bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Government subsidies, inflation and consumers' welfare
Authors: Bental B. , Spiegel M. 
Published: September 2022

There are numerous contributions to the literature on the relationship between various government intervention schemes and the rate of inflation. However, it seems that the policy of direct price support to consumer goods has not been analyzed in the professional literature, despite the fact that such policies are proposed in various countries in conjunction with anti-inflationary measures. For example, the British government proposed in July 1975 to increase food subsidies, among other measures to attrack inflation.Economists seem to be aware of the questionable value of subsidies in the fight against inflation. Subsidies have to be financed by the government, and therefore they may cause larger deficits, thus contributing to the inflationary process. On the other hand, subsidies may affect income distribution in favor of certains groups, and be of political value.We undertake a rigorous analysis of consumption subsidies and their relation to inflation and income distribution. The model employed for this purpose is Samuelson’s overlapping generations model (Samuelson, [1958]), in its simplest form. There is just one good, and fiat money; inflation is measured by the change of the money price of the consumption good from period to period.
The Influence of the 1974 Oil Crisis on Sectoral Growth Rates in the Belgian Economy
Authors: Bossier F. , Duwein D. 
Published: September 2022

This paper briefly presents and analyses the behaviour of the different sectors of the Belgian economy during the period 1965-1978. Special attention is paid to the influence of the 1974 oil crisis on sectors of the Belgian economy. It is shown that the 1974 shock had different consequences according to the energy components of the sectors.Measured in 1970 prices, the real production of all Belgian sectors together had an average, annual growth rate of 4.32 % between 1965 and 1978. This 13-year period, however, was marked by an important shock in 1974 and the growth rates over the period 1974-1978 were substantially lower than those observed before 1974.Although the average growth rate was 5.5% during the period 1965-1978, it was below 2% (1.79%) between 1974 and 1978. This important reduction illustrates the set-back of activity in most sectors and especially in the industrial sector; the average growth rate of industry dropped from 6.81% between 1965 and 1974 to 0.85 % from 1974 to 1978. The energy sector was also affected by the 1974 crisis, only conserving a moderate growth rate of 1.74% during the period 1974-1978 against 6.77% previously. On the contrary, services resisted the crisis better and maintained a growth rate of about 4 % until 1978.
Rémunération des directeurs généraux : le cas de la Belgique
Authors: Heinen Jean-Paul 
Published: September 2022

Ce sont Berle et Means (1962) qui furent les premiers à tenter de confirmer empiriquement et systématiquement l’idée que les fonctions de management sont dissociées de la propriété dans les grandes sociétés.Leur vision contraste avec celle des modèles classiques et néo-classiques : ils perçoivent l’entreprise comme une organisation dont le centre de décision a cessé d’être le lieu d’un interêt commun, celui du propriétaire.Cette séparation entre la propriété et le contrôle des grandes entreprises aboutit à l’énoncé d’une pluralité d’objectifs au sein de l’organisation ainsi redéfinie, cette pluralité n’étant que la conséquence de la confrontation d’intérêts a priori divergents.Le modèle de maximisation du profit peut dès lors ne plus se révéler valable; dans certains cas il convient plutôt d’élaborer un modèle où le profit n’est plus considéré que comme l’un des arguments de la fonction d’objectif ou comme une contrainte minimale à respecter.
Imports as a Competitive Discipline
Authors: Geroski Paul A. , Jacquemin Alexis 
Published: September 2022

The proposition that imports may constrain domestic competition and ought to be encouraged on at least monopoly welfare loss grounds is neither new nor very frequently challenged. In this paper, we should like to present several reflections on the literature — empirical and theoretical — associated with this proposition, and to sketch the outlines of two further empirical exercises which we believe capable of yielding information on some aspects of this general view.It is becoming increasingly accepted that industry conduct ought to play an important role in our theorizing about oligopoly, and that structural indices can be poor, and occasionally quite inaccurate reflections of the more complex reality of industry performance. In this section, we should like to explore this insight in the context of competition in an open economy.
Strategic Groups : an Application to Foreign and Domestic Firms in Spain
Authors: Donsimoni M.P. , Leoz-Arguelles V. 
Published: September 2022

