysis methods that were used were regression analysis for the relational analysis among the various overall indices and the markov switching model for a more detailed analysis the results of the analyses showed that south korea s economic growth and co2 emission were coincidental the correlation analysis of the country s economic growth and energy consumption showed a significant correlation between economic growth and fossil fuels which emit co2 such as coal in the industrial sector petroleum products in the industrial and transportation sectors and liquefied natural gas lng in the residential commercial and industrial sectors it is expected that the results of this study will pave the way for the conduct of various researches on controlling the country s co2 emission management and for suggestions for such to be given such as policies for reducing the energy consumption in each sector using the methodology proposed in this study

economic growth energy conservation and emissions reduction a comparative analysis based on panel data for 8 asian pacific countries this study was conducted to evaluate the causality between energy consumption gdp growth and carbon emissions for eight asia pacific countries from 1971 to 2005 using the panel data the results indicate that there are long run equilibrium relationships between these variables additionally causality from energy consumption to co2 emissions was observed generally but there were some opposite relationships also parameter estimations of the panel data model indicate that there are great differences in the carbon emissions the efficiencies of energy use carbon emissions of unit gdp and unit energy consumption between developed and developing countries the base carbon emissions per capita energy consumption and efficiency of energy use in developing countries are far lower than in developed countries however the co2 emissions per unit of energy use is higher although developing countries may reduce their co2 emission per unit energy use total energy consumption will rise rapidly with economic development thus developing countries must determine how to undergo economic growth while conserving energy and reducing emissions to respond to global climate change it is necessary to develop innovative technology for energy use transform the energy structure and conduct the clean development mechanism

tax avoidance and intra family transfers to what extent do people avoid taxes on intra family transfers be quests and gifts and how would integration unification of the dif ferent transfers taxes affect tax avoidance these issues are important for families and their welfare as well as for governments and their pos sibilities of raising revenue from transfer taxes in this paper we study the effects of transfer taxes on altruistic parents transfers to their chil dren using a theoretical model we find that altruistic parents do not necessarily tax minimize however in some cases when they do there is an infinitely large excess burden of a transfer tax we also find that integration of transfer taxes reduces tax avoidance all tax avoidance is eliminated with complete integration

causal relationship between energy consumption and gdp revisited the case of korea 1970 1999 abstract causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is investigated applying a multivariate model of capital labor energy and gdp usual btu energy aggregate is substituted with a divisia aggregate in an attempt to mitigate aggregation bias to test for granger causality in the presence of cointegration among the variables we employ a vector error correction model rather than a vector autoregressive model empirical results for korea over the period 1970 1999 suggest a long run bidirectional causal relationship between energy and gdp and short run unidirectional causality running from energy to gdp the source of causation in the long run is found to be the error correction terms in both directions

co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth in turkey abstract this paper examines the long run and causal relationship issues between economic growth carbon emissions energy consumption and employment ratio in turkey by using autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach of cointegration empirical results for turkey over the period 1968 2005 suggest an evidence of a long run relationship between the variables at 5 significance level in turkey the estimated income elasticity of carbon emissions per capita is 0 606 and the income elasticity of energy consumption per capita is 1 375 results for the existence and direction of granger causality show that neither carbon emissions per capita nor energy consumption per capita cause real gdp per capita but employment ratio causes real gdp per capita in the short run in addition ekc hypothesis at causal framework by using a linear logarithmic model is not valid in turkish case the overall results indicates that energy conservation policies such as rationing energy consumption and controlling carbon dioxide emissions are likely to have no adverse effect on the real output growth of turkey

how strong are bequest motives evidence based on estimates of the demand for life insurance and annuities this paper presents new empirical evidence in support of the view that a significant fraction of total saving is motivated by the desire to leave bequests specifically i find that social security annuity benefits significantly raise life insurance holdings and depress private annuity holdings among elderly individuals these patterns indicate that the typical household would choose to maintain a positive fraction of its resources in bequeathable forms even if insurance markets were perfect evidence on the relationship between insurance purchases and total resources reinforces this conclusion

how inheriting affects bequest plans we present and test the idea that bequest planning is linked with the experience of inheriting we consider a family tradition of bequeathing as a channel through which the intention to bequeath is moulded by and is positively correlated with the experience of inheriting using data from the survey on health ageing and retirement in europe share we find that the experience of inheriting enhances the intention to bequeath independently of the positive impact of wealth we also find that the expectation of inheriting has a positive impact on the intention to bequeath controlling for the expected increase in wealth on account of future inheritances

