De-Industrialisation, Entrepreneurial Industries and Welfare

We develop a two-sector general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition featuring nonhomothetic production and a variable demand elasticity for the manufactured goods. An increase in the relative price of manufacturing varieties can lead to a decline in total industrial output in our framework, i.e., to de-industrialisation.The two key mechanisms behind this surprising result are that the founding of firms requires skilled labour as a fixed input requirement, and that the price increase can raise the profit margin in the manufacturing industry and thereby induce firm entry. When the manufacturing sector mainly adjusts at the extensive margin,we refer to this industry as being entrepreneurial. Due to the fixed input requirement entry reduces the effective endowment of skilled labour available for production.This reduces industrial output owing to a novel generalized version of the Rybczynski effect. De-industrialisation occurs if that effect is sufficiently large in comparison with the standard output price effect for a given number of firms. Furthermore we prove the counterintuitive result that de-industrialisation implies a fall in the output per firm and under plausible conditions a rise in welfare. Our results shed new light on the current debates about possible causes of premature de-industrialisation and its welfare effects.Entrepreneurial industries, monopolistic competition, de-industrialisation, welfare effects

Environmental policy, the gains from trade and the double dividend debate

A multihousehold economy with production/consumption externalities, environmental taxation, and governmental production of pure, nonexclusive and nonrivalrous public goods is assumed. The production of public goods is financed from environmental tax revenue. Globally valid necessary and sufficient conditions for gains from international trade are derived and interpreted. A simple yet general environmental policy rule ensuring trade gains is put forward. The effect of international trade on the personal distribution of income of households is also considered. If the simple policy rule is followed, it is shown that the move to free trade represents a Pareto improvement without lump sum compensation by the government. The relevance of the double dividend debate for the achievement of trade gains is discussed

Capital, heterogeneous labour, global goods markets and unemployment

A two country model of trade between a flexiwage and a minimum wage economy or two mmjmum wage economies is developed. The main novelty is that there are three factors of production: capital, skilled and unskilled labour. This unlocks the terms of trade. Unskilled labour is subject to the same or different minimum wages in one or both countries. The trading pattern of the two countries is explained in terms of differences in various factor intensities, endowments with the two fully employed factors (capital and skilled labour) and the binding minimum wage rates. Free trade may reduce the wage of the unskilled workers in the flexiwage economy and lower the unemployment in the minimum wage economy. This follows because unemployment may be a source of competitive advantage due to the income effect. If the two countries differ only in terms of factor endowments (but operate the same minimum wage) free trade moves the two countries towards an equalisation of unemployment

Official Versus Private Foreign Aid: The Role of Crowding Out, Free Riding, and Political Economy

There exists ample evidence that the provision of official (governmental) aid relative to private aid to developing countries varies considerably between donor countries. A multihousehold model of official and private aid provision is put forward to explain the said differences. The latter are explained in terms of different political economy equilibria, differences in country size and donor/non-donor household composition, the distribution of income in the donor country as well as differences in the extent of the coordination of private aid provision. The interaction between the government and the two types of donor households is modelled first as a simultaneous game and then as a two stage game in which the government or a donor group has a first mover advantage

De-industrialisation and entrepreneurship under monopolistic competition

This paper offers a new mechanism to explain de-industrialisation in response to a price increase of the manufactured good. In our trade model, one sector (agriculture) is perfectly competitive while the other (manufacturing) is monopolistically competitive. Both industries use skilled and unskilled labour as inputs. Entry into manufacturing requires a fixed cost in terms of skilled labour only. A rise in the market price for the differentiated goods raises both marginal revenue and the price of skilled labour, which affects the marginal cost of production and the entry cost. When short-run profits increase so that new manufacturing firms enter, fewer skilled workers are available for production purposes. This, in turn, may then lead to a decline in total manufacturing output. Our theoretical mechanism is jointly consistent with recent empirical observations on pre-mature deindustrialization characterizing several Latin American and Asian countries, and productive diversification as observed in various developing economies

Factor Content Functions and the Theory of International Trade

This Paper introduces the concepts of direct and indirect factor trade utility functions and uses them to derive Marshallian and Hicksian factor content functions, which express the quantities of factors embodied in net exports as a function of the economy's factor prices and endowments. The properties of these functions are discussed and they are used to derive a number of new results. In particular, it is shown that, in certain circumstances, the existence of gains from trade is necessary and sufficient for the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem to hold in its factor content form

De-Industrialisation, Entrepreneurial Industries and Welfare

We develop a two-sector general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition featuring nonhomothetic production and a variable demand elasticity for the manufactured goods. An increase in the relative price of manufacturing varieties can lead to a decline in total industrial output in our framework, i.e., to de-industrialisation. The two key mechanisms behind this surprising result are that the founding of firms requires skilled labour as a fixed input requirement, and that the price increase can raise the profit margin in the manufacturing industry and thereby induce firm entry. When the manufacturing sector mainly adjusts at the extensive margin, we refer to this industry as being entrepreneurial. Due to the fixed input requirement entry reduces the effective endowment of skilled labour available for production. This reduces industrial output owing to a novel generalized version of the Rybczynski effect. De-industrialisation occurs if that effect is sufficiently large in comparison with the standard output price effect for a given number of firms. Furthermore we prove the counterintuitive result that de-industrialisation implies a fall in the output per firm and under plausible conditions a rise in welfare. Our results shed new light on the current debates about possible causes of premature de-industrialisation and its welfare effects

Factor content functions and theory of international trade

This paper introduces the concepts of direct and indirect factor trade utility functions and uses them to derive Marshallian and Hicksian factor content functions, which express the quantities of factors embodied in variables. The properties of these functions are discussed and they are used to derive a number of new results. In particualar, it is shown that, in certain circumstances, the existence of gains from trade is necessary and sufficient for the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem to hold in its factor content form.A hard copy is available in UCD Library at GEN 330.08 IR/UN

Procompetitive gains from trade and comparative advantage

SIGLEAvailable from Bibliothek des Instituts fuer Weltwirtschaft, ZBW, Duesternbrook Weg 120, D-24105 Kiel W 113 (155) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman