structural change and income distribution an inverted u relationship abstract this paper constructs a disequilibrium model in order to analyse the structural transition characterized by the emergence of a new sector we show that in an economy where preferences and technology adapt over time multiple long term outcomes are mainly brought about by different distributive rules governing the assignment of innovative rents between workers and entrepreneurs we robustly establish that a successful transition to a two sector economy is ensured by a balanced distribution restoring the co ordination of investment and consumption plans instead when innovative rents are too concentrated in favor of either workers or entrepreneurs the system does not fully accomplish the transition and unemployment might emerge in contrast with the standard view of a negative relationship between real wages and employment

on the welfare effects of a duty free zone abstract the analysis extends and corrects the results of an earlier paper by hamada two problems are analyzed 1 how is location of production affected by opening up of a free zone taking into account different kinds of trade barriers and zones implications for production consumption and welfare in a number of different cases are analyzed 2 what are the effects of capital inflow either into the zone or into the host country our results show that both types of capital inflow diminish welfare and welfare diminishes comparatively more when imported into the zone repatriated income as well as its composition is explicitly incorporated

smuggling and price disparity abstract this paper proposes a model of smuggling consistent with the coexistence of smuggling legal trade and price disparity defined as a domestic price which exceeds is less than the return from legal export import these phenomena have been found to characterize indonesian smuggling a framework is presented in which legal trade is used to cloak smuggling activity with the implication that the greater the volume of legal trade the less the costs of smuggling this model is then used to explain the observation noted above and to show that smuggling may be welfare increasing vis a vis the non smuggling situation and that even if the suppression of smuggling is costless tax revenue maximization may require a positive level of smuggling in addition the model is applied to coffee and rubber exports from indonesia

theories of bank behavior under capital regulation abstract this paper reviews academic studies of bank capital regulation in an effort to evaluate the intellectual foundation for the imposition of the basel i and basel ii systems of risk based capital requirements the theoretical literature yields general agreement about the immediate effects of capital requirements on bank lending and loan rates and the longer term impacts on bank ratios of equity to total or risk adjusted assets this literature produces highly mixed predictions however regarding the effects of capital regulation on asset risk and overall safety and soundness for the banking system as a whole thus the intellectual foundation for the present capital regulation regime is not particularly strong the mixed conclusions in the academic literature on banking certainly do not provide unqualified support for moving to an even more stringent and costly system of capital requirements these widely ambiguous results do suggest however that assessing the implications of capital regulation for balance sheet risk and monitoring effort in diverse banking systems is an important agenda for future theoretical research in the banking area

preferential trading agreements and capital flows abstract a three country trade model is used to determine the impact of a preferential trading agreement between two countries on world prices and the international allocation of capital assuming the agreeing countries have characteristics typically associated with developing countries we derive a simple condition that predicts whether a country experiences an inflow or outflow of capital with the agreement while at least one country experiences a capital inflow the other may experience an outflow welfare implications are addressed

mathematical vindication of ricardo on machinery ricardo is shown to be right that machinery can hurt wages and reduce output a dramatic robot example reveals wicksell s error in believing that pareto optimality calls for no drop in total output from a viable invention under ricardo s axiom that labor supply adjusts to keep wages at the subsistence level he can correctly deduce on a market clearing basis a rise in his net product rent plus interest while the greater drop in population and total wages result in a reduction in his gross product rent plus interest plus wages

tourism welfare and de industrialization in a small open economy this paper investigates the effects of an expansion of tourism on welfare output and factor prices in the host country using a general equilibrium international trade model in the absence of taxes foreign ownership and distortions an increase in foreign visitors will increase welfare only if the price of nontradables increases factor mobility and foreign ownership tend to reduce the gains from tourism while commodity taxes tend to increase them conditions under which an increase in tourism can lead to deindustrialization are also discussed copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

