Military Expenditure and Economic Activity: The Colombian Case

We enhance a standard RBC model to account for military expenditure and the costs of an internal conflict or war. The model captures the natural trade-off in military expenditure: crowding out of private consumption and investment but less destruction (and, therefore, higher marginal productivity) of private capital (and labor). Hence, military expenditure below (above) a certain threshold generates a positive (negative) net benefit in terms of output. The model is calibrated to an annual frequency using Colombian data. We find that an increase in military expenditure of 1% GDP (the current policy of Colombian authorities) increases investment and output above the steady state during several periods, before the shock fades away. Even though consumption falls on impact (to open up space for the additional military expenditure and private investment), it increases above its stationary trend after three periods, remains on positive grounds thereafter, and the cumulated net gain is positive.Real business cycle, stationary state, military expenditure, crowding-out, productivity shock

Investment Under Uncertainty: Theory and Tests with Industry Data

Under the assumption of constant returns to scale, there is a very simple, easily testable condition for optimal investment under uncertainty. Application of the test requires no parametric assumptions about technology and no assumptions about the competitiveness of the output market. The condition is that the expected marginal revenue product of labor equal the expected rental price of capital. The condition implies a certain invariance property for a modified version of Solow's productivity residual. Tests of the invariance property for U.S. industry data give very strong rejection in quite a few industries. The interpretation of rejection is either that the technology has increasing returns (possibly because of fixed costs) or that fins systematically over-invest.

The Sustainability of Fiscal Policy in the United States

The paper examines the sustainability of U.S. fiscal policy, finding substantial evidence in favor. I summarize the U.S. fiscal record from 1792-2003, critically review sustainability conditions and their testable implications, and apply them to U.S. data. I particularly emphasize the ramifications of economic growth. A “growth dividend” has historically covered the entire interest bill on the U.S. debt. Unit root tests on real series, unscaled by GDP, are distorted by the series’ severe heteroskedasticity. The most credible evidence in favor of sustainability is the robust positive response of primary surpluses to fluctuations in the debt-GDP ratio.public debt, sustainability, primary surplus, unit root

International Capital Mobility, Public Investment and Economic Growth

This paper presents a neoclassical model of international capital flows, public investment, and economic growth. Because public capital is non-traded and is imperfectly substitutable for private capital, the open economy converges only gradually to the Solow steady-state notwithstanding the fact that international capital mobility is perfect. Along the convergence path, the economy initially runs a current account deficit that reflects a consumption boom and a surge in public spending. Over time, the rate of public investment declines as does the rate of growth in the standard measure of multifactor productivity in the private sector, the Solow residual.

The Intertemporal Approach to the Current Account

The intertemporal approach views the current-account balance as the outcome of forward-looking dynamic saving and investment decisions. This paper, a chapter in the forthcoming third volume of the Handbook of International Economics, surveys the theory and empirical work on the intertemporal approach as it has developed since the early 1980s. After reviewing the basic one-good, representative- consumer model, the paper considers a series of extended models incorporating relative prices, complex demographic structures, consumer durables, asset-market incompleteness, and asymmetric information. We also present a variety of empirical evidence illustrating the usefulness of the intertemporal approach, and argue that intertemporal models provide a consistent and coherent foundation for open-economy policy analysis. As such, the intertemporal approach should supplant the expanded versions of the Mundell-Fleming IS-LM model that currently furnish the dominant paradigm used by central banks, finance ministries, and international economic agencies.

Fiscal policy in the aftermath of 9/11

This paper investigates the nature of U.S. fiscal policy in the aftermath of 9/11. We argue that the recent dramatic fall in the government surplus and the large fall in tax rates cannot be accounted for by either the state of the U.S. economy as of 9/11 or as the typical response of fiscal policy to a large exogenous rise in military expenditures. Our evidence suggests that, had tax rates responded in the way they ‘normally’ do to large exogenous changes in government spending, aggregate output would have been lower and the surplus would not have changed by much. The unusually large fall in tax rates had an expansionary impact on output and was the primary force underlying the large decline in the surplus. Our results do not bear directly on the question of whether the decline in tax rates and the decline in the surplus after 9/11 were desirable or not.Fiscal policy ; Terrorism

Measuring and Explaining Government Inefficiency in Developing Countries

We show the relevance of government expenditure inefficiency using the Barro (1990) model. We estimate government inefficiency for 52 developing countries using a data envelopment analysis. The estimated inefficiencies are subsequently used in a general to specific approach in order to identify their determinants. We find the government expenditure inefficiency is primarily determined by governance and political variables, and structural country variables. Economic policy determinants apparently count less. Government inefficiency of the Sub Saharan countries in the sample is substantially higher. --Government inefficiency,data envelopment analysis,economic development

DEATH (MACHINES) AND TAXES

In the defense policy literature, it is widely believed that there is a pronounced bias towards the procurement of a less than optimal number of excessively sophisticated weapons. In this paper, we consider the possibility that this perceived bias is the result of the timing and informational structure of defense procurement decisions, and the inter-relationship of this structure with overall fiscal policy. Specifically, this paper presents a model that suggests that tax smoothing considerations of the type first articulated in Barro (1979) could lead social welfare maximizing decision makers to choose a higher level of weapon quality than would be optimal if government revenue could be raised without resort to distortionary taxation.Defense procurement, Weapon quality, Tax smoothing, Public Economics, H57,

The Dynamics between Real Exchange Rate Movements and Trends in Trade Performance: The Case of Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s exchange rate policies have been a bone of contention for concerned economic analysts and commentators alike. This study takes a new look at the record to explore the impact of exchange rate liberalization reforms on export growth in Ethiopia. I employ generalized method of moments estimators (GMM) techniques on time series data for the period 1981-2009. The study does not support the widely held view that exchange rate reforms induce export growth. But world income was found to positively impact Ethiopia’s export receipts over time.Real Exchange Rate, Devaluation, Export Performance