time consistent public policy in this paper we study how a benevolent government that cannot commit to future policy should trade off the costs and benefits of public expenditure we characterize and solve for markov perfect equilibria of the dynamic game between successive governments the characterization consists of an inter temporal first order condition a generalized euler equation for the government and we use it both to gain insight into the nature of the equilibrium and as a basis for computations for a calibrated economy we find that when the only tax base available to the government is capital income an inelastic source of funds at any point in time the government still refrains from taxing at confiscatory rates we also find that when the only tax base is labour income the markov equilibrium features less public expenditure and lower tax rates than the ramsey equilibrium

optimal capital income taxation with incomplete markets borrowing constraints and constant discounting for a wide class of infinitely lived agent models chamley has shown that the optimal capital income tax rate is zero in the long run lucas has argued that for the u s economy there is a significant welfare gain from switching to this policy this paper shows that for the bewley class of models with incomplete insurance markets and borrowing constraints the optimal tax rate on capital income is positive even in the long run therefore cutting the capital income tax to zero may well lead to welfare losses

commodity price instability and economic goal attainment in developing countries abstract this paper reviews the theoretical and empirical micro and macro foundations for the frequent claims that instabilities in international commodity markets have deleterious effects on goal attainment in primary commodity exporting developing countries this review leads to the conclusion that the available evidence does not support these claims the paper concludes with speculation on why such claims are so strong despite the lack of supporting evidence perhaps it is because of measurement problems and perhaps because of small but articulate groups with vested interests in overstating the problem

stabilization and redistribution of coffee revenues a political economy model of commodity marketing boards abstract domestic prices of export crops are important macroeconomic variables in primary exporting countries not only are they key determinants of the business cycle but also play a pivotal role in the resolution of distributive conflicts using a model where producers delegate pricing decisions in a fully optimizing environment this paper explores the relationship between the redistribution and stabilization functions of marketing boards the results of the model as well as the empirical evidence suggest that different institutional arrangements are helpful in explaining differences in macroeconomic performance across countries the analysis is carried out for coffee in colombia costa rica cote d ivoire and kenya

the effects of volatility in the terms of trade on output growth new evidence abstract this paper examines the empirical evidence for the hypothesis that there is a negative relationship between terms of trade volatility and output growth it finds a statistically significant link between income terms of trade volatility and lower growth rates when the degree of volatility in the income terms of trade is decomposed into its components fluctuations in real exports are of a magnitude similar to those in the relative price of tradables similarly the volatility in the net barter terms of trade is equally affected by variations in the price of exports and of imports any policies aimed at stabilizing the terms of trade or any of its components need to take account of this

are micro and macro labor supply elasticities consistent a review of evidence on the intensive and extensive margins we evaluate whether state of the art macro models featuring indivisible labor are consistent with modern quasi experimental micro evidence by synthesizing evidence on both the intensive and extensive margins we find that micro estimates are consistent with macro estimates of the steady state hicksian elasticities relevant for cross country comparisons on both the extensive and intensive margins however micro estimates of intertemporal substitution frisch elasticities are an order of magnitude smaller than the values needed to explain business cycle fluctuations in aggregate hours by preferences the key puzzle to be resolved is why micro and macro estimates of the frisch extensive margin elasticity are so different

fuzzy input output model for optimizing eco industrial supply chains under water footprint constraints global water stress is expected to increase due to population growth economic development and climate change because of this trend there is an increased interest in the water intensity of industrial activities conducted via the product supply chain or within specified geographical boundaries or regions both at the enterprise or regulatory level the total water footprint of economic activities should be evaluated in consideration of local water resource consumption virtual water trade and resource availability as individual entities seek to protect their respective interests the challenge is to optimize inter regional trade of goods with the consideration of the interests of participants in the network this work presents a fuzzy inputeoutput model for optimizing supply chains under water footprint constraints two case studies involving tile manufacturing and biofuel production are considered to demonstrate the use of the model

