Endogenous growth, decline in social capital and expansion of market activities

We model in an endogenous growth set-up the hypotheses that the expansion of market activities weakens social capital formation, and that firms can invest in formal mechanisms of control and enforcement to substitute for social capital (trust, work ethics, honesty). The model shows that the economy tends to grow faster when it is relatively poorer in social capital and that perpetual growth can be consistent with the progressive erosion of social capital. These results may help reconciling Putnam’s claim that social capital has declined in the U.S. with the satisfactory growth performance of the U.S. economy over the same period.Generalized trust; externalities; marketization; social assets

The evolution of the Sino-American Co-dependency: modelling a regime switch in a growth setting

This work presents a two-country two-stage growth model capturing the special relationship that has emerged in recent years between the US and China (the so-called BWII regime described by Dooley et al., 2003). The Chinese authorities maintain a competitive (i.e., undervalued) exchange rate in order to sustain the high-productive exporting sectors, foster growth and absorb the large amount of rural workers into the industrial sector. Thus, China runs current account surpluses against the US and accumulates US assets in the form of foreign reserves. The US policy-makers are supposedly more concerned with keeping high the consumption possibilities of the population and exploit the Chinese willingness to finance the US external deficits. We consider three scenarios for the future state of the Sino-American co-dependency. All the scenarios share phase 1, resembling what has actually occurred in recent years, but differ in accordance with what fiscal policy the Chinese authorities adopt, and whether and when China fully liberalizes its capital account and floats the currency (thus starting phase 2). Scenario A is quite optimistic because the Chinese fiscal policy is effective in partially substituting the mercantilist policy undertaken in phase 1 as a fundamental source of demand for tradables and as an engine of growth. Scenario B emphasizes the risks for China of abandoning too early the peg of the exchange rate. Finally, Scenario C shows that a Chinese continuation of the current export-led growth strategy can be economically feasible and lead to the mobilization of the Chinese manpower into the advanced sectors of the economy.Bretton Woods II, growth, global imbalances, regime switch

Dualism and growth in transition economies: a two-sector model with efficient and subsidized enterprises

We develop a two-sector growth model distinguishing between a private sector consisting of profit-making firms and a state-controlled sector consisting of subsidized firms. Both sectors produce the same good. The private sector generates learning-by-doing and technological spillovers, while the state-controlled one is technologically obsolete and ‘stagnant’. This distinction allows tracing the dual-economy stage of development observed in transition economies. While in some of them the period in which profit-making and loss-making enterprises coexist was rather brief, some continue to display this pattern because of their industrial legacies and politicoideological preferences. The model predicts that—ceteris paribus—the larger is the initial fraction of the workforce employed in the obsolete sector and the stronger is the degree of ideological hostility towards market forces, the lower is the speed at which a transition economy will converge to the income level of the most advanced countries.Dual economy, endogenous growth, transitional economies

The Future of the Sino-American Co-Dependency

The crisis of 2008 has shown the unsustainability of the global imbalances centered on the USChina symbiotic relationship that characterized the previous decade. This has revived the so-called growth-rebalancing debate. In particular, the new emerging consensus calls for a re-orientation of the US economy away from consumption and toward exports, and for policy shifts that can help China to reduce its dependence on external demand and inefficiently high rates of capital accumulation. In this essay, we discuss the economic and political feasibility of the proposed patterns of re-adjustment by focusing on the short- and long-term trade-offs faced by the policymakers. We argue that the rebalancing will be gradual and partial because of the costs associated with a radical shift in the growth strategies of both countries. We also believe that this scenario will be consistent with a world economy expanding at lower rates than in the past decade.Growth strategies; Global imbalances; Sino-American co-dependency; Growth Rebalancing

The China-US co-dependency and the elusive costs of growth rebalancing

The global crisis burst in 2007 has revived the growth-rebalancing debate and backed the position of those advocating a fast reduction of the global imbalances centered on the symbiotic US-China relationship. In this work, we develop a two-country two-stage growth model reproducing the main features of the Sino-American co-dependency and we analyze alternative (medium- and long-term) scenarios for its evolution. We show that altering the Chinese exchange rate policy and down-sizing the US external deficits with a view to moving the production of tradables toward the US may imply some relevant costs. If exchange rate and fiscal policies are not properly tuned in both countries, the rebalancing process may lead to the emergence of structural unemployment in the US (due to the greater labor intensity of growth recorded in the nontradable sector than in the tradable sector) and to a slow-down in the process whereby the Chinese labor force is gradually absorbed in the modern sectors of the economyGrowth-rebalancing, global imbalances, structural unemployment

Chinese reserves accumulation and US monetary policy: Will China go on buying US financial assets?

It has been argued that China may stop financing the US external deficit, appreciate the currency, increase consumption and move its economy away from tradables and towards nontradables. Our two-country model shows that paradoxically this policy option is unattractive if the US authorities keep monetary policy sufficiently loose, thus reducing the real value of the US liabilities held by China. As long as the American and Chinese authorities pursue complementary objectives, the current China-US arrangement continues. In addition, an untimely appreciation of China’s real exchange rate may have negative consequences on employment in the US and in China.China-US co-dependency; global imbalances; reserve accumulation; external debt

Breaking the stability pact: was it predictable?

We show analytically that the credibility problem which has affected the European Stability Pact originates from the insufficient distinction between two reasons for having binding fiscal constraints. The first reason deals with the governments’ tendency to neglect the effects of their