efficiency considerations and the exemption of food from sales and value added taxes we evaluate efficiency considerations underlying the widespread exemption of food from sales and value added taxes and the implications for tax policy household and restau rant meals and both constant and increasing returns cases are examined higher taxes on food offset the non taxation of time inputs into household production even under constant returns to scale with increasing returns gains from taxing food are higher and amplified by subsidizing restaurant food and all marginal cost components of restaurant meals on effi ciency grounds exemption of food from sales and value added taxes emerges as socially costly policy especially under increasing returns

inflation and financial deepening abstract financial deepening is defined as increases in the ratio of a country s financial assets to its gdp financial asset accumulation simultaneously provides credit to finance real asset accumulation for the development process the equilibrium long run ratio of financial assets to gdp may be expressed as a simple relationship of a country s financial savings ratio and its growth rate the present paper incorporates the effects of inflation on financial deepening inflation necessarily entails capital losses on all existing financial asset holdings it is shown that unless more monetary saving is forthcoming to offset such inflation induced capital losses inflation will operate to reduce drastically the degree of financial deepening which a country can obtain the process is illustrated with respect to the korean economy

financial intermediation and endogenous growth an endogenous growth model with multiple assets is developed agents who face random future liquidity needs accumulate capital and a liquid but unproductive asset the effects of introducing financial intermediation into this environment are considered conditions are provided under which the introduction of intermediaries shifts the composition of savings toward capital causing intermediation to be growth promoting in addition intermediaries generally reduce socially unnecessary capital liquidation again tending to promote growth

financial development economic growth and banking sector controls evidence from india this paper uses newly collected data from the reserve bank of india to examine the effects of various types of banking sector controls on the process of financial deepening with the exception of a lending rate ceiling these controls are found to influence financial deepening negatively independently of the well known effect of the real interest rate exogeneity tests suggest that financial deepening and economic growth are jointly determined thus policies which affect financial deepening may also have an influence on economic growth the role of banking sector controls in the process of economic development has received considerable attention in the literature the traditional approach due to mckinnon i973 and shaw i973 postulates that government intervention in the pricing and allocation of loanable funds dubbed financial repression inhibits financial development by depressing real interest rates see

the comparison between ad valorem and specific taxation under imperfect competition abstract this paper compares ad valorem and specific taxation in two models of oligopoly with and without free entry predominantly ad valorem taxation implies a relatively low consumer price high tax revenue and when entry is precluded low profits ad valorem taxation dominates specific taxation from the welfare perspective the set of circumstances under which with free entry specific taxation raises welfare is a strict subset of that in which ad valorem taxation is welfare improving and in both models the maximisation of consumer welfare subject to a binding revenue constraint requires maximum reliance on ad valorem taxation

inflation and financial deepening comment abstract in a recent paper moore 1986 has criticized mckinnon s 1976 analysis of the relationship between a country s savings propensities and its money income ratio on both logical and empirical grounds and has proposed an alternative treatment we argue here that moore s critique and proposed alternative while containing useful insights are theoretically and empirically problematic and we propose a synthesis of mckinnon s and moore s treatments we also develop a simple growth model based upon our synthesis which is shown to generate certain significant implications for the neo structuralist critique of the mckinnon shaw financial liberalization prescription

keiretsu and relationship specific investment a barrier to trade this article develops a model of informal procurement within japanese keiretsu so as to consider effects on intermediate good imports such as auto parts parts suppliers make relationship specific investments that benefit the automaker and prices are determined by bargaining after investment has been sunk although this investment raises efficiency it limits the range of imports to less important parts such as tailpipes and it is possible that no parts are imported despite lower foreign costs lack of information concerning investment rents combined with counterintuitive responses of imports to changes in output and costs could create unwarranted perceptions of a trade barrier

unorganized money markets and unproductive assets in the new structuralist critique of financial liberalization abstract the new structuralists critique of financial liberalization emphasizes the role of informal credit markets in financing firms residual credit demand in ldcs and the relevance of households portfolio substitution patterns the sensitivity of their policy conclusions is demonstrated in the context of a representative model developed by van wijnbergen the relative efficiency of intermediation in the formal and informal credit markets crucially affects the outcome of the portfolio allocation effects generated by higher bank deposit rates an anomaly in the characterization of unproductive assets in defining credit supply is also examined

on the optimal tax base for commodity taxation taxed considerable effort has been devoted to characterizing the manner in which the optimal tax rates differ across the taxable commodities but the literature has rarely addressed the issue of which commodities should be included in the tax base in fact the standard optimal tax model cannot provide a useful answer to this question because it does not contain any of the resource costs normally associated with the collection of taxes an omission that seriously diminishes the policy relevance of the model 2

interest rate management in ldc s the mckinnon argument that higher time deposit rates raise output and lower inflation in the short run and increase medium term growth by raising the savings rate are shown to depend crucially on the assumption that portfolio shifts into td s come out of an asset providing less intermediation than the banking system we show that if instead the shift is out of an asset providing more intermediation e g loans on a curbmarket raising td rates is contractionary in the short run may have negative impacts on growth and can lead to more rather than less inflation in the short run