on the choice between capital import and labor export abstract the paper analyses some questions arising in connection with inflow of foreign capital into a host country and its free zone when capital is mobile between sectors capital import into any part of the economy decreases welfare with sector specific capital import of capital into the protected sector export sector decreases increases welfare if capital import into the export sector of the domestic zone is infeasible there may be a case for establishing a free zone and allowing capital import exclusively there with a suitable tax policy capital import into the free zone will always be beneficial

protection and the harmful effects of endogenous capital flows abstract assume a country has in place a binding tariff and is a price taker on world markets in which capital is internationally mobile and unimpeded regardless of trade patterns possible specificity of capital or factor intensities an increase in the tariff harms the country if capital is frozen and harms the country even more when capital mobility brings rates of return into line among countries

international factor movements repatriation and welfare abstract this paper analyzes two different ways of allowing foreign capital inflow introducing it into the domestic economy and introducing it into a duty free zone it shows how the ranking of the two policies depends on the production patterns in the duty free zone and the rules of factor income repatriation the result can be used to explain the discrepancy between the rankings of these policies in two recent papers the analysis also shows how the way of repatriating factor income could affect the equilibrium of factor movement the welfare of the factor owners and the welfare of the countries concerned

smuggling illegal versus legal goods across the u s mexico border a structural equations model approach author affiliation andreas buehn faculty of business and economics technische universitaet dresden chair for economics esp monetary economics 01062 dresden germany e mail andreas buehn tu dresden de corresponding author stefan eichler faculty of business and economics technische universitaet dresden chair for economics esp monetary economics 01062 dresden germany e mail stefan eichler tu dresden de acknowledgment we thank gordon hanson for providing the data on mexican wages and u s border enforcement we are also grateful to alexander karmann sunshine moore the editor and two anonymous referees for their many useful comments and suggestions on this article we also benefited from comments of participants of the lunchtime seminar at technische universitaet dresden all remaining errors are the authors responsibility 1 introductionin this article we study smuggling across the u s mexico border from 1975 to 2004 we contribute to the literature in the following ways first we treat smuggling as an unobservable variable using a multiple indicators multiple causes mimic model we capture the latent nature of smuggling and identify its determinants and long run trends 1 secondly we argue that the analysis of smuggling has been incomplete so far existing studies merely analyze the causes of trade misinvoicing illegal trade or smuggling of legal goods which represent only a fraction of total illegal trade to improve the understanding of illegal trade we distinguish between smuggling illegal goods versus smuggling legal goods the types of smuggling differ with respect to the goods being smuggled the agents involved in smuggling the smuggling incentive and the intensity of law enforcement trade misinvoicing occurs when entrepreneurs misreport the value of legal exports or imports to evade tariffs and taxes and is commonly considered a peccadillo smugglers usually bribe officials or are fined a fee smuggling illegal freight such as illicit drugs and illegal immigrants however often involves dangerous criminals who commit serious offenses and who if caught face severe punishment as a result their incentive to smuggle is related to the intensity of law enforcement rather than tax or tariff evasion studying the u s mexican case is appropriate as most illegal drugs and immigrants enter the united states via the mexican border the large income disparity between the two nations may explain the high u s demand for illegal goods which relatively poor mexicans are willing to meet despite the risks involved we examine whether the clinton and bush administrations succeeded in reducing smuggling across the border through intensified border enforcement using a simple microeconomic framework we determine which microeconomic incentives affect the two types of smuggling the hypotheses are then tested in a mimic model that studies the impact of observed causes the microeconomic incentives to smuggle on the latent phenomenon smuggling as indicated by observable macroeconomic variables applying the benchmarking procedure promoted by dell anno and schneider 2006 and dell anno 2007 we calculate a time series for each type of smuggling we find that smuggling in illegal goods from mexico to the united states decreases when mexican labor market conditions improve and u s border enforcement is intensified the mexican recessions in 1982 1983 and 1995 led to large temporary increases in smuggling to 113 billion and 87 billion respectively smuggling in illegal goods decreased overall however from 116 billion in 1984 to 27 billion in 2004 this reduction can be attributed to stricter u s border enforcement and better mexican job prospects smuggling legal goods is driven by real exchange rates and tariff and tax evasion export misinvoicing fluctuated between underinvoicing values of 0

