explaining business cycles in small open economies abstract this paper analyzes the role of world price shocks fluctuations in the prices of capital intermediate and primary goods and in the world real interest rate in the generation and propagation of business cycles in small open developing countries i construct a stochastic dynamic multi sector small open economy model the model is a variant of the specific factors model and reflects the major structural characteristics of developing economies i utilize variance decomposition methods to quantitatively evaluate the impact of world price shocks the results indicate that world price shocks account for a significant fraction of business cycle variability in developing countries

public pensions unemployment insurance and growth abstract we develop an overlapping generations model that highlights the interaction between an unfunded pension program and an unemployment insurance program in the presence of a labor market with union wage setting both programs are financed by earmarked proportional wage taxes levied on firms and their employees the equilibrium path entails endogenous growth and involuntary unemployment the presence of spillovers between pension programs and unemployment insurance programs has striking implications for growth policy efficiency issues and the transition to a fully funded pension system

social security and migration with endogenous skill upgrading abstract the aim of the paper is to investigate the joint redistributive effects of migration and pensions and to reassess the sustainability issue raised in the existing economic literature the paper first develops a theoretical framework to analyse the impact of international migration on the labour market the model allows for heterogeneity across native born individuals and for migrants to affect both the wages and the education decision in the recipient country it then explicitly focuses on pensions under alternative migration scenarios the analysis shows that migration causes redistributive effects which increase across group wage inequality however the endogenous educational response by residents partially offsets the redistributive impact of migration while creating additional interest groups migration helps the financial sustainability of the pension scheme but the interaction between migration and pensions causes complex inter and intragenerational redistributive conflicts which are analysed in the paper

a note on short term intersectoral factor immobility abstract the dynamic trade literature has identified two important aspects of the adjustment process to real shocks contributed to short term intersectoral factor immobilities real income rises over time as the production factors reallocate while the presence of nontradeable goods leads to a dynamic relative price effect while these effects are usually studied separately in the literature this paper presents a simple multi period model with optimizing agents in which both effects operate simultaneously as an illustration of the model the current account response to a favorable endowment shock is studied the two effects have an opposite impact on the direction of the current account response the relationship between model parameters and the response to the shock is studied

intertemporal price speculation and the optimal current account deficit abstract the paper studies the effects of terms of trade fluctuations in an infinite horizon optimizing model of a small open economy while the current account response to a transitory terms of trade shock is in part explicable by intertemporal smoothing an important additional factor is the effect of anticipated future terms of trade shifts on the ral value of the external debt in terms of the home consumption basket when foreign borrowing is indexed to the import good a temporary worsening of the terms of trade creates the expectation of a decline in the real value of external debt this fall in the relevant real interest rate leads households to increase consumption while export prices are low and to decrease consumption sharply once the terms of trade recover if an adverse price shock is of sufficiently brief duration instantaneous utility will rise initially

terms of trade uncertainty savings and the production structure abstract this paper studies the response of savings and the production structure tradeables non tradeables to an increase in future terms of trade uncertainty holding expected utility constant there is no international trade in risky assets the impact on the production structure is studied by analyzing the markets for domestic equity the paper shows that the response of both non tradeables production and savings is ambiguous cross country evidence indicates that an increase in terms of trade uncertainty leads to a higher fraction of the labor force in the non tradeables sector

aggregate spending and the terms of trade is there a laursen metzler effect this paper investigates the spending and current account effects of terms of trade shifts in a model where households maximize utility over an infinite planning period in the framework developed here an economy specialized in production must experience a fall in aggregate spending and a current surplus as a result of an unanticipated permanent worsening in its terms of trade the paper s model thus provides a setting in which the current account deficit predicted by laursen and metzier harberger and others fails to materialize

can immigrant employment alleviate the demographic burden the role of union centralization this paper investigates the effect of labor immigration on public pensions when wage setting by a centralized trade union leads to unemployment it is shown that immigration improves the financial soundness of pay as you go pensions if and only if it diminishes total employment this occurs if the absolute value of the elasticity of labor demand exceeds the unemployment rate