the influence of real output renewable and non renewable energy trade and financial development on carbon emissions in the top renewable energy countries due to tremendous increase in the level of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in the last several decades a number of studies in the energy growth environment literature have attempted to identify the determinants of co2 emissions a major criticism related to the existing studies we realize is the selection of panel estimation techniques almost all studies use panel methods that ignore the issue of cross sectional dependence even though countries in the panel are most likely heterogeneous and cross sectionally dependent in addition the majority of existing studies use aggregate energy consumption and thus fail to identify the impacts of energy consumption by sources on the environment in order to fulfill the mentioned gaps in the literature this empirical study analyzes the influence of the real income renewable energy consumption non renewable energy consumption trade openness and financial development on co2 emissions in the ekc model for the top countries listed in the renewable energy country attractiveness index by employing heterogeneous panel estimation techniques with cross section dependence we find that the analyzed variables become stationary at their first differences by using the cadf and the cips unit root tests and the analyzed variables are cointegrated by employing the lm bootstrap cointegration test by using the fmols and the dols we also find that increases in renewable energy consumption trade openness and financial development decrease carbon emissions while increases in non renewable energy consumption contribute to the level of emissions and the ekc hypothesis is supported for the top renewable energy countries

bequest behavior and the effect of heirs earnings testing the altruistic model of bequests that parents transfer resources to children because of altruistic concern is a reasonable a priori assumption however economic theories of altruistic transfers have produced many counterintuitive conclusions and consequently much debate when applied to bequests these theories predict that inheritances will compensate for earnings differences between siblings as well as between parents and children this paper tests these implications using a new data set centered on federal estate tax returns little support can be found for an altruistic theory of bequests this finding has implications for macroeconomic policy government transfer programs and inequality copyright 1996 by american economic association

incentives to create jobs regional subsidies national trade policy and foreign direct investment a national authority wishes to attract foreign direct investment fdi to create local jobs we analyse the optimal national trade policy when local authorities might offer subsidies to convince a multi national enterprise mne to invest in their jurisdiction with centralised decision making or with allocation of investment to particular localities the central authority s optimal policy is to use a high tariff to avoid payment of any subsidy to the mne despite this some socially undesirable but locally desirable fdi cannot be avoided if local authorities compete to offer subsidies to attract local investment then the central government s optimal policy is to try to discourage fdi by choosing a low tariff despite this some socially undesirable and even locally undesirable fdi prevails we conduct our analysis both assuming an upper bound on tariffs as would be consistent with trade liberalisation and allowing tariffs to vary freely the effect of increasing trade liberalisation depends heavily on the system of granting local subsidies if the system is centralised trade liberalisation decreases the range of parameters for which fdi occurs if the system is decentralised and competitive it increases this range

credibility of trade policy reform and investment the mexican experience abstract this paper assesses whether the program of trade liberalization undertaken by mexico after 1985 was undermined by lack of credibility it provides an empirical counterpart to some of the credibility issues that have been discussed elsewhere in the literature and proposes a methodology based on the estimation of a probit model to measure the probability of trade policy reversal due to the likelihood of occurrence of a balance of payments crisis it is shown that the probability of trade policy reversal reduced indeed the rate of capital accumulation during the first years of the reform

high tech and productivity evidence from israeli industrial firms abstract the main purpose of this study is to characterize and analyze high technology industrial firms a technology index is constructed and used to classify firms the largest concentration of hightech firms is israel is found in electronics and transport equipment industries and the lowest in textiles and clothing high tech firms appear to be more productive more export oriented pay higher wages and earn higher rates of return than low tech firms the fact that high tech firms in israel are export oriented is shown to be consistent with the international trade theories of comparative advantage and strategic rent seeking