tariffs capital export and immiserizing growth abstract the purpose of this paper is to show how the brecher diaz 1977 and minabe 1974 propositions on the capital inflow from a tariff apply symmetrically to capital outflow that is when the home country continues to import the labor intensive goods while remaining incompletely specialized the capital outflow must reduce the home country s real income this will be so when the net return to home capital is greater than the home value of its marginal product at internal prices but less than the home value of its marginal product at world prices

trade misinvoicing the dark side of world trade n this paper we study the determinants of trade misinvoicing we contrib ute to the literature in the following ways rst we present a simple micro economic framework that simultaneously analyses the effect of microeconomicincentives and deterrents on the macroeconomic phenomenon of trade misin voicing this approach takes into account that the nancial incentives for trademisinvoicing determine the decision as to whether and how much exports imports to underinvoice or overinvoice whereas the deterrents to trademisinvoicing only have an impact on the optimal amount of misinvoicing second we test the derived theoretical hypotheses using a rich data set of 86countries over the period 1980 to 2005 trade misinvoicing occurs if the true value of exports or imports deviatesfrom the amount of exports or imports businesses report to the authorities aninteresting literature has emerged that studies the determinants of trade mis invoicing by analysing bilateral trade partner statistics for recent examples fisman and wei 2007 berger and nitsch 2008 farzanegan 2008 trademisinvoicing is typically motivated by nancial incentives for example by ben e ting from a premium at the black market for foreign exchange or by evadingtariffs or taxes while the empirical literature has mainly focused on analysingthe incentives for that nancial malpractice we also test the relevance ofdeterrents to misinvoice i e the risk of detection and costs of punishment the microeconomic framework presented in this paper demonstrates that the nancial incentives for trade misinvoicing such as the black market premium

risk based capital requirements and bank portfolio risk abstract we construct a linear programming model and analyze the effectiveness of r b capital adequacy standards when bank deposits are fully insured we derive a set of optimal asset risk weights given a constraint in raising equity and using these weights the r b capital plan is an effective regulation mechanism without a constraint on equity maximum leverage restrictions and r b capital plans are mutually exclusive alternatives as we deviate from the optimal risk weights a combination of a leverage restriction and a r b equity ratio seems to be the more appropriate approach to controlling bank portfolio risk

business cycle models with endogenous technology this paper compares real and monetary business cycle models with and without endogenous technical change if technology is endogenous the properties of these models change significantly in particular both real and monetary models yield very similar output processes if growth is endogenous and changes in aggregate demand can result in permanent changes in productivity employment and output the effect of depreciation of technology is examined and the pattern of real wage movements over the cycle when money wages are fixed but technology is changing is briefly considered copyright 1990 by american economic association

smuggling and the black market for foreign exchange this paper develops a model of the black market for foreign exchange in which black market currency is demanded and supplied by firms engaged in smuggling it is demonstrated that quotas or foreign exchange rationing are not necessary to induce the coexistence of legal and black foreign exchange markets variants of the model analyze the implications of capital flight unbalanced trade quotas foreign exchange licensing and economies with more than two goods

worldwide organized cigarette smuggling an empirical analysis this article estimates the economic size and the impact on government revenues of cigarette smuggling worldwide and formulates economic policies that can be used to effectively address the problem first information from various sources are combined and a global map of smuggling routes for cigarettes is described by examining the international cigarette trade records the hub transit countries in six regions of the world are identified second a variable that measures smuggling incentives for cigarettes is defined and computed for 110 countries third a static global demand model for cigarettes that includes the smuggling incentives variable is specified and robustly estimated using the estimation results global price and income elasticities of cigarette demand are obtained as 0 41 and 0 37 respectively it is estimated that in 1999 3 4 of global cigarette consumption was smuggled and 7 4 of tax revenue was lost to smuggling fourth the best policy options are identified to achieve the objec