the terms of trade and the current account the harberger laursen metzler effect the paper examines the effect of terms of trade changes on a small country s spending and current account assuming optimizing behavior in an intertemporal framework with perfect international capital mobility a temporary future terms of trade deterioration implies a deterioration improvement of the trade balance whereas a permanent terms of trade deterioration has an ambiguous effect depending on the rate of time preference nominal and real variables are considered via exact price indexes two periods and an infinite horizon are examined

current account dynamics and the terms of trade harberger laursen metzler two generations later this is a study of the current account dynamics resulting from the savings and investment dynamics in a small open economy which is subject to exogenous changes in its terms of trade and in world interest rates anticipated and unanticipated as well as temporary and permanent terms of trade changes have very different effects there is however a general tendency towards cycles in both savings and investment which gives rise to cycles in the current account it is shown that the classic harberger laursen metzler effect on saving of a terms of trade deterioration can have any sign for plausible parameter values both for temporary and permanent disturbances

trade and insurance with imperfectly observed outcomes abstractthe following sections are included introductionthe modelunobserved outcomescostly observationconcluding remarksreferences this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

international capital movements under uncertainty in this paper we analyze the determinants of international movements of physical capital in a model with uncertainty and international trade in goods and securities in our model the world allocation of capital is governed to some extent by the asset preferences of risk averse consumer investors in a one good variant in the spirit of the macdougall model we find that relative factor abundance relative labor force size and relative production riskiness have separate but interrelated influences on the direction of equilibrium capital movements these same factors remain important in a two good version with heckscher ohlin production structure in this case the direction of physical capital flow is determinate unlike in a world of certainty and may hinge on the identity of the factor that is used intensively in the industry with random technology

deterioration of the terms of trade and capital accumulation a reexamination of the laursen metzler effect abstract this paper analyzes the effect of both a permanent and a temporary deterioration in the terms of trade on a small open economy the model based on intertemporal optimization emphasizes the labor leisure choice and the role of capital accumulation the transitional dynamics is shown to depend upon the long run response of the capital stock to the terms of trade shock this consists of a negative substitution effect together with a positive income effect whether or not the laursen metzler effect holds depends upon whether the income effect dominates the substitution effect

the heckscher ohlin and travis vanek theorems under uncertainty abstract the heckscher ohlin theorem is valid under uncertainty of the special benchmark sort modelled by helpman razin their pessimism over its validity is vanquished by more structure rational expectations are imposed on consumers and identical and constant relative aversion to income risk is assumed under these circumstances with free commodity trade the heckscher ohlin theorem holds for the international exchange of equities

empirical relevance of the hillman condition for revealed comparative advantage 10 stylized facts the theoretically necessary and sufficient condition for the correspondence between revealed comparative advantage and pre trade relative prices derived by hillman 1980 is analysed empirically for virtually all countries of the world over an extended period of time this yields 10 stylized facts including that i violations of the hillman condition are small as a share of the number of observations but substantial as a share of the value of world exports ii violations occur relatively frequently in the period 1970 1984 and more rarely in the period 1985 1997 and iii violations occur foremost in primary product and natural resource intensive sectors and for countries in africa the middle east latin america and central and eastern europe an additional bonus of verifying the hillman condition in empirical research is its ability to identify erroneously classified trade flows

trade and insurance with moral hazard abstract previous literature on the use of trade policy for insurance has relied implicitly on moral hazard and adverse selection as the reasons for the failure of private markets for risk bearing this paper begins with the observation that such forces should be incorporated explicitly into the models to ensure a fair comparison between markets and governments for the case of moral hazard it is found that market equilibrium given exclusive insurance is an informationally constrained pareto optimum in one case of non exclusive insurance a systematic role for government insurance is found but the scope of trade policy is ambiguous

sustaining fiscal policy through immigration this paper explores the fiscal implications of immigration to the us and argues that immigration policy should be viewed as a vital part of fiscal policy in particular a case is made that skill