diagnosis murder the death of state death taxes since 1976 more than 30 states have eliminated their death taxes and many others have reduced them this unexplored case of interstate tax competition presents a unique opportunity to develop a new more satisfying definition of competitor based on historical elderly migration patterns using data from 1967 onward we outline the recent history of state death tax competition and present a spatial econometric analysis interstate tax competition is evident and grows stronger when using migration based definitions of competitors the article concludes with still more evidence of interstate tax competition the recent movement by states to effectively revive their death taxes jel h7 d7 i introduction the federal estate tax has received wide attention especially because its elimination has been a centerpiece of president george w bush s tax proposals 1 largely overlooked however is the quiet revolution that has been taking place at the state level since 1976 31 of the 48 contiguous states have repealed their death or estate inheritance and gift eig taxes instead relying only on the pick up tax whereby states capture a portion of the federal estate tax liability but do not increase the overall liability of the estate 2 of the remaining 12 states that still have eig taxes 2 have enacted legislation that will eliminate them by 2005 and others are considering doing so beyond the outright elimination of eig taxes many states have also acted to reduce them in a variety of ways such as exempting certain beneficiaries such as the spouse this trend is noteworthy for several reasons foremost it appears to us a prime example of intense interstate tax competition due to the growing size and political influence of the elderly population there is additional political pressure because states may worry that high eig taxes will drive the high income elderly to move to bordering states or retirement havens the stakes may be substantial for example longino and crown 1989 estimate that florida had a net gain of 5 billion in income from the elderly migrants it received between 1985 and 1990 and sastry 1992 73 estimates that one new job is created for every 2 5 elderly migrants it receives state eig tax competition also provides us with a unique opportunity to explore alternative definitions of competitor states beyond simple geography because the movements of the tax base the elderly are fairly easy to track via historical migration data yet no research to our knowledge has explored interstate eig tax competition furthermore these widespread changes in state eig taxes provide substantial cross sectional and time series variation that has been mostly overlooked by researchers interested in the behavioral effects of estate taxes 3 state eig tax policy is also still in flux current and proposed changes in the federal estate tax have substantial revenue consequences for states effectively eliminating eig tax revenues for those that rely solely on the pick up tax how will the states react to this change at present several states have enacted or are considering legislation that would effectively decouple their eig taxes from the federal estate tax and so would preserve the revenue source indeed as the federal estate tax is slowly eliminated eig taxes in states that continue to use them may be the only remaining taxes on bequests yet little is known about them our research seeks to fill this void using state level data from 1967 to the present we first describe the brief history and geographical pattern of these widespread reductions in state eig taxes to our knowledge ours is the first research to document in a systematic way this phenomenon we begin with a chronology of the states that eliminated completely their eig taxes thereby choosing to rely instead only on the pick up tax however there are many other ways that the states may reduce their eig taxes such as increasing exemptions or reducing tax rates

opportunity cost trade policies and the efficiency of firms abstract this paper analyzes the effects of trade policies on the technological effort of a firm entering a new market in the context of a developing country we depart from previous literature by bringing into focus the opportunity cost of technological effort a firm that spends time in acquiring a more efficient technology delays the commercialization of its products thus incurring an opportunity cost in terms of profits forgone protection increases both the opportunity cost and the benefits from technological effort in the case of linear demand function and constant returns to scale technology protection is shown to unambiguously reduce the protected firm s technological effort export subsidy is also shown to reduce technological effort when the potential level of exports under free trade is high

inefficient foreign borrowing a dual and common agency perspective studying the implications of uncoordinated borrowing the paper first looks at whether and when countries borrow too much in the aggregate it then revisits the original sin debate analyzing whether and when equity portfolio investment international portfolio diversification domestic currency denomination and longer maturities enhance borrowing countries access to international lending the paper thereby relates a country s level and quality of access to international capital markets to a variety of institutional features such as the level of domestic savings their location the extent of control rights held by political authorities and the interests of dominant domestic political forces

infant industry tariff protection with pressure groups abstract this paper analyzes the increasing tariff protection in the spanish iron and steel industry over the first third of the 20th century learning effects are explicitly included to model a dynamic game of trade liberalization the government chooses the tariff level while firms decide how much to produce each period firms production decisions determine their future cost levels assuming that learning reduces only fixed costs the dynamic game may be solved in closed form so that the optimality and time consistency of the actual policy can be evaluated furthermore the model is used to measure the relative importance of producers and consumers on the government s equilibrium tariff strategy the model is calibrated for year 1913 and it is shown that the existence of important unexploited dynamic economies of scale may have justified high tariff levels at that time in addition the results also show that the spanish iron and steel producers behaved more competitively than what is commonly assumed and that the government s protection policy was not significantly conditioned by steel producers

economic growth energy consumption financial development international trade and co2 emissions in indonesia this study examines the linkages among economic growth energy consumption financial development trade openness and co2 emissions over the period of 1975q1 2011q4 in the case of indonesia the stationary analysis is performed by using zivot andrews structural break unit root test and the ardl bounds testing approach for a long run relationship between the series in the presence of structural breaks the causal relation between the concerned variable is examined by the vecm granger causality technique and robustness of causal analysis is tested by innovative accounting approach iaa our results confirm that the variables are cointegrated it means that the long run relationship exists in the presence of structural break stemming in the series the empirical findings indicate that economic growth and energy consumption increases co2 emissions while financial development and trade openness compact it the vecm causality analysis has shown the feedback hypothesis between energy consumption and co2 emissions economic growth and co2 emissions are also interrelated i e bidirectional causality financial development granger causes co2 emissions the study opens up a new policy insights to control the environment from degradation by using energy efficient technologies financial development and trade openness can also play their role in improving the environmental quality