The theory of Industrial Organization has traditionally assumed that firms in an industry are alike in all important dimensions except for their market share. In this context, a large body of the literature posits that some long run structural features on an industry such as the size distribution of sellers, the nature of the product and of technology and the existence of barriers to entry generate market power. Above normal profits are the manifestation of this market power and firms are assumed to benefit from it in proportion to their market share.This theory of industry-wide profit determination has recently been challenged by several authors (Hunt (1972), Newman (1978), Porter (1979), Caves and Pugel (1980), Encaoua and Franck (1980), Encaoua and Jacquemin (1981)). In particular, they have emphasized differences among firms’ strategies within an industry, indicating that these differences appear to be rather stable in the long run. Hence, strategic groups, i.e., groups of firms highly symmetrical in their strategies have been introduced as an additional element of market structure. The resulting hypothesis states that industries with substantial heterogeneous strategic groups should not fit the traditional structure-performance paradigm as well as industries with homogeneous strategic groups. Empirical support for this hypothesis can be found in Newman (1978) and Encaoua and Franck (1980).
The Impact of Concentration on Wages in the Sectors of Mining and Manufacturing of West German Industry
Authors: Feldmann B. 
Published: September 2022

Assuming a certain extend of labour immobility between different industrial sectors, this paper shall test empirically the effect of monopoly power on labour earnings in 40 West German industries.This investigation has been done before by several authors for different countries, but so far only one empirical analysis exists for West Germany, where a negative effect of firms’ concentration on wages was found. This is rather surprising, considering the opposite findings for the USA, the UK, France, Belgium and Italy, where in all cases positive relationships between firms’ concentration and wages have been revealed. Therefore another test for West Germany seems justified.In general, the analysis of links between monopoly power and labour income contributes to the research in welfare loss through monopolization, since any empirical measure of this welfare loss is understated if some fraction of monopoly profit is transferred to labour.
A Consumer with a Time-Varying B-Matrix
Authors: Lubulwa A.S.G. 
Published: September 2022

1. INTRODUCTIONThis paper introduces the idea of a consumer who has a time varying Lancasterian matrix of characteristics imbedded in an intertemporal Stone-Geary utility function. The thrust of the paper is theoretical, its main aim being the generalisation of the theoretical contributions of Dixon and Lluch (1977). The main contribution in Dixon and Lluch (1977) is that DELES, a system of equations is proposed which describe the consumer’s planned and actual expenditure paths for durables. In order to derive these equations they have a consumer maximising an inter-temporal Klein-Rubin utility function defined on the stocks of durables, subject to a budget integral constraint and a vector of durable goods stocks’ adjustment equations.This paper differs from Dixon and Lluch's contribution in that we assume that utility is not derived from the stocks of durables directly. Utility is derived from the characteristics that the durables yield. For example a car yields satisfaction to a consumer indirectly through characteristics like speed, comfort, safety, reliability, economy in petrol consumption, prestige and similar characteristics associated with the car. The idea of characteristics is best known from the work of Lancaster (1966, 1971), who assumes a constant objectively known characteristics matrix. This paper differs further from Lancaster (1966, 1971) in that we assume that characteristics of a durable change over time. Take the example of a car again. Over time, though, characteristics like capacity, associated with a particular car may be time invariant, most other characteristics like car reliability, petrol consumption, comfort, speed, prestige may change with the age of the car.
La configuration Nord-Sud du commerce des produits alimentaires: Un essai prospectif et une expérience d’histoire économétrique.
Authors: Burniaux Jean-Marc 
Published: September 2022

ABSTRACTAll the econometric studies on world food prospects lead to the picture of an increasing food trade deficit in the Third World. We discuss here this topic using a more global approach based on a general equilibrium framework covering the whole World Economy and involving disagregated rural and urban sectors. With this model, we analyses the impacts of Third World demography and debt, oil price, rural productivity and developed region growth. The model finds that the food trade in 1960 to 1995 is highly sensitive to these variables. The oil shocks and the resulting economic stagnation in the industrialized countries has broken trade patterns that were supposed to bring welfare to LDCs. These implied a North to South food trade balanced by a South to North manufactured trade. To sustain 5 percent growth in shrinking industrial world markets, the Third World, and especially the semi-industrialized countries, would be forced to « export urban hunger ». At the end of the century, food would flow from South to North, in the opposite direction from what has been unanimously predicted by other studies.
On the (In) Dependence of Interest-Rate Setting in a Small Open Economy - the Case of Belgium 1976-1983
Authors: Acx Rudi , Quintyn Marc 
Published: September 2022

For a longer period than has ever been the case in the past, these last few years have been marked by historically high levels of interest rates, as well as by an inversion of the yieldcurve.Given these extra-ordinary context, we think it right to renew our interest in the determination process of what is called the « domestic » interest rate in a small open economy. This is all the more important as the causes of interest rate volatility in the Belgian case may prove to be situated not only on an international level. They may also be found in domestic factors as e.g. the increase in the government debt (for a survey, see Fayt (1981)).This article is another contribution to the series of studies made in the seventies by e.g. De Generale Bankmaatschappij (1971), Hernandez-Lopez (1973), Clavijo and Kervyn (1974), Vuchelen (1976 and 1977c) and a more recent contribution of Reding, Jehin and Abraham (1982).
Mineral-Taxation in a Stages-of-Production Framework
Authors: Slade Margaret 
Published: September 2022