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

mass migration unions and government intervention the widening gap between the dismal economic situation in the less developed economies and the economic prospects of migrants to western economies has generated a potential for mass migration at the same time the developed economies have experienced high and persistent unemployment among their unskilled workers who would have to compete with new immigrants we use a model that distinguishes labor markets by skill and concentrate on the imperfectly competitive mechanism of wage determination in the unskilled labor market to demonstrate that additional immigration might be beneficial precisely because of potential replacement effects if the wages of skilled workers are positively affected by additional unskilled labor this may lead to higher employment and output our results thus qualify standard economic reasoning based on competitive models or on the literature on rural urban migration in developing countries

consumption puzzles and precautionary savings abstract when marginal utility is convex agents accumulate savings as a precautionary measure against labor income eventualities this paper shows that precautionary savings can go a long way in making the excess growth excess smoothness and excess sensitivity features of consumption consistent with the stochastic processes of labor income observed in the u s at the microeconomic level

the terms of trade labour supply and the current account this paper extends svensson and razin s two period analysis of the laursen harberger metzler effect to the important case where labour supply and output are variable a terms of trade shift alters the relationship between the product and the consumption wage and so induces a change in output this extension substantially enriches their analysis a temporary current terms of trade deterioration has an ambiguous effect on the current account but their finding that a future deterioration leads to an improvement in the current account is strengthened the effect of a permanent terms of trade shift in a stationary state depends not only on the rate of time preference but also on the strength of intertemporal substitution effects in the canonical case of a constant rate of time preference the current account deteriorates in response to a permanent terms of trade deterioration if the degree of intertemporal substitution in consumption exceeds that in leisure or equivalently whether the wealth effect on consumption exceeds that on labour supply the model is then extended to an infinite horizon by embedding it in an overlapping generations framework intergenerational linkages through the labour market are now the source of some complex dynamics from an initial position of balance on current account an anticipated temporary terms of trade deterioration leads to a period of steadily increasing surplus a deficit on impact and a further period of declining surpluses a permanent deterioration in the terms of trade leads to a similar period of anticipatory surpluses followed by a period of declining deficits after impact this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

trade unions non binding wage agreements and capital accumulation abstract this paper provides a counterexample to some recent results of grout and others which state that in a bargaining situation without binding wage agreements the capital stock will be biased downwards in a general equilibrium setting this result may be reversed the model is a simple diamond type overlapping generations economy where the young supply labour and the old own both capital and shares in firms in this environment a move from binding to non binding wage contracts may increase the capital stock as will a rise in trade union power finally it is shown that the move to non binding contracts may increase or decrease steady state utility but that the non binding contracts equilibrium is always pareto inefficient

comparative advantage in uk manufacturing trade 1910 1935 this paper uses a maintained hypothesis of comparative advantage based on relative factor endowments to investigate uk manufacturing trade prior to world war ii the results from several independent tests indicate that britain exported goods intensive in the use of unskilled labour and had a comparative disadvantage in goods intensive in the use of human capital right up to the mid 1930s this is consistent with the views of contemporaries but somewhat at odds with recent optimistic assessments of structural change in pre war britain this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

migration and pension with international capital mobility abstract being relatively low earners migrants are net beneficiaries of the welfare state therefore in a static set up migration may be resisted by the entire native born population however it is shown that in a dynamic set up with a pension system which is an important pillar of any welfare state migration is beneficial to all income high and low and all age old and young groups

real interest rates home goods and optimal external borrowing the paper investigates the optimal time path of consumption and external borrowing in the dependent economy model the small country faces given world prices and a given world real interest rate the presence of a home goods sector implies that the relevant real interest rate appropriate to consumption decisions depends on the rate of change of the real price of home goods the paper shows how transitory disturbances in output or in the world real interest rate affect the time profile of consumption and the trade balance in particular it is shown that the presence of a home goods sector dampens the consumption effects of changes in the world interest rate

immigration unemployment and pensions this paper examines the impact of immigration on a host country with welfare state arrangements that support both the unemployed and the elderly it is shown that low skilled immigration increases the unemployment rate furthermore it harms the low skilled native population and benefits the high skilled natives and pensioners nevertheless as under competitive labor markets immigration generates an unambiguous gain for the native population as a whole howe er in contrast to the findings under full employment this gain can be dampened by an expansion of the pension system

tariffs as insurance optimal commercial policy when domestic markets are incomplete free trade is not optimal for a small country that faces uncertain terms of trade if some factors are immobile ex post and markets for contingent claims are incomplete the government can improve social welfare by using commercial policy that serves as a partial substitute for missing insurance markets using a combination of analytical and simulation techniques we demonstrate that optimal policy for this purpose will often have an anti trade bias we also show that the usual preference by economists for factor or product taxes and subsidies over tariffs and export subsidies may not be justified in this context this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item