why did wicksell change his mind about the machinery question abstract the article investigates wicksell s change of mind about the machinery question between 1890 and 1900 1901 wicksell at first sided with the so called compensation theory that workers are not harmed by the introduction of machinery in his lecture notes of april 1900 made available here for the first time wicksell deployed marginal productivity theory to discuss the effects of labour saving technical progress with inconclusive results finally in his published 1901 lectures and in his 1900 article about marginal productivity wicksell claimed that the introduction of machinery increases output and reduces wages his analysis was based on the demonstration that free competition maximizes output but not total utility it is argued that wicksell s change of mind and his mature formulation of the machinery question result from his critical assessment of the then new concept of pareto optimality together with his reinterpretation and rejection of ricardo s 1821 contention that the introduction of machinery may diminish output and employment

black markets and optimal evadable taxation in a simple model of evadable indirect taxation some surprises emerge because of a market thinning effect of high prices high taxes induce multiple equilibria low price black markets and high price legal markets further evadability introduces a bifurcation to optimal taxation for less effective tax administrations the optimal tax system follows a cash cow pattern with one sector bearing all of the tax but for relatively effective administrations the optimum follows a slightly modified ramsey rule this discontinuity results from the mathematics of evasion incentives and may help explain tax reforms commonly seen over the course of economic development

international factor mobility non traded goods tariffs and the terms of trade the present paper develops a general model with one imported one exported many non traded goods where some factors of production are internationally mobile within this framework the analysis establishes the validity of some earlier results and extends others that is 1 a tariff increase reduces the country s welfare 2 tariff induced international factor flows reduce a country s welfare 3 an improvement in a country s terms of trade in the presence of a tariff raises its welfare more when factors are internationally mobile than when not and 4 with preferential trading agreements trade creation always improves the country s welfare while trade diversion may or may not

smuggling around the world evidence from a structural equation model this article uses a multiple indicators multiple causes mimic model to analyse the determinants of smuggling the analysis reveals that higher corruption and a lower rule of law encourage smuggling tariffs and trade restrictions are important push factors while a higher black market premium bmp discourages smugglers based on the mimic estimates we calculate an index of smuggling which provides a ranking for 54 countries we find that smuggling is rampant in cameroon pakistan and kenya while it is least prevalent in switzerland finland and sweden

empirical determinants of purchasing power parity deviations abstract this paper investigates the empirical determinants of purchasing power parity ppp deviations over the recent period of flexible exchange rates transitory ppp deviations arise in a world in which prices are sticky but where exchange rates respond instantaneously to news permanent ppp deviations occur when price indices differ across countries and the world is subject to real shocks regressions consistent with the hypothesis that current exchange rate changes create immediate ppp deviations which are slowly dissipated but not eliminated imply that both sticky prices and real shocks are responsible for the recent failure of ppp

risk taking behavior of banks under regulation abstract this paper analyzes the value maximization of regulated banks within a moral hazard framework in the model regulators monitor both the capital ratio and the asset portfolio and banks simultaneously select the optimum capital ratio and asset portfolio a key assumption is that a bank cannot expect a positive put option value once it is classified as risky by regulators the optimum values of the two variables depend on investment opportunities and charter values as well as regulatory parameters the model that explicitly incorporates regulation can explain various phenomena that are seemingly inconsistent with the predictions of moral hazard models for example a positive relationship between the capital ratio and the riskiness of the asset portfolio a particularly interesting result is that a larger charter value results in a higher risk interior solution