export fluctuations and economic growth an empirical analysis abstract the uncertainty associated with trade variability is generally resumed to exert a significant effect on the domestic economy of loss developed countries inadequately equipped to cope with these fluctuations the belief that it has a negative influence on these economies has been for several decades the dominant hypothesis among economists but it has been challenged on both theoretical and empirical growths the present paper proposes to investigate this problem from an empirical point of view cross country analysis is developed to investigate the influence of export instability on the domestic economy of less advanced nations the results show that no clear conclusions for the general case can be provided since they are sensitive to the particular time period considered a negative impact can be expected when price and quantity instability appear to reinforce each other but this is not always the case

redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model abstract we investigate the redistributive potential of capital taxation in an intertemporal maximizing model of capital formation first even unanticipated redistributive capital taxation is severely limited in its effectiveness since it depresses wages second under any convergent redistributive tax policy which maximizes a paretian social objective the capital income tax will converge to zero independent of the factor supply elasticities these results are independent of workers holdings of capital

indivisible labor lotteries and equilibrium abstract this paper considers an economy where labor is indivisible and agents are identical although the discontinuity in labor supply at the individual level disappears as a result of aggregation it is shown that indivisible labor has strong consequences for the aggregate bahavior of the economy it is also shown that optimal allocations involve lotteries over employment and consumption

measuring the efficacy of inventory with a dynamic input output model abstract this paper extends the recently developed dynamic inoperability input output model diim for assessing productivity degradations due to disasters inventory policies are formulated and incorporated within the diim to evaluate the impact of inventories on the resilience of disrupted interdependent systems the inventory diim can provide practical insights to preparedness decision making through explicit tradeoff analysis of multiple objectives including inventory costs and economic loss reductions the model is demonstrated in several illustrative examples to depict various nuances of inventory policies the paper then culminates in a case study that utilizes input output and inventory accounts from the bureau of economic analysis

resource intensity institutions and development summary we examine the relationship between resource abundance and several indicators of human welfare consistent with the existing literature on the relationship between resource abundance and economic growth we find that given an initial income level resource intensive countries tend to suffer lower levels of human development while we find only weak support for a direct link between resources and welfare there is an indirect link that operates through institutional quality there are also significant differences in the effects that resources have on different measures of institutional quality these results imply that the resource curse is a more encompassing phenomenon than previously considered and that key differences exist between the effects of different resource types on various aspects of governance and human welfare 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

a fuzzy linear programming enterprise input output model for optimal crisis operations in industrial complexes abstract industrial complexes may be subject to significant risk of cascading failure caused by various disruptions and emerging economies are potentially more susceptible to the impacts as less established policies are in place to deal with these issues in particular there is a need to develop adaptation strategies to ensure the resilience of industrial activities to various perturbations that may result from climate change the inherent complexity of such systems makes decision making for risk management a non trivial task that is best facilitated with the aid of mathematical models enterprise input output models have been used extensively to model production systems at different scales in this work a fuzzy linear programming enterprise input output model is developed to determine optimal adjustments in production levels of multi product systems when a crisis is induced by a loss of resource inputs the model allows for adjustments that are equitable for different decision makers that may comprise an industrial complex or a supply chain capabilities of the model are illustrated with a case study on the effect of water shortage on an aluminum production system

indivisible labor and the business cycle abstract a growth model with shocks to technology is studied labor is indivisible so all variability in hours worked is due to fluctuations in the number employed we find that unlike previous equilibrium models of the business cycle this economy displays large fluctuations in hours worked and relatively small fluctuations in productivity this finding is independent of individuals willingness to substitute leisure across time this and other findings are the result of studying and comparing summary statistics describing this economy an economy with divisible labor and post war u s time series

from export instability effects to international stabilization policies abstract this paper examines how the analysis of export earnings instability effects can help in the search for international policies of export earnings stabilization export instability which has been increasing and has been a quantity instability as well as a price instability is seen as a development problem a judgment relying mainly on a new cross section study and its policy implications stabilization of export earnings is analyzed as a response to this problem shortfall compensation and its different alternative conditions are examined with regard to the assumed effects of export instability and with special reference to the imf compensatory financing facility to the stabex and to the new proposal of the 1985 unctad expert group