Government interference in private markets for exhaustible resources is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Each level of government — federal, state or provincial, and even local — has its own tax policy. Tax-policy instruments include royalties, depletion allowances, severance taxes, price controls and supports, environmental regulations, freight subsidies, profit taxes, and property taxes, to name only a few.These taxes may be levied at every stage of production. For example, property and some ad valorem taxes are levied on ores in the ground, severance taxes are paid when the ore leaves the ground, royalties and depletion allowances may be collected at the first sale (after some degree of processing), and price controls may be placed on finished products.Not only does the government intervene in private resource markets with great regularity but the size of tax effects is not small. For example, depletion allowances in the United States have been as large as thirty three and one third percent of revenues. And price controls in some periods have kept petroleum prices at less than half world prices.
A Role for an International Institution: A One-Shot Game-Theoretic Approach
Authors: Pacheco Fernando 
Published: September 2022

ABSTRACTIn this paper we use a two-country model of flexible exchange rates to analyse strategic interdependence. Values for the policy instruments are selected from discrete sets, increasing the likelihood of a non-unique Nash equilibrium. Communication between the policy makers becomes very important; we define international institutions as communication devices, since their mission in the context of our model (we are in a one-shot game) is indeed the exchange of some information, either policy proposals or recommendations. We discuss two such devices: direct communication (for instance, a telephone line), and communication through a mediator (an international parliament) that makes policy recommendations to both countries, which are not necessarily followed. The conclusion is that these devices may increase actual or expected welfare levels and ease agreement between decision makers, even in a world where Nash equilibria are efficient.
More Efficient Economic Policies of Disinflation: The Case of Greece
Authors: Economou George E. 
Published: September 2022

The high inflation rate and the increase in the unemployment rate coupled with very low growth rates, occured as a result of the second oil crisis, was confronted the policy makers of the new administration with a dilemma. They responded with a compromise of different sorts of policies aiming at achieving a gradual reduction of the inflation and unemployment rates so that they are reduced down to equilibrium over a long enough period of time.However, the monetary and fiscal policies adopted are not considered as a single macroeconomic instrument. The growth of real output is pursued with an expansionary public and fiscal policy, while inflation is confronted with restrained monetary policy against the private sector of the economy. Moreover, the way prices and incomes policy is adopted postpones recovering of output and profits, thus creating serious fears for a further increase of unemployment and a resurgence of inflation.
Can a Real Wage Decrease Cure Unemployment? A General Equilibrium Analysis for Belgium
Authors: Ginsburgh Victor 
Published: September 2022

In a series of papers (Ginsburgh and Erlich (1984), Ginsburgh and Van der Heyden (1985), Erlich, Ginsburgh and Van der Heyden (1985)), we have tried to assess by how much the real wage should be or should have been decreased in order to ensure short and/or long run full employment.This short note describes the main ideas lying behind the general equilibrium model built to answer these questions and summarizes the main results.The model attempts to embed a situation of short run market imperfections into a long run competitive equilibrium framework. If price rigidities and a lack of substitution between factors are acceptable assumptions in the short run, there do exist no better concepts than flexible prices, substitution possibilities and equilibrium in all markets in the long run.
Trends, Random Walks and the Expectations-Augmented Phillips-Curve- A Summary
Authors: Wasserfallen W. 
Published: September 2022

In most macroeconomic models, variations in nominal variables, such as inflation or money growth, are considered to be important determinants of cyclical fluctuations in real activity. The major hypothesis in that respect is the so-called Phillips-curve. In its modern interpretation, it maintains that only unexpected changes in nominal magnitudes produce real effects. Reliable empirical evidence on these effects is therefore crucial for the building of macroeconomic models and the conduct of monetary policy.Time series of output, industrial production or employment however contain growth and seasonal components in addition to cyclical elements. The empirical implementation of business cycle models therefore requires assumptions with respect to growth and seasonal parts as well, in order to isolate cyclical movements and to avoid misspecified equations. It has become general practice to assume that economic growth can be reasonably well approximated by a deterministic linear time trend. Seasonality is either captured through the explicit introduction of dummy variables or the use of seasonally adjusted data. Again, these procedures assume a deterministic seasonal structure. It is generally concluded in this literature, that unanticipated and possibly also expected changes in nominal magnitudes have non-negligible real effects.
A Note on the Inequality Approach of the Labour Theory of Value
Authors: Cuyvers Ludo 
Published: September 2022