risk in banking and capital regulation this paper investigates the role of bank capital regulation in risk control it is known that banks choose portfolios of higher risk because of inefficiently priced deposit insurance bank capital regulation is a way to redress this bias toward risk utilizing the mean variance model the following results are shown a the use of simple capital ratios in regulation is an ineffective means to bound the insolvency risk of banks b as a solution to problems of the capital ratio regulation the theoretically correct risk weights under the risk based capital plan are explicitly derived and c the theoretically correct risk weights are restrictions on asset composition which alters the optimal portfolio choice of banking firms the recent increase in bank failures especially after the 1980 and 1982 deregulatory acts has again ignited a controversy over the risk portfolio of the banking industry given the importance of this sector there has been increased scrutiny of the industry s motives for risk taking and possible regulatory changes to improve its stability these investigations have centered around two rather complementary areas the first of these is the role of deposit insurance and how its current pricing procedure encourages risk taking and justifies current bank regulations the works of buser chen and kane 4 kane 9 and benston et al 2 have made substantive contributions the authors demonstrates the way in which our current fixed rate insurance system rewards risk taking by the firm and insulates it through deposit insurance from the market discipline that needs to exist to ensure proper risk evaluation this realization has led these authors to propose a series of regulatory changes to encourage proper portfolio choice within the industry these include a shift to market value accounting risk based deposit insurance premiums and additional capital regulation the last of these serves as a method of coinsurance whereby higher capital levels require the bank to absorb greater losses in the event of failure and encourage additional prudence in management in essense it is one method of risk reduction that may offset the risk preference imposed on the industry due to the inappropriate insurance pricing because the amount of capital influences the probability of bank insolvency and thus the soundness of the entire banking system the regulators ceteris paribus prefer more capital to

terms of trade shocks and domestic prices under tariffs and quotas a note abstract it is well known that in a partial equilibrium setting import quotas are superior to tariffs in terms of insulating domestic prices against foreign terms of trade shocks the present paper demonstrates however that in a general equilibrium context where the income effects of terms of trade shocks are taken into account domestic prices can be more vulnerable under a quota than under a tariff

the locational choice for free trade zones rural versus urban options abstract urban and rural areas are compared as appropriate locations for a free trade zone within a developing country suffering from urban unemployment if domestic capital is mobile between the two regions then the rural area is shown to be preferable to the urban area and sufficient conditions for this conclusion are presented this conclusion may be reversed however if capital is sector specific the condition for this reversal is also discussed

tariffs capital export and immiserizing growth this note attempts to prove that tariff induced capital export will not cause immiserizing growth if exporters of capital earn abroad an amount equal to the value of domestic marginal product of capital at world prices irrespective of the repatriated profit being transferred in terms of home exportables or home importables

tariffs capital export and immiserizing growth a reply it would be wrong to infer from yeong her yeh 1983 that one can exclude the possibility of immiserization from capital export if exporters of capital earn abroad an amount equal to the value of marginal product of capital at world prices immiserization may occur both in the capital exporting and importing countries when the amount of capital transfer is limited

adjusting to technological change the subject of my address is adjusting to technological change something that a lot of people are doing nowadays the revolution in information and communication technologies and the transition to a knowledge based economy are inducing people in every sector to change how they work and do business what i want to emphasize is that these changes constitute a social process that involves more than the sum of our individual struggles with inanimate nature people are adjusting not only to changes in technology but to changes that others are making to technology adjustments in one sector induce unexpected adjustments and innovations in other sectors in a complex process that none of the participants can possibly comprehend the process is governed by social institutions particularly by the business enterprises that organize almost all economic transactions in a modem economy and at the same time it is transforming those institutions a graphic account of how peoples lives are being tossed about by the winds of change might be too depressing for this occasion so to keep it light i am simply going to talk about macroeconomic theory if there is one profession that has not yet seen much of the darker side of technological change it is macroeconomic theory in fact the recent resurgence of interest in growth and technological change seems to have had a calming effect on the profession by diverting attention from the issues of unemployment inflation and aggregate demand management that have been the subjects of the furious controversies since the keynesian revolution peaceful coexistence has emerged between previously opposing schools now united by the

