International Trade and Search

The standard model of international trade based on Dixit-Stiglitz theory of monopolistic competition originally developed by Helpman and Krugman is extended to allow for costly search and matching between producers of different varieties and retailers. This extension provides a new way of characterizing how the economy is divided in closed and open sectors. Trade policies will naturally have an effect on this division. The entry and exit of retailers and producers is modeled. It is shown that these (both gross and temporarily also net) flows (and the associated job flows) are affected by policies. Tariffs increase gross flows of retailers relative to producers. Gross flows will also be increased in the sector favored by policies. This provides a potentially fruitful hypothesis for empirical work. In contrast to the standard model, trade policies have also an effect on the scale of output by individual producers. Finally, the welfare effects of tariffs are surprising. Tariffs can improve welfare if they switch enough productive resources from the producers in the matching process relative to producers already matched and producing. This result is new to the literature.

Bribes and local fiscal autonomy in Russia

Russian industrial enterprises inherited from the Soviet era a tradition of producing welfare and infrastructure services within the firm, also for outside users. Despite the massive restructuring of the economy that took place since, many firms are still active in service provision. At the same time, opaque fiscal federalism is a problem for municipalities whereas rent extraction by public sector officials is a problem for firms. In this paper we examine whether there is a link between these phenomena. We propose a model on local fiscal incentives, service provision by firms and the municipality-firm relationship in the form of bribes. Using survey data from 404 medium and large industrial enterprises in 40 regions of Russia, we find that the higher the share of own revenues in the local budget, the more likely the firms are to report bribes. In the case of infrastructure services, the data also support the hypothesis that the channel is through service provision: the less fiscal autonomy, the more service provision and the less likely the firms are to report bribes.local fiscal incentives; corruption; service provision; Russia; firm survey

Reforms and Confidence

We examine the choice of economic reforms when policymakers have present-biased preferences and can choose to discard information (maintain confidence) to mitigate distortions from excess discounting. The decisions of policymakers and firms are shown to be interdependent. Confident policymakers carry out welfare-improving reforms more often, which increases the probability that firms will invest in restructuring. While policymakers in different countries can be equally irrational, the consequences of bounded rationality are less severe in economies with beneficial initial conditions. We also examine how present-biased preferences influence the choice between big bang versus gradualist reform strategies. Our findings help explain differences in economic reform success in various countries.policy reform; behavioural economics; hyperbolic discounting; con…dence; gradualism

Decomposing Growth: Do Low-Income and HIPCs Differ from High-Income Countries? Growth, Technological Catch-up, Technological Change and Human and Physical Capital Deepening

productivity, efficiency, developing countries