the new structuralist critique of the monetarist theory of inflation the case of the philippines abstract developing economies may be characterized by long production lags advanced outlays to finance working capital needs will therefore assume primary importance with weak commodity and equity markets the financing is usually funded by credit either from the legal banking sector or from an underground curb market monetary and credit contraction espoused by monetarists as a key policy for controlling inflation will increase the cost of financing working capital needs this has an immediate short run stagflationary impact coming from the supply side of the economy the study uses a one sector macro model to test this hypothesis on the philippines with annual data from 1958 to 1980 the results give empirical support to the claim that the working capital cost push supply side effect is strong enough which means that austerity measures may require a heavy and costly recession before price inflation can be brought down

public sector banking efficiency and economic growth in india abstract this paper develops a framework that integrates harrod domar growth model and mckinnon shaw hypothesis via molho s dynamic adjustment mechanism the model is used to determine the impact of bank nationalization through aggressive bank branch expansion programs and priority sector credit allocation on india s financial savings investment productivity and gdp the empirical findings indicate that the bank nationalization policy has been a mixed blessing the aggressive bank branch program since 1969 resulted in an increased in savings investment productivity of capital and gdp however the priority sector credit allocation policy did not fully achieve its desired goals

directed credit and investment in small scale industry in india evidence from firm level data 1965 78 panel data on 788 modern sector indian firms during 1965 78 are used to analyse the link between the size of a firm and its financial environment exogeneity tests reveal that large firms with improved investment prospects could obtain external finance at the margin but that small firms could not the policy of directing bank credit accordingly relaxed a binding constraint on small firms raising investment assuming that all of the rise in the credit sales ratio in small firms was policy induced then so was about one third of the 170 per cent rise during 1965 78 in their investment sales ratio

monetization economic development and the exogeneity of money abstract using granger causality the authors examine the question of the exogeniety of money in india during its period of most rapid monetization 1970 1975 the paper finds that the demand for money function with the narrow stock of money can be estimated but not with the broad stock of money there is evidence of feedback between m 2 monetized income and the rate of interest an explanation along the lines of patrick s analysis of supply led financial development is advanced to show the influence of m 2 on income and the rate of interest

financial repression the new structuralists and stabilization policy in semi industrialized economies abstract this paper examines the short and long run effects of a variety of macroeconomic policies in a simple model where the curb market plays a pivotal role as the marginal supplier of loanable funds it is found that financial liberalization may fail in the short run and contrary to the claims of the new structuralists that the financial market repercussions of devaluation may be favorable in evaluating any policy the time horizon is critical short and long run multipliers may differ in sign in all cases save that of a contraction in the stock of bank credit

income velocity of money in agricultural developing economies t he response of income velocity of money to economic growth has implications for monetary planning in a developing economy velocity is the ratio of nominal income to money stock and decreases only if money stock rises at a faster rate than nominal income a well known hypothesis in this context is that of friedman 1959 which states that in countries experiencing a secular rise in real income per capita the stock of money generally rises over long periods at a decidedly higher rate than does money income i e velocity declines ezekiel and adekunle 1969 and melitz and correa 1970 in their international crosscountry comparisons have found evidence largely in favour of the friedman hypothesis this in its turn has strengthened the hope for active growthoriented monetary planning the extent of resources that can be transferred for investment purposes through non inflationary monetary expansion increases as development proceeds cross section studies involving developed and developing economies do not provide satisfactory indications of what happens to velocity over time in any individual developing economy firstly velocities have not behaved uniformly in all the developing economies secondly international cross country comparisons do not adequately explain why velocity changes in any individual economy is it because money is a luxury good i e income elasticity of demand for money is greater than unity to the agents in the economy is it because economic development brings about structural changes in the economy which lead to the observed behaviour of velocity is it because monetary habits change in a systematic way it is important to have time series analyses of developing economies to provide answers to such questions for example in a study of malaysia and singapore short 1973 found that though velocity did move inversely to per capita income this negative impact was overpowered by the change in monetary habits which the increase in bank offices caused the aim of this paper is to analyse the temporal behaviour of income velocity of money in agricultural developing economies in the literature on velocity and demand for money in developing economies attention is focussed mainly on three issues i the incomeelasticity of demand for money and in particular whether money is a luxury good or not ii the growth of monetisation and changes in monetary habits and iii the effect of the cost of holding money one important factor which has suffered total neglect is the role of sectoral differences in money demand behaviour and the structural shifts in the sectoral composition of income that accompany development money demand behaviour may vary across sectors this is true not only in developing economies but also in developed economies for example goldfeld 1976 has found that the business sector and the household sector in the united states have different money demand functions an implicit specification error is committed in the aggregative money demand or velocity equation whenever the sectoral income composition factor is omitted on a priori grounds this factor should have special significance in developing economies where sectoral shares in national income change over time in the absence of flow offunds accounts and adequate data on sectoral money holdings for most of the developing economies direct estimation of sectoral demand functions is not possible thus an aggregative specification which incorporates the sectoral income composition factor is necessary to analyse the behaviour of velocity