on the economic theory of smuggling earlier models of smuggling involve indeterminate equilibria for individual firms but they are deficient in their tr eatment of risk and or transport costs a model is constructed for an intra eec type of framework with due regard to such costs unique eq uilibria result smuggling of agricultural goods is an increasing cos t industry not because of implausible unspecified externalities as i n some earlier papers but because of increasing transport costs as t he extensive margin for smuggling is expanded predictions of the mod el are supported by studies of trade between the republic of ireland and northern ireland copyright 1988 by the london school of economics and political science

efficient excise taxation the evidence from cigarettes we develop a model in which optimizing policy makers in adjacent government jurisdictions levy excise taxes on a commodity that has a unique point of production from which all shipments emanate from this model we derive an unusually specific predicted geographical pattern of those excise taxes in which these taxes rise at a decreasing rate as one moves outward from the point of production we compare these predictions to the observed pattern of cigarette taxes imposed by state governments in the united states and find the data to be fully consistent with our model among these predictions is the existence of a ripple effect which reduces taxes in many other jurisdictions due to low taxes at the point of production we estimate that these induced tax reductions in other states save cigarette producers and consumers a minimum of 110 million per year

capital requirements and the behaviour of commercial banks abstract i study the consequences of capital regulations on the portfolio choices of commercial banks elaborating on previous work by kareken and wallace 1978 koehn and santomero 1980 and kim and santomero 1988 i obtain the following results if the objective of commercial banks is maximization of the market value of their future profits value maximizing banks capital regulations cannot prevent banks from choosing very specialized and very risky portfolios risk based insurance premia are in fact the relevant instrument for that purpose on the other hand if banks behave as portfolio managers utility maximizing banks capital regulations can be effective but only if the weights used in the computation of the ratio are proportional to the systematic risks of the assets their betas because of limited liability of commercial banks a minimum capital regulation or a closing rule may become necessary as well to prevent failing banks from betting for resurrection

flexible exchange rates prices and the role of news lessons from the 1970s recent experience with flexible exchange rate systems has led to renewed interest in the operation of foreign exchange markets as reflected in many recent studies of the principal determinants of exchange rates the 1970s witnessed the dramatic alteration of the international monetary system from a regime of pegged exchange rates which prevailed for about a quarter of a century since the bretton woods conference into a regime of flexible though managed rates as a consequence of the emergence of the new legal and economic system traders national governments and international organisations were confronted with new economic problems choices and instruments during the 1970s ex change rates fluctuated widely and inflation rates accelerated the international monetary system had to accommodate extraordinarily large oil related shocks which affected trade flows in goods and assets huge oil payments had to be recycled uncertainties concerning future developments in international politics reached new heights and the prospects for the world economy got gloomier these developments placed unprecedented pressures on the markets for foreign exchange as well as on other asset markets they were associated with a large slide in the value of the us dollar and resulted in speeding up the creation of new institutions like the european monetary system which provided the formal framework for the management of exchange rates among members

the welfare impact of tariff induced international capital movement in contrast to the literature that deals with specific repatriation rule in this note the general condition under which tariff induced capital inflow outflow will increase reduce the welfare of a small tariff ridden economy is investigated the derivation is simple and the results obtained embrace all repatriation rules

a reexamination of mean variance analysis of bank capital regulation abstract the mean variance framework has been used to analyze the effects of bank capital regulation on the asset and bankruptcy risk of insured utility maximizing banks this literature claims that more stringent capital regulation will increase asset risk and can increase bankruptcy risk these conclusions are notable because they are opposite to those obtained for insured value maximizing banks in this paper we show that the utility maximization literature does not support its conclusions regarding the effects of bank capital regulation because it has mischaracterized the bank s investment opportunity set by neglecting the option value of deposit insurance