informational benefits of international treaties international treaties allow a minister in one country to learn about the beliefs held by a minister in another country so allowing each to make better decisions when the net benefits of environmental policy are uncertain a country which participates in negotiating an environmental treaty or which supports strong environmental action thereby provides information to another country that such action can be worthwhile this dimension of international environmental agreements helps explain why countries negotiate treaties why these treaties often implement the nash non cooperative equilibrium why agreement to a treaty by a country deemed not particularly favorable to it can strengthen environmental action and why treaties may invoke a minimum participation clause the informational mechanism we discuss holds even if physical spillovers are absent and even if monitoring and enforcement are infeasible our approach can explain additional phenomena how requirements for approval by several bodies within a country can increase support for a policy and why simultaneous action can lead to better outcomes than sequential action

to own or not to own your life insurance policy abstract life insurance proceeds are generally subject to the estate tax an exception is when the policy is owned by the beneficiaries and the insured gives up ownership and control including the ability to change beneficiaries should the insured strategically own the policy contract and potentially subject proceeds to estate and inheritance taxes or relinquish control with the beneficiaries owning the policy and escape such transfer taxes this paper addresses how the estate tax influences the choice of life insurance ownership using samples of estate tax returns the empirical evidence suggests that those facing high estate tax rates are more likely to forgo ownership and have proceeds excluded from their estates and provides further evidence on the incentive effect of taxes and in support of the strategic bequest motive

strategic environmental policy under incomplete information this paper introduces incomplete information into recent analyses of strategic environmental policy it is shown how asymmetric information between planners and producers affects national incentives to impose strategic environmental standards on domestic industries in international oligopolistic competition relative to the full information case incomplete information is likely to mitigate allocative distortions originating from strategic behaviour a countervailing effect tending to raise distortion is however revealed from the analysis this effect is absent when governments intervene in free trade through direct production subsidies the results suggest that incentives to capture foreign rents are less reduced due to private information when environmental standards rather than direct production subsidies are the strategic instrument

capital subsidies and countervailing duties in oligopolistic industries abstract under gatt countries are allowed to impose countervailing duties to offset foreign subsidies however gatt rules limit the amount of duty to the amount of the subsidy this paper examines a generalized model of imperfect competition with capital subsidies and shows the conditions under which a countervailing duty will offset the effect of the subsidy on exports also conditions are specified under which exports will increase despite the imposition of the maximum tariff under gatt in addition the paper considers whether profit shifting motives for a subsidy still exist even when this maximum duty is anticipated

effects of financial development indicators on energy consumption and co2 emission of european east asian and oceania countries the financial crisis is considered a major economic issue and energy consumption and pollution are believed to be one of the most important environmental concerns in the new millennium the review on investigation of the nexus among energy consumption gdp growth financial development and co2 emission has shown no definitive conclusion apart from that the effects of financial development on energy consumption are not yet understood properly thus this article investigates the effects of financial indicator shocks i e credit market and stock market shocks on energy consumption and carbon dioxide co2 emissions and vice versa panel vector auto regression pvar models were employed to investigate the relationships in 13 european and 12 east asia and oceania countries from 1989 to 2011 findings emphasize the important role of co2 emission and energy consumption on explaining each other s deviation with only the degree of effect differing although energy consumption and co2 emission shocks on financial indicators such as private sector credit is not very pronounced in both groups of countries but the strength of energy consumption shock on stock return rate in european countries is greater than east asian and oceania countries conversely shocks to stock return rate influence energy consumption especially in long horizon in case of east asia and oceania countries

bequest taxes inter vivos gifts and the bequest motive abstract this paper investigates the existence of an operative bequest motive by testing whether state bequest taxes influence the giving of inter vivos gifts a significant positive relation between bequest tax rates and both the probability and level of inter vivos gifts is found suggesting that at least some portion of bequests is intentional

electricity consumption and economic growth evidence from korea abstract this paper investigates the short and long run causality issues between electricity consumption and economic growth in korea by using the co integration and error correction models it employs annual data covering the period 1970 2002 the overall results show that there exists bi directional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth this means that an increase in electricity consumption directly affects economic growth and that economic growth also stimulates further electricity consumption