I. INTRODUCTIONThe economic literature of the seventies shows a remarkable mathematical development of Marxian economics, especially after the publication, in 1970 and 1973 respectively, of Brody’s and Morishima books on Marx’s theory of value and growth (Brody (1970), Morishima (1973)) (it thus apparently took an entire decade for the many fruits contained in Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, in Okisio’s work (Okisio (1963)) and in the pioneering Econometrica paper of Morishima and Seton (1961) to mature). Not surprisingly, the relative abundance of mathematical papers and notes on the labour theory of value was accompanied by a lot of controversy. Steedman (1975) for instance, pointed out that joint production, when expressed in a linear system of equations, might easily give rise to negative labour values, a phenomenon already met by Morishima ((1973), pp. 182 ff.). In that case, positive surplus value is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the existence of positive profits. Such apparent perversities and the need of introducing the concept of scrapping unprofitable capital goods and technology, lead Morishima to develop his inequality approach.
Unemployment and Labour Market Transition Probabilities
Authors: Theeuwes Jules 
Published: September 2022

I. ANALYSING UNEMPLOYMENT: A RESEARCH PROGRAMThere are many kinds of unemployment. An average economist should be able to enumerate at least a dozen without forward notice. This embarrassing abundance of definitions gives a clear indication of the trouble we have pinning unemployment down.Unemployment is generally considered to be an undesirable quantity in a market economy. Although not all of it. Part of it is unavoidable and even considered necessary for an efficient matching of jobs and workers. In this sense one could define —although this would not be easy— an optimal quantity of unemployment taking into account the institutions and stochastics of the labour market. Unemployment under and above this optimum would be inefficient. The next question is: can one avoid too much or too little unemployment through policy measures at reasonable costs? There is no definite answer to that. A lot of heated discussion in macroeconomics focusses on this subject.
Unidentified Floating Unemployment (UFU) and the Specification of the UV-Curve
Authors: de Neubourg Chris 
Published: September 2022

Conceptually, unemployment may originate in various types of (temporary) imbalances on the labour market. Five types of origins are broadly to be distinguished (given the real wage level and the volume of labour supply):Uk: unemployment originating in very short term — seasonal — fluctuations in economic activity;Ul: unemployment originating in the underutilization of the existing physical production capacity;Um: unemployment originating in a shortage of new investment, that fails to compensate for the loss of employment due to the ongoing scrapping of older vintages of production capacity. Two dimensions can be distinguished (a) production capacity may increase too slowly and (b) the new capacity may be too capital intensive to guarantee the absorption (utilization) of the (given) labour force;Un: unemployment due to labour market imperfections leading to real mismatches of supply and demand. Market imperfections, in turn, originate in the behavioural reactions of workers and employers to incomplete information and in the fact that adjustments are seldom immediate and necessarily take time (see de Neubourg 1985a for details);
Trade Unions, Investment and Employment in a Small Open Economy: A Dutch Perspective
Authors: Mulder C.B. , van der Ploeg F. 
Published: September 2022

1. INTRODUCTIONLike in most European countries, unemployment in Holland has increased considerably in the past ten, fifteen years. This phenomenon is of major concern and warrants explanation. This paper sets out to explain employment and unemployment in a small open economy with powerful trade unions. It provides a framework in which various essential features of a small open economy, like Holland, are imbedded. World trade is a dominating factor on the demand side, whereas unions and long-run labour supply are dominating factors on the supply side. The various instruments the government has available (tax rates, levels of benefits, investment subsidies, public sector expenditure and employment) affect both sides of the economy. The investment behaviour of firms is an important link between present and future.The formal framework developed in this paper consists of a model with a well developed supply side and a demand side. The supply side is built around rums engaged in monopolistic competition. This provides a role for demand. The firms take the wage rates and aggregate demand as given when deciding on their labour demand and investment decisions.
The Impact of High Tariffs and Imperfect Market Structure on Plant Scale Inefficiency in Canadian Manufacturing Industries in the 1970’s
Authors: Baldwin J.R. , Gorecki P.K. 
Published: September 2022

INTRODUCTIONProductivity differences between the Canadian and U.S. manufacturing sectors are commonly attributed to smaller Canadian plant scale and levels of product diversity that are too large. However, there are relatively few studies that have actually investigated the extent of suboptimal scale. And those that have done so have either concentrated on a relatively small number of industries (Eastman and Stykolt, 1967; Gorecki, 1976; Scherer et al., 1975), have been beset by missing data observations (Caves et al., 1980) or have focused on Canada without comparing it to some international standard (Gupta, 1979; Dickson, 1979).