international factor mobility minimum wage rates and factor price equalization a synthesis this paper examines the behavior of a small open economy facing perfectly elastic supply curves for some of its productive factors in particular the paper derives some comparative statics properties of such economies compares them with the properties of otherwise identical economies in which all factor prices are determined endogenously and investigates the relationship between factor price rigidities factor price equalization and the pattern of specialization among the new results which are proved it is shown that as more and more factor price rigidities are imposed on an economy it comes closer to a state of factor price equalization

risk based capital adequacy standards for a sample of 43 major banks abstract the paper extends the option theoretic framework for the estimation of risk adjusted deposit premiums to the calculation of risk based capital adequacy standards based on market data for equity and the book value of debt the model solves for the market value of the capital infusion required to lower the implied deposit premium to acceptable levels of risk this capital infusion can then be translated into market value capital adequacy standards and book value capital asset ratios the determination of which is within the current statutory discretion of regulatory agencies the model is empirically applied to a sample of 43 major u s banks

is fairly priced deposit insurance possible we analyze risk sensitive incentive compatible deposit insurance in the presence of private information and moral hazard without deposit linked subsidies it is impossible to implement risk sensitive incentive compatible deposit insurance pricing in a competitive deregulated environment except when the deposit insurer is the least risk averse agent in the economy we establish this formally in the context of an insurance scheme in which privately informed depository institutions are offered deposit insurance premia contingent on reported capital the result holds for alternative sorting instruments as well this suggests a contradiction between deregulation and fairly priced risk sensitive deposit insurance this paper exposes a conflict between a deregulated competitive financial services industry on the one hand and fairly priced risk sensitive deposit insurance on the other we show that if depository institutions dis are perfectly competitive i e each makes zero profits on average then it is impossible to implement incentive compatible risk sensitive deposit insurance pricing recent distress among dis has fueled debate about reform of the existing deposit insurance system many believe that the prevailing risk insensitive premium structure encourages dis to choose excessively risky assets and that it should be replaced by deposit insurance premia linked to the dis choices of risk 2 risk sensitive deposit insurance pricing however imposes greater informational demands on the deposit insurer and runs afoul of both

customs union and unemployment in ldcs abstract welfare effects of customs union are examined for a small open economy with unemployment of labor of harris todaro type and some new results are reported specifically it is demonstrated that for ldcs afflicted with urban unemployment trade creating customs union continues to be an effective policy

the effect of risk based capital requirements on profit efficiency in banking the purpose of this paper is twofold to show how to measure profit efficiency in banking using a newly developed technique and to use that technique to determine the effect of risk based capital requirements on the profit performance of us banks the measure of profit efficiency used captures deviations from profit maximization arising from technical inefficiency caused by a lack of managerial oversight and allocative inefficiency which is caused by managers choosing a nonoptimal mix of inputs and outputs a leverage ratio constraint and a risk weighted capital ratio constraint are explicitly included in the model which allows identification of the effect on profits of those constraints the techniques are applied to random samples of us banks for 1990 1992 and 1994 the results indicate that allocative inefficiency is a larger source of profit loss than technical inefficiency and that the risk based capital standards have a significant effect on bank allocative efficiency

cigarette taxes and illicit trade in europe cigarettes are highly taxed in europe but at higher prices some consumers substitute more toward illicit cigarettes the illicit retail trade in cigarettes irtc includes counterfeit untaxed and smuggled cigarettes some existing literature includes claims that taxes are not an important determinant of irtc using data from the european union we find the opposite raising prices leads to substantial increases in irtc a 1 increase in tax pack is expected to increase illicit market share by 5 to 12 percentage points and increase illicit cigarette sales by 29 to 95 the results are robust to alternative specifications and data jel i18 h26 k42

smuggling trade and price disparity a crime theoretic approach abstract we provide a simple but fairly general model of smuggling capable of handling both the bhagwati hansen type of illegal trade through illegal entry points and the pitt type of illegal trade through legal entry points the paper focuses on the latter type of trade we take explicit account of the risk and uncertainty associated with illegal activity and moreover treat the real costs of smuggling as a choice variable of the firm it is shown that smuggling legal trade and price disparity may coexist as in pitt the economy s response to increased enforcement of laws against smuggling is explicitly analyzed it is shown that increased enforcement raises real per unit costs of smuggling and the domestic price of importables but lowers both the absolute quantity and the share of illegal imports in total imports the effect on welfare is ambiguous