policy designs in a dynamic model of infant industry protection abstract this paper takes the neoclassical infant industry model allows agents to respond to future expectations and reveals previously unexplained relationships between protection and outcome policy which projects to protect the industry until international competitiveness may not necessarily succeed consistent to the mixed empirical evaluations to guarantee success protection has to last longer however for success to be an equilibrium protection can last shorter decline after take off is also an equilibrium when adjustment speed is bounded increasing the protection rate is not isomorphic to decreasing its duration in policy design adjustment speed critical industry scale and policy duration are all relevant

the impact of parallel imports on investments in cost reducing research and development abstract we develop a two country model of endogenous investment in process innovation by a manufacturer facing competition from parallel imports pi we find that the distortions associated with pi inhibit innovation however the difference between the manufacturer s expected profits under successful and failed innovation is u shaped in the cost of engaging in pi thus the reduction in r d investment depends on both legality of pi and transport costs the reduction in innovation could harm global welfare depending on whether the manufacturer was deterring pi with a high wholesale price if so banning such trade would raise expected welfare

how many franchises in a market abstract this paper studies how firms use their number of franchises as a strategic tool firms can commit to high output by creating many franchises however signing a single franchise contract with a low wholesale price is an equally effective way to generate output the value of granting many franchises is undercut when firms can sign contracts afterwards so firms place only a single franchise in a market this finding reverses previous results which did not model contracts the same issues arise in international competition policy where countries use anti trust policy to affect their number of exporters and use subsidies to affect the choices of exporters

green industrial policy green growth requires green technologies production techniques that economize on exhaustible resources and emit fewer greenhouse gases the availability of green technologies both lowers social costs in the transition to a green growth path and helps achieve a satisfactory rate of material progress under that path the theoretical case in favour of using industrial policy to facilitate green growth is quite strong economists traditional scepticism on industrial policy is grounded instead on pragmatic considerations having to do with the difficulty of achieving well targeted and effective interventions in practice while these objections deserve serious attention i argue that they are not insurmountable a key objective of this paper is to show how the practice of industrial policy can be improved by designing institutional frameworks that counter both informational and political risks

a model for determining the optimal lease payment in the solar lease business for residences and third party companies with focus on the region and on multi family housing complexes abstract the solar lease business is a recent market trend that has been introduced in many countries an example is the u s solar lease payment lp business which is a payment facility for leasing the solar pv system where the customers pay a certain amount to a third party company in the solar lease business the profit obtained by residences and third party companies depends on the solar lp several impact factors should be simultaneously considered when estimating the solar lp that guarantees the profitability of the business for both sides this study aimed to develop a model for determining the optimal solar lp in the solar lease business for residences and third party companies a genetic algorithm was utilized to solve the trade off problem among the many factors involved the optimal solar lp was provided according to two categories i the electricity generation rate by region and ii the electricity consumption rates of multi family housing complexes in terms of the region the optimal solar lp depended on the electricity generation rate and the difference between the highest and lowest monthly solar lps per unit was us 0 30 in terms of the electricity consumption rate the optimal solar lp depended on the electricity consumption rate and the number of units and the difference between the highest and lowest monthly solar lps per unit was us 3 14 the developed model makes it possible for the government to suggest the optimal solar lp for promoting the solar lease business and to develop a solar pv system

rational expectations econometric analysis of changes in regime an investigation of the term structure of interest rates abstract this paper is of interest both for its methodological contribution of new tools for analyzing rational expectations models and for its substantive conclusions concerning the term structure of interest rates during the monetary experiment of october 1979 the paper studies systems subject to changes in regime interpreted here as occasional discrete shifts in the parameters governing the time series behavior of exogenous economic variables the specification is shown to be quite tractable both theoretically and empirically the technique is used to analyze yields on three month treasury bills and ten year treasury bonds during 1962 to 1987 a constant parameter linear model for short term rates is shown to be inconsistent both with the univariate time series properties of short rates and with the observed bivariate relation between long and short rates under the expectations hypothesis of the term structure an alternative nonlinear model that admits the possibility of changes in regime affords a much better description of the univariate process for short rates moreover the cross equation restrictions implied by the expectations hypothesis of the term structure are consistent with the nonlinear specification indeed the residuals of the restricted relation have a standard error of only 0 8 basis points this is a third less than that of a completely unrestricted linear regression of long rates on short rates and compares with an unconditional standard deviation of long rates of 142 basis points i conclude that once the recognition by bond traders of changes in regime is taken into account the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates holds up fairly well for these data