investment spending and interest rate policy the case of financial liberalisation in turkey the purpose of the present study is to analyse the impact of interest rate policy on investment spending in turkey over a period which covers years of both financial repression and financial liberalisation the model presented suggests that investment will be positively correlated with below equilibrium interest rates and negatively correlated with above equilibrium rates the model is tested using a switching regime model with an unknown equilibrium rate of interest the results suggest that setting interest rates too high may be as detrimental to economic health as setting them too low moreover there is evidence of an autonomous downward shift in the investment function during the liberalisation period which may have resulted from heightened uncertainty during the period

monetization financial liberalization and economic development barter sector in 1954 55 the monetized sector contributed 69 to the net national product of india the share of the monetized sector increased to 78 6 of the net national product by 1974 75 during this period the explicit objective of monetary policy in india was to help accelerate the pace of economic development in an environment of reasonable price stability there are several versions of the financial liberalization hypothesis but the one put forward by ronald mckinnon is chosen here because of its succinctness and easy amenability to empirical verification 2 mckinnon s theory in essence deals with the effect of financial liberalization on the accumulation of capital through a policy of high real interest rates this formulation has been made operational by estimating the response of real demand for money balances and private investment to alternative rates of return under the implicit assumption that these are the only two alternative forms of assets held by the private sector 3 all this is predicated on the assumption that the effective limitation on the rate of real capital formation is the supply of real savings and not the inadequate willingness to invest most underdeveloped countries have a significant barter sector a reduction in the share of the barter sector can help to further accelerate the accumulation of capital in a barter system a good share of the factors of production is tied up in distribution away from production to achieve the double coincidence required in such a system with the

on the desirability of input taxes abstract if it is not possible to tax all final goods and it is considered desirable to impose positive taxes on currently untaxed goods then it is desirable to tax inputs and intermediate goods at positive rates

food and work poverty and hunger nutrition and human productivity many have suggested that widespread undernutrition is a major factor retarding work output and development this hypothesis has been expounded with particular vigor by the international development agencies the world bank presently estimates that 34 of the population in developing countries have insufficient energy intakes to allow them to lead an active working life h correa and g cummins p belli and b m popkin have developed well thought out expositions of the above cycle of poverty theory 2 although some developmentalists led by p v sukhatme t srinivasan p payne and m lipton3 have been questioning these assumptions with increasing vigor the cycle of poverty is a deceptively logical and extremely tenacious example of the persistence of error in speculations concerning development statements such as physical weakness interacts with other disadvantages to perpetuate poverty acute shortage of food impairs development poor people are locked into a syndrome of physical deprivation 4 and low real income is a reflection of low productivity the case for balanced growth rests on the need for a balanced diet are still common in the literature in his 1982 edition of the widely read and well written exposition of major developmental issues entitled inside the third world paul harrison states the labour of a hungry man is less productiveso he is likely to produce less or to earn less and this will keep him poor and hungry food intake has a direct and obvious effect on work avoidance of physical effort and excessive resting become essential adaptations to chronic hunger with low income he can afford to buy less food and is caught in a vicious circle of poverty malnutrition

inefficiencies from financial liberalization in the absence of well functioning equity markets since the seminal works by mckinnon 1973 and shaw 1973 there has been active research into the working of financially repressed economies and the beneficial effects of elnancial liberalization see fry 1982 for a survey of literature they claim that liberalization of the elnancial sector from interest rate ceilings and other restrictions facilitates economic development and growth because higher interest rates lead to both increased savings and greater efficiency of capital allocation today the idea that financial activity should not be repressed has become the new orthodoxy in academia as well as in the major international institutions that provide policy guidelines for developing countries the elnancial liberalization argument however is incomplete the literature on emancial liberalization has emphasized eliminating interest rate ceilings and fostering free competition among banks it has largely overlooked the possibility that endogenous constraints in the credit market such as imperfect information could be signielcant barriers to efelcient credit allocation even when banks are freed from interest rate ceilings nor has the literature dealt with market structure e g the oligopolistic and cartelized banking systems found in most locs the literature has emphasized the role of the banking sector which is correctly perceived as the only organized capital market in most developing countries it has neglected the potential

ramsey tax rules for economies with imperfect competition abstract this paper derives optimal commodity tax rules for a general equilibrium model with imperfect competition to achieve this functions are constructed that describe the effects of taxation upon the equilibrium prices and profit levels of imperfectly competitive industries the use of these functions allows existing tax rules to be generalised to accommodate imperfect competition

optimal financial structure of finance companies in a regulated environment of a developing country little is known about the regulatory framework for financial institutions in developing countries in this paper the effect of regulations in the financial structure of finance companies in a developing country is examined the analysis suggests that regulations are so restrictive that they are reducing competition limiting the mobilization of local resources and inducing credit rationing in the financial system the application of simple programming techniques to evaluate the regulatory framework is also demonstrated some policy recommendations and suggestions for further research are presented at the end