capital controls and bank risk abstract we analyze the effects of deposit guarantees on banks loan portfolio in contrast to earlier work we view bank loans net of evaluation and monitoring costs as non zero npv investments e g market securities deposit guarantees lead to inefficient investment and under plausible circumstances capital requirement increases lead banks to increase asset risk the risk increase reduces the beneficial effects of capital increases on the probability of default and on the economic efficiency of bank lending in some cases a tightening of the capital constraint even leads to an increase in the probability of default and financial instability and to higher expected costs of transferring assets to regulatory agencies increases in bank capital are not a substitute for risk monitoring and control and may imply an increased need for such surveillance

endogenous choice of trade policy instruments abstract recently developed theories of endogenous trade policy formation have attempted to explain tariffs as the result of economic interest seeking by individuals or groups this note demonstrates that tariffs will not emerge as a policy choice if income is redistributed solely through trade policy induced factor price changes a production tax cum subsidy will be adopted as both gainers and losers are better off than with a tariff

capital regulation and bank risk taking a note abstract this paper examines theoretically the effects of more stringent capital regulation on bank asset portfolio risk the analysis shows that for a value maximizing bank incentives to increase asset risk decline as its capital increases thus as long as regulatory efforts to contain asset risk and size are not reduced more stringent capital regulation unambiguously reduces the expected liability of the deposit insurance system

a theory of risk smuggling and welfare abstract this paper argues that the existing models of smuggling do not provide a proper treatment of risk the paper develops a smuggling model which is an application of james tobin s celebrated risk analysis to the smuggling situation the paper shows that a large number of existing key smuggling related results are fundamentally modified the paper then develops special cases using this properly specified risk model these special cases help identify the assumptions one needs to obtain results in the existing smuggling literature it is shown that the required assumptions for these results to hold are generally quite unrealistic

the cleansing effect of recessions the authors investigate industry response to cyclical variations in demand production units that embody the newest process and product innovations are continuously being created and outdated units are being destroyed although outdated units are the most likely to turn unprofitable and be scrapped in a recession they can be insulated from the fall in demand by a reduction in creation the structure of adjustment costs plays a determinant role in the responsiveness of those two margins the calibrated model matches the relative volatilities of the observed manufacturing job creation and destruction series and their asymmetries over the cycle copyright 1994 by american economic association

endogenous tariff formation the case of mercosur mercosur appears as an interesting case study for analyzing the determinants of exceptions in regional trade agreements its member countries argentina brazil paraguay and uruguay intended to make mercosur a full customs union by january 1995 this goal turned out to be too ambitious and the protocol of ouro preto and other agreements signed in december 1994 led to a hybrid solution overall out of a total of 9 119 tariff lines around 30 percent are subject in at least one member country to either external deviations from the common external tariff or internal deviations from free trade thus an important set of holes remains under the existing agreement leading some authors to consider mercosur an incomplete customs union this article compares the results of the theoretical literature on endogenous tariff formation with evidence from mercosur the results show that mercosur common external tariff and member countries deviations from it and from internal free trade can be explained by sector or industry lobbying as predicted by the endogenous tariff literature if a viable political economy is a key to success then mercosur is here to stay

the transhipment problem smuggling and welfare in paraguay abstract this paper studies the effects of contraband on resource allocation and welfare using parguayan data a major portion of exports from this economy involves the transhipment of goods from third countries through paraguay to brazil and argentina to avoid trade taxes both explicit and implicit via quantitative restrictions and multiple exchange rates using international and paraguayan databases for 1990 we calculate that contraband accounted for 58 of exports and 31 of imports finally we estimate that such trade increased welfare by 2 1 of gdp