Intergenerational Transfer and Effective Demand

This paper analyzes the effect that an intergenerational redistribution policy has on effective demand by introducing the monetary stagnation model into an overlapping generations economy. We show that the redistribution from a younger generation to an older generation worsens effective demand and the employment rate.Effective demand

Public Policy, Employment, and Welfare in an Efficiency Wage Model

This paper develops an efficiency wage model to highlight public policy for relieving unemployment. For the purposes of relief, we present unemployment benefits, public employment programs and wage subsidies. The results show that unemployment benefits have a negative effect on the employment rate, while public employment and wage subsidies have a positive effect. The impact of these policies on social welfare is also considered.

Does Pro-population Policy Raise Per Capita Consumption?

We theoretically analyze the effects of a child allowance, an improvement in the efficiency of child rearing and a labor income tax on the fertility rate and per capita consumption. The effects on per capita consumption are opposite in the absence, and the presence, of unemployment. For example, a child allowance urges people to have more children and allocate more labor to child rearing, decreasing labor supply for the purpose of commodity production. Therefore, under full employment, it decreases per capita consumption. In the presence of unemployment, however, it reduces the deflationary gap and hence stimulates per capita consumption.

Patterns of Technology, Industry Concentration, and Productivity Growth Without Scale Effects

This paper investigates the relationship between geographic patterns of industrial activity and endogenous growth in a two region model of trade that exhibits no scale effect. The in-house process innovation of manufacturing firms drives productivity growth and is closely associated with firm-level scales of production and relative levels of accessible technical knowledge. Focusing on long-run industry shares and a cross-region productivity gap, we find that dispersed equilibria with positive industry shares for both regions always produce higher growth rates than core-periphery equilibria with all industry locating in one region. Moreover, the highest growth rate arises in a symmetric steady state that features no productivity gap and equal shares of industry leading to the conclusion that the geographic concentration of industry has a negative impact on overall growth. Convergence towards a dispersed equilibrium, however, is contingent on the levels of inter-regional transport costs and knowledge dispersion. Finally, we explore the implications of greater economic integration arising from reduced transport costs and greater knowledge dispersion for patterns of industry and productivity, and for regional welfare levels within a dispersed equilibrium.Industry Concentration, Industry Share, Productivity Gap, Productivity Growth, Scale Effect

Technological Leaders and Followers in a World Economy

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model of North-South trade and economic growth in a world economy with a continuum of countries. Countries are different in research productivity. Innovation, imitation and the relative wage between countries are endogenously determined as well as the number of the country that specialize in innovative or imitative R&D. We investigate how equilibrium is affected by globalization, intellectual property right protection, industrial policy, competition and migration. The model is also extended to introduce foreign direct investment.Innovation, imitation, growth, trade, North, South

Subject/Object Asymmetry in the Comprehension of English Relative Clauses by Japanese Learners of English

While a number of studies have shown that object-extracted relative clauses are more difficult to understand than subject-extracted counterparts for second language (L2) English learners (e.g., Izumi, 2003), less is known about why this is the case and how they process these complex sentences. This exploratory study examines the potential applicability of Gibson's (1998, 2000) Syntactic Prediction Locality Theory (SPLT), a theory proposed to predict first language (L1) processing difficulty, to L2 processing and considers whether the theory might also account for the processing difficulties of subject- and object-extracted relative clauses encountered by L2 learners. Results of a self-paced reading time experiment from 15 Japanese learners of English are mainly consistent with the reading time profile predicted by the SPLT and thus suggest that the L1 processing theory might also be able to account for L2 processing difficulty

Certifying achievement in the control of Chagas disease native vectors: what is a viable scenario?

As an evaluation scheme, we propose certifying for “control”, as alternative to “interruption”, of Chagas disease transmission by native vectors, to project a more achievable and measurable goal and sharing good practices through an “open online platform” rather than “formal certification” to make the key knowledge more accumulable and accessible