multiple breaks terms of trade shocks and the unit root hypothesis for african per capita real gdp summary this paper presents an investigation of the unit root hypothesis for per capita real gdp series in 46 african countries from maddison 2003 over the period spreading during 1950 and 2001 toward this end we employ highly flexible panel techniques which incorporate multiple mean and slope shifts in the output series our findings are clearly supportive of regime wise trend stationarity in output after 1 allowing for cross dependence and multiple breaks and 2 removing four countries that exert undue influence on the whole panel remarkably our main results hold true for alternative per capita real gdp proxies retrieved from the penn world table 6 2 as well as for different country groups constructed on the basis of the country s participation in regional integration processes interestingly the timing of the breaks broadly coincides with terms of trade shocks associated with large fluctuations in the price of primary commodities based on our results we draw some policy prescriptions that point to the need for managing adequately terms of trade booms and busts to avoid large swings in africa s aggregate output

market reform and private trade in eastern and southern africa abstract this article reviews the experience of market reform in eastern and southern africa and highlights some key lessons learned a distinction is drawn between countries whose policy regime before reform was favourable to food production and those whose policies were unfavourable and alternative reform paths are described the two key issues emerging are the role of the public sector after reform for which there is still no clearly appropriate model and how the strong short term response of the private sector to trading opportunities can be transformed into investment post reform markets have been competitive but operate under tight constraints with little evidence of significant capital accumulation critical research issues to inform policy making are identified

optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital abstract this paper is concerned with the structure and time consistency of optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital in a dynamic context optimal taxation means distributing tax distortions over time in a welfare maximizing way for a barter economy our main finding is that with debt commitments of sufficiently rich maturity structure an optimal policy if one exists is time consistent in a monetary economy the idea of optimal taxation must be broadened to include an inflation tax and we find that time consistency does not carry over an optimal inflation tax requires commitment by rules in a sense that has no counterpart in the dynamic theory of ordinary excise taxes the reason time consistency fails in a monetary economy is that nominal assets should from a welfare maximizing point of view always be taxed away via an immediate inflation in a kind of capital levy this emerges as a new possibility when money is introduced into an economy without capital

optimal ramsey taxation with endogenous risk aversion abstract in this paper we study optimal ramsey taxation under endogenous risk aversion formulation in an otherwise standard real business cycle economy we show that when the risk aversion coefficient co moves counter cyclically the canonical chamley judd chamley 1986 judd 1985 result does not hold true and the ramsey planner chooses a positive capital income tax rate in the long run we report that result is due to additional wedges both in the intratemporal and the intertemporal optimality condition of the representative household

portfolio models and planning for export diversification malawi tanzania and zimbabwe evidence is presented regarding strengths and limitations of portfolio approaches as applied to diversifying export earnings an empirical application using data from malawi tanzania and zimbabwe is used to demonstrate these strengths and limitations modifications of the typical portfolio approach to export diversification are presented these modifications help make the approach more plausible for use in developing countries the modified approach is shown to provide guidance to policymakers who seek simultaneously to increase export earnings and reduce their instability

growing up in a recession does the historical macroeconomic environment affect preferences for redistribution we find that individuals who experienced a recession when young believe that success in life depends more on luck than effort support more government redistribution and tend to vote for left wing parties the effect of recessions on beliefs is long lasting we support our findings with evidence from three different datasets first we identify the effect of recessions on beliefs exploiting time and regional variation in macroeconomic conditions using data from the 1972 2010 general social survey our specifications control for nonlinear time period life cycle and cohort effects as well as a host of background variables second we rely on data from the national longitudinal survey of the high school class of 1972 to corroborate the age period cohort specification and look at heterogeneous effects of experiencing a recession during early adulthood third using data from the world value survey we confirm our findings with a sample of 37 countries whose citizens experienced macroeconomic disasters at different points in history