the sensitivity of strategic and corrective r d policy in oligopolistic industries abstract we evaluate the case for r d subsidies in export sectors when the outcome of r d is uncertain and the product market is oligopolistic when r d reduces expected costs in the particular sense of first order stochastic dominance a national strategic basis for r d subsidies exists whether firms choose prices or quantities this must be balanced against a corrective incentive to tax r d whenever the number of domestic firms exceeds one however when r d increases the riskiness of the cost distribution as well the results may switch there emerges a strategic incentive to tax and a corrective incentive to subsidize r d

learning by doing export subsidies and industry growth japanese steel in the 1950s and 1960s abstract the paper examines the japanese steel industry to evaluate the role of export subsidy policies export subsidies can be instrumental in increasing an industry s cost competitiveness in the presence of learning by doing a characteristic of production in the steel industry using a dynamic estimation model this paper identifies a significant learning rate of above 20 with little intra industry knowledge spillover simulations made with the model indicate that the subsidy policy had an insignificant impact on industry growth the paper finds that the export subsidy had a small effect in stimulating industry growth because the estimated steel supply function was relatively inelastic

the relationship between co2 emissions and economic growth the case of korea with nonlinear evidence abstract using star models we investigate the nonlinear dynamic properties and the interdependence of co2 emissions and economic growth for korea the estimation results indicate that the growth rate of both co2 emissions and industrial production exhibit a significant nonlinear asymmetric dynamics while the linear granger causality test finds no causality in any direction the results of the nonlinear granger causality tests show a two way causality between co2 emissions and economic growth the strong mutual causation between co2 emissions and economic activities indicates that the economic impact from co2 mitigation is expected to be higher in korea this suggests that the appropriate energy and environmental policy be to mitigate co2 emissions while having less impact on the economy

carbon dioxide co2 emissions during urbanization a comparative study between china and japan as the world s largest emitter of co2 china is facing increasing domestic and international pressures on emissions mitigation considering japan s leading position in energy conservation this paper conducts a comparative study between china and japan at the urbanization stages to analyze the similarities as well as differences of influencing factors of co2 emissions results indicate that although co2 emissions in japan and china showed the similar characteristics of rigid growth during the urbanization processes significant differences exist in factors such as co2 emissions per capita energy structure and energy intensity between the two countries which are the determinants for co2 emissions growth a cointegration model is constructed to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between co2 emissions and factors including gdp urbanization level energy intensity and cement manufacture empirical results show that there is a quadratic relationship between income growth and co2 emissions granger causality test is then adopted to explore the causal relationships among the variables the future co2 emissions and emission reduction potentials in china are estimated based on scenario analysis finally japan s valuable experience of reducing energy intensity and optimizing energy structure is concluded to provide important policy implications for china s strategic low carbon planning and low carbon transition

a review on energy systems and ghg emissions reduction plan and policy of the republic of korea past present and future abstract the primary objectives of this study were to understand the energy plans and policies of the republic of korea rok and outline its development in the energy sector both qualitative and quantitative information were gathered and evaluated in the context of the defined objectives the study has outlined that the primary motivational factor for achieving the current improved energy status of the rok was to support the rapid industrial growth and socio economic development of the country the major steps taken were to manage the country s escalating energy demand and to minimize the greenhouse emissions in energy sector along its progressive economic development the economic growth of the country had good correlation with the escalating fossil fuel consumption this is however among the great concerns in the country in today s global agenda of sustainable energy managements the country has been primarily relying on the imported energy sources which averaged to 84 including nuclear generation of the total primary energy supply tpes during the period of 2000 2014 oil has been the main source of energy supply in the country followed by coal and natural gas penetration of renewable energy technologies was primarily motivated to meet the country s strategic goals including the downscaling of ghg emission by 37 by 2030 compared to the business as usual bau situation despite the different initiations in the energy management renewable energy sources covered only 4 5 of the tpes in 2014 in addition the country s urgent need now is also towards the management of the available natural resources to support the growing demand of bio economy at this particular interest the country needs to identify the sustainable availability of resources to balance the multi fold sectors this demands comprehensive energy system analysis along with identifying the avenues of the utilization of biomass resources

planned and unplanned bequests we distinguish between bequests that are planned as part of a lifetime optimization process and those that are the unplanned result of errors in forecasting the date of death given the initial endowment we expect a positive relation between the bequest and the planning horizon and a negative relation between unexpectedly long life and the bequest a unique data set on wealthy decedents and their parents provides measures of expected horizons based on parents longevity both predictions are confirmed and there is an especially large and significant positive relation between the bequest and the length of the planning horizon

