Population diversity and financial risk-taking

We hypothesize that financial risk-taking originates in preindustrial interpersonal population diversity. We use data on immigrants residing in the United States and show that controlling for all known determinants of portfolio decisions and more than 100 control variables, diversity in the country of immigrants’ origin positively affects stock market participation and the level of risky asset holdings. Our results remain robust when instrumenting diversity with plant variety. We also identify the channels through which the effect of diversity operates (mostly individualism and human capital), but also conclude that diversity exerts an independent effect

Endogenous time preference and public policy: Growth and fiscal implications

Copyright @ 2010 Cambridge University Press. This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.This paper studies the growth and fiscal policy implications of the assumption that public policy generates an externality in the individual rate of time preference through the aggregate public capital stock. We examine the competitive equilibrium properties and we solve for endogenous growth–maximizing fiscal policy. We investigate the behavior of the government size and the growth rate to the sensitivity of time preference to public capital and the magnitude of public capital externality on production. We find that the Barro taxation rule [Barro, Robert J., Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990), 103–125], which states that the elasticity of public capital in the production function should equal the government size, is suboptimal. We show that the government does not necessarily have to increase income taxation following a rise in public capital intensity because of the externality of public capital on time preference and, in turn, on growth and the tax base of the economy

Sustainability Traps: Patience and Innovation

This paper argues that the joint relation between long-term orientation, environmental quality and innovation plays a key role in explaining the economic and the environmental dimension of sustainability. In our model multiple equilibria of economic development and environmental quality can arise due to a trade-off between the demand for innovation that promotes sustainability, and the ephemeral pleasure from polluting manufacturing that impedes it. Additional to traditional policies such as aid and technology transfers, policies that target behavioral changes through environmental protection may provide a double-dividend of economic and environmental sustainability through an environment-patience-innovation channel.ISSN:0924-6460ISSN:1573-150

Public capital maintenance and congestion: Long-run growth and fiscal policies

In this paper we study an endogenous growth model, in which public maintenance expenditures affect the depreciation rate of public capital and the latter is subject to congestion. We find that economies with low congestion in public infrastructure will require a threshold level of public capital maintenance for ongoing growth. We also examine the fiscal implications of public capital maintenance policies and we find that the composition of public capital expenditures under congestion is a crucial determinant of optimal and growth-maximizing fiscal policies. The government can affect the return of public capital by re-allocating public expenditures between 'new' public investment and maintenance and hence avoid excessive taxation that is required under increasing congestion.Public capital maintenance Congestion Optimal fiscal policies

Optimal fiscal policy with endogenous time preference

This paper studies the role of Ramsey taxation under the assumption that the individual rate of time preference is determined by the publicly-provided social level of education. We show how intertemporal complementarities of aggregate human capital can generate multiple equilibria and we examine the role of endogenous fiscal policies in equilibrium selection. Our analysis implies a lower optimal government size due to the effect of human capital on time preference

Population Diversity and Financial Risk-Taking

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