markov perfect capital and labor taxes abstract this paper analyzes the markov perfect equilibrium of an economy were a benevolent government that lacks the ability to commit to future policy choices uses taxes on capital and labor income to finance the provision of a public good the main finding is that the government taxes capital and subsidizes labor so that only the dynamic inefficiency of future capital taxes remains if agents preference for the public good is sufficiently high then capital is confiscated setting bounds on taxes alleviates the dynamic inefficiency inherent in capital taxation but some implementations carry a high welfare cost allowing for endogenous capital utilization makes the current capital tax distortionary and implies capital and labor tax rates that are relatively close to those measured for the u s economy

on price risk and the inverse farm size productivity relationship abstract the oft observed inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has elicited several explanations having important policy and theoretical implications using advances in the analysis of price risk effects on producer behavior and a simple two period model of an agricultural household that both produces and consumes under price uncertainty at the time labor allocation decisions are made this paper demonstrates analytically that a non degenerate land distribution and price risk can together produce an inverse relationship even absent any of the more common explanations empirical evidence from madagascar confirms the plausibility of this intuitive explanation for the phenomenon

coffee money and inflation in colombia abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between coffee money inflation and international competitiveness in colombia the basic hypothesis being investigated is that higher lower prices of coffee will tend to result through the accumulation of international reserves in higher lower inflation in turn this higher inflation will generate for a given rate of devaluation of the nominal exchange rate a reduction of the real exchange rate with the consequent loss of competitiveness in the non coffee tradable goods sector a dutch disease type of model is developed to discuss analytically the relationship between coffee prices money creation and competitiveness in the short and long run empirical results for 1952 1980 are presented these results support the hypothesis that there has been a positive relationship between the price of coffee money creation and inflation in colombia

the short run impact of fluctuating primary commodity prices on three developing economies columbia ivory coast and kenya abstract computable general equilibrium models are used to study the short run impact of fluctuating primary commodity prices on the economies of columbia ivory coast and kenya the results indicate that these economies are destabilized by primary commodity price fluctuations unless governments act to hold real domestic absorption constant to achieve this however would require foreign exchange reserves in excess of the level normally available to these governments for the purpose of stabilizing domestic economic activity

a new look at the benefits of diversification lessons from central america recent trends of export diversification in central america may lower foreign exchange earnings instability there four countries costa rica el salvador honduras and guatemala are analysed across a twenty year period the paper uses united nations commodity trade statistics to explain why costa rica and honduras have enjoyed greater earnings stability in recent years despite the fact that honduras has not greatly diversified its export products and markets despite the growth of new agricultural and manufacturing goods traditional primary products still dominate the countries export portfolios specific products within each of the four broad product category groups contribute to the varied country outcomes summary statistics from the united nations panel data suggest newer agricultural exports have not stabilized guatemalan and salvadoran export earnings while honduras has enjoyed relatively stable banana export revenues and costa rica has benefited from the smooth flow of microelectronic product

p graph approach for gdp optimal allocation of resources commodities and capital in economic systems under climate change induced crisis conditions abstract climate change impacts may manifest via multiple pathways often leading to a shortage of resources reduction in production capacities or reduction in available labor inputs that are vital for economic activities effective climate change adaptation strategies are needed to determine the optimal allocation of scarce resources commodities or capital under crisis conditions to minimize the economic consequences in such cases it is necessary to account for structural properties of economic systems to ensure that rational distribution policies are implemented input output models are used to illustrate interdependencies among economic sectors and to assess both direct and indirect effects of disruptive events alternatively these interdependencies may be exploited for developing effective recovery efforts to minimize the ripple effects of a crisis in this paper a process graph representation of the input output model is developed to generate a rational procedure for the allocation of scarce resources commodities or capital during crisis conditions the process graph model is a graph theoretic approach originally developed for chemical process design applications the analogous problem structure allows it to be used for the input output system the method is demonstrated through several case studies to identify allocation policies geared towards reducing the impact of disruptions attributed to critical resources commodities or capital results show that depending on the economic structure the optimal allocation of scarce resources commodities or capital will satisfy the final demands of some economic sectors and reduce the production capacity of others in order to minimize the reduction of total gross domestic product though similar results can be obtained through traditional mathematical programming models the process graph platform has the advantage to visually present the distribution of scarce resources commodities or capital within the system this work is a first attempt to implement the process graph approach in the fields of economics and climate change adaptation in conclusion the process graph based approach developed in this work can be used to provide policymakers with insights in developing appropriate risk mitigation plans associated with climate change induced crisis conditions potential applications include both the development of disaster preparedness measures for anticipated disruptions as well as the implementation of real time emergency response in the midst of a crisis