the state as strategist in international business research no matter what strategy managers choose cross national differences in states strategic capabilities and objectives affect multinational corporations capabilities to manage interdependent operations in this paper we develop four attribute dimensions along which states strategic economic capabilities vary we then apply these dimensions to show how they contribute to familiar international business models of managerial process mnc strategy and organizational structure and country competitiveness

political influence and the dynamic consistency of policy garfinkel department of economics university of fornia 3151 social science plaza irvine ca 92697 lee artment of economics university of california 3151 soscience plaza irvine ca 92697 and international monfund 700 19th street nw washington dc 20431 we k without implicating avinash dixit amihai glazer chel grossman luisa lambertini stergios skaperdas an ymous referee and seminar participants at the university alifornia los angeles california state universityerton and the 1998 winter meetings of the econometociety for helpful comments on previous drafts of this r which had been circulated under the title political ipline and the dynamic consistency of policy the s expressed in this paper are those of the authors and ld not be attributed to the international monetary fund see torsten persson and guido tabellini 1990 for a ul survey of this literature

markets and regulatory hold up problems abstract many regulatory programs such as environmental regulation are effective only if firms make irreversible investments that reduce the cost of compliance a firm potentially subject to regulation may therefore behave strategically by not investing thereby forcing the regulator to void the proposed regulation we show that such incentives which resemble a hold up problem may not be overcome when government s only tool is the imposition of an emissions tax the hold up problem can be overcome by the issuance of tradeable permits a time consistent equilibrium exists with all firms investing and the government imposing regulations even if no permits are traded and their market price is low indeed an observation of no trade may indicate that pollution abatement is great

do credible domestic institutions promote credible international agreements we examine the relationship between international policy coordination and domestic policy reputation when both are self sustaining we show that domestic policy commitment does not necessarily facilitate international cooperation rather efficient policies may be most easily sustained when governments are unable to pre commit to policy domestically moreover the lack of domestic commitment is more likely to facilitate international cooperation the larger the international spillovers of domestic policies are

time inconsistency of protectionist programs protectionist trade policies have long been advocated as second best instruments to achieve certain national objectives in situations where there is a market imperfection in essence protection provides time and resources for firms to undertake cost reducing investments recently there has been an emergence of new arguments to justify the implementation of a national industrial policy to encourage investment and to ensure the competitiveness of targeted industries also at the theoretical level a new argument known as strategic trade policy has emerged according to this argument protectionism gives domestic firms strategic advantage against foreign firms to capture a greater share of export markets where rents are not competed away actually the performance of protectionist programs has been grim industries have not adapted and protection has had to be renewed again and again arguments justifying protection have avoided this issue by implicitly assuming that authorities can credibly precommit to eliminate protection this is a very strong assumption in fact government actions are not exogenous but they are rather the result of an optimization process or they are best responses to political pressures as stressed in the public choice literature 2 therefore if authorities capitulate to protectionist pressures in the present they are unlikely to resist them in the future in the event that the targeted firm would not have adapted the inability of authorities to precommit to the unconditional elimination of protection generates a trade off for the firm if during the program the firm does not invest sufficiently in cost

econometric analysis of trade exports imports energy consumption and co2 emission in six regions abstract the aim of this study is to explore the bi directional long run relationship between trade energy consumption trade co 2 emission exports energy consumption exports co 2 emission imports energy consumption and imports co 2 emission 189 countries from six different regions namely asia pacific eastern europe the americas middle east and north africa mena sub saharan africa ssa and western europe were selected the panel fully modified ols fmols was utilized taking the period of 1990 2011 the panel results show that all the regions excluding eastern europe show a long run positive relationship between the trade variables energy consumption and between the trade variable co 2 emission however at the country level the results reveal that the feedback long run positive relationship between the trade variables energy consumption and co 2 emission takes place in most cases when the share of trade of goods and services to gdp is significant and the level of the countries development is high however the negative or the non significant long run relationship between the variables takes place generally in countries when the trade variables do not play a large share in their gdp and when these countries are in early development stages

hidden regimes and the demand for carbon dioxide from motor gasoline abstract perhaps the most tactile source of anthropogenic carbon dioxide co2 emissions stem from vehicle use because consumers are well aware of their price and quantity decisions it is likely that consumer demand for co2 emissions from motor gasoline are quite responsive to the overall state of the economy using a structurally identified markov switching demand model i find that co2 emissions respond asymmetrically to changes in income and the price of gasoline in expansionary and contracting states of the economy the findings of this paper indicate that flexible policy instruments have the potential to mitigate undue burden on consumers and producers compared to their static counterparts

renewable energy policies and contradictions in causality a case of next 11 countries abstract numerous studies on the causal relationship between economic growth energy consumption and carbon dioxide co2 emissions have shown divergence in policy recommendations which arises mainly due to the choice of methodology and the period of study this inconclusiveness in policy prescriptions might turn out to be critical when the renewable energy policies of the developing nations are considered our study analyses the causal relationship between economic growth carbon emissions fossil fuel and renewable energy consumption in next 11 countries during the period of 1990 2016 along with conducting parametric and non parametric causality tests together introducing the geweke 1982 causality test in the literature of energy economics we attempt to establish a wholesome aspect of policy design by comparing and complementing results of different causality analysis and how the causality directions should comply with the context setting our empirical evidence confirms that robust renewable energy policy can be designed by complementing the various causality test results rather than focusing on one particular causality test

international r d rivalry and industrial strategy this paper presents a theory of government intervention which provides an explanation for industrial strategy policies such as r d or export subsidies in imperfectly competitive international markets domestic net welfare is improved by the capture of a greater share of the output of rent earning industries although the subsidy ridden noncooperative international equilibrium is jointly suboptimal behaviour of governments and firms is modelled as a three stage subgame perfect nash equilibrium the assumption that the government is the first player in this game allows it to influence equilibrium outcomes by altering the set of credible actions open to firms

choosing between gifts and bequests how taxes affect the timing of wealth transfers abstract a number of theories have been advanced to explain the size and timing of intergenerational transfers one factor only recently explored is the effects of taxes and in particular the estate tax on such transfers this paper represents the first attempt to explore how capital gains and gift taxes in addition to the estate tax interact to influence incentives in the timing of transfers using estate tax data and exploiting variations in state inheritance gift and capital gains tax rates this paper finds taxes to be an important consideration in the choice between gifts and bequests in particular each of capital gains and gift taxes are found to be important determinants of the timing of transfers these findings are robust to a number of specifications that control for borrowing charitable bequests marital status and the portfolio composition of wealth transfers

industrial targeting experimentation and long run specialization abstract this paper emphasizes the experimental nature of industrial targeting policies under uncertainty in a small open economy a government promotes entry of new firms in selected industries and updates its beliefs about the country s comparative advantage in a bayesian way this selective targeting policy is analyzed in the framework of a special type of statistical decision problem known as the multi armed bandit the paper analyzes how the costs and benefits of learning about a country s comparative advantage depend on the characteristics of the targeted industries the framework suggests that even an optimally designed industrial targeting policy may eventually steer the country away from specializing according to its true comparative advantage

intergenerational transfers and the accumulation of wealth h t ouseholds acquire wealth from two sources they save out of income they have earned and they receive transfers from other people the first method of wealth accumulation goes under the name of life cycle saving in which people save during their working lives and dissave after retirement the second involves either an inter vivos transfer that is a transfer between living people or a bequest a transfer that occurs at the death of the donor while inter vivos transfers and bequests will arise in dynastic models where preferences include a taste for the well being of one s descendents few empirical life cycle models reflect these concerns indeed a sharp debate has arisen over the ability of the simple life cycle model to explain observed wealth accumulation understanding the relative sizes of these sources of wealth accumulation affects a variety of issues for example the effects of government debt social insurance public transfer programs estate taxes and incentives for charitable giving depend to some extent on the magnitude and nature of private saving and transfers of wealth analyses of the inequality of wealth may depend on whether most of wealth is earned or received as transfers appropriate policies for encouraging private saving may look rather different depending on whether most saving is to be consumed later in life or passed along to the next generation finally evidence on transfer patterns relates to more fundamental

do safeguard tariffs and antidumping duties open or close technology gaps abstract this paper examines how the country breadth of tariff protection can affect the technology adoption decisions of both domestic import competing and foreign exporting firms the contribution of the analysis is to show how firm level technology adoption changes under tariffs of different country breadth i show that a country specific tariff like an antidumping duty induces both domestic import competing firms and foreign exporting firms to adopt a new technology earlier than they would under free trade in contrast a broadly applied tariff like a safeguard can accelerate technology adoption by a domestic import competing firm but will slow down technology adoption by foreign exporting firms because safeguard tariffs can delay the foreign firm s adoption of new technology the worldwide welfare costs associated with using them may be larger than is generally believed