a new look at the effects of export instability on investment and growth abstract this paper is concerned with the effects of export instability on investment and growth it is shown that past cross sectional empirical studies on the effects of export instability either in prices or in value terms used an incorrect measure of instability that does not properly take account of the share of exports in gdp using a new instability index and a broad set of conditioning variables it is shown that export instability was positively associated with investment but negatively associated with growth in a large sample of countries during the period from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s

multiple objective analysis of input output models for emergency management this paper shows how a visual interactive dynamic multiple objective linear programming decision support system can effectively be used for analyzing input output models we have applied our approach to studying the quantitative effects of economic or political crises to the finnish economy examples of such crises are nuclear power plant accidents trade embargoes and international conflicts an input output model of the finnish economy with 17 industries sectors is employed our system has been implemented on a microcomputer and is being used by the national board of economic defense several typical case situations are discussed

international tourism and export instability export diversification has been suggested as a strategy for decreasing the level of export earnings instability which is experienced by many developing countries in recent years the international tourism sector has made an increasingly important contribution to the economies of many low income countries this article examines whether diversification into the non traditional tourism sector has succeeded in decreasing the instability of export earnings it was found that although tourism has the advantage of high growth rates and is a major source of foreign currency receipts earnings from international tourism did not bring about a significant decrease in the instability of export earnings of most of the developing and industrialised countries considered furthermore a net increase in the instability of earnings from tourism and merchandise exports occurred in a number of countries and may be a particular problem in small open developing economies

a system dynamic approach for exploring the effects of climate change risks on firms economic performance a number of studies have recently examined the potential relationships between climate change and the business community the majority of such studies have emphasized statistical and benchmarking techniques to identify how climate change could have implications on firms operations and their economic performance these techniques draw primary data from questionnaire surveys and corporate environmental reports in an ex post basis a fact that provide evidence in a linear probabilistic and static character these studies have provided limited insights regarding the future complex effects of climate change on corporate economic performance this paper aims to contribute to this literature by developing a dynamic model to investigate the evolutionary trends of the relationships between climate change risks financial performance and the operational processes of firms the main scope is to identify how physical regulatory reputational and litigation risks will affect day to day operations an integrated model will be established in order to improve managers and academics understanding of climate change and business performance four scenarios will also be tested to illustrate what if relationships in the presence of climate change risks finally the proposed model is based on the corporate climate change management system thinking system dynamic and stella software

changes in background risk and risk taking behaviour economic decision making under uncertainty often takes place in the presence of multiple risks and in markets that are less than complete as a consequence choices about endogenous risks sometimes must be made while simultaneously facing one or more immutable exogenous background risks that are not under the control of the agent and that are independent of endogenous risks it is somehow natural to assume that an exogenous deterioration in background wealth will cause an individual to take more care elsewhere if we define a deterioration for example as making the individual poorer by removing a fixed amount of initial wealth we know from pratt 1964 that decreasing absolute risk aversion dara of an individual s von neumann morgenstern utility function yields this natural result if on the other hand background wealth becomes riskier due to the addition of a zero mean risk that is also statistically independent of all other risks behavior will be more risk averse if and only if preferences are risk vulnerable as defined by gollier and pratt 1996 risk vulnerability described below in section 4 is a stronger notion than dara and includes proper risk aversion pratt and zeckhauser 1987 and standard risk aversion eeckhoudt and kimball 1992 kimball 1993 as particular cases but a deterioration in background wealth may encompass more complicated distribution changes than the introduction of another statistically independent risk in this paper we examine background wealth deteriorations that take the form of both general firstand second degree stochastic dominance changes in risk fsd and ssd respectively in particular we determine conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for each of these two types of background risk changes to imply more risk averse behavior on the part of the individual for the case of fsd changes this condition turns out to be ross stronger characterization of decreasing absolute risk aversion in the case of general ssd changes in the distribution of background wealth the condition derived is a stronger version in ross sense of the conditions characterizing preferences that are locally risk vulnerable in the sense of gollier and pratt the necessary and sufficient conditions derived are fairly restrictive upon preferences however if we take as positive behavior that individuals act in a more risk averse manner whenever the distribution of background wealth deteriorates these conditions place canonical limits upon appropriate utility representations at the very least they

stabilisation strategies in primary commodity exporting countries a case study of chile abstract a range of stabilisation options are considered to enable the chilean economy to accomodate a reduction in world copper prices these include macroeconomic wage and trade devaluation protection export subsidies policies using a multisectoral model the paper checks the ability of these option to reach employment and current account targets while quantifying their implications for other macroeconomic and structural variables each option is efficient in some degree in meeting one target while violating the other external and internal equilibrium cannot however be simultaneously achieved without cuts in both money wages and real absorption trade policies in themselves are insufficient

primary commodity price fluctuations and developing countries an econometric model of copper and zambia abstract most of the literature on commodity price fluctuations and their impact on development has been based on cross country data and aggregated export earnings the results have been inconclusive largely because the analysis fails to recognize the importance of country and commodity differences this paper isolates a single commodity copper and a single country zambia which copper export earnings loom large in the economy it then presents an econometric model of the country consisting of a disaggregated copper export sector with links to a macro model of the whole economy fluctuations in export prices around a smooth trend are then simulated and their impact on the non export sectors observed through such a development indicators as exployment levels gdp levels and growth rates general price levels and final demand

sequential equilibria in a ramsey tax model this paper presents a full characterization of the equilibrium value set of a ramsey tax model more generally it develops a dynamic programming method for a class of policy games between the government and a continuum of households by selectively incorporating euler conditions into a strategic dynamic programming framework we wed two technologies that are usually considered competing alternatives resulting in a substantial simplification of the problem

optimal taxation of capital income in general equilibrium with infinite lives this paper analyzes the optimal tax on capital income in general equilibrium models of the second best agents have infinite lives and utility functions which are extensions from the koopmans form the population is heterogeneous the important property of the models is the equality between the social and the private discount rates in the long run i find that the optimal tax rate is zero in the long run for a special case of additively separable utility functions i then determine the tax rates along the dynamic path and conditions that are sufficient for the local stability of the steady state

measuring changes in international production from a disruption case study of the japanese earthquake and tsunami the earthquake and tsunami that struck japan on march 11 2011 caused a tremendous loss of life and property the disaster also disrupted global supply chains which was blamed for anemic growth in the global economy a multiregional input output model can quantify the international impacts on production due to changes in demand from companies reducing their orders because of a disruption by using the input output model to conceptualize a supply chain we present a unique method for calculating indirect production losses caused by disabled production facilities methods for calculating the possible transfer of demand to industries in other countries are also discussed we apply the multiregional input output model to the japanese earthquake and tsunami comparing results generated by japanese consumer sales with those generated by japanese production data reveals that japanese demand was satised by other countries and that inventory in the production pipeline likely allowed consumer sales to remain strong

export instability export growth and gdp growth abstract the positive correlation between export instability and export expansion reported by lam in a recent paper is shown to be the result of a bias caused by the manner in which the instability index was calculated and by using data series which end in a year of unusually high exports it is shown that when correction is made for these factors there is no statistically significant correlation between export instability and export expansion or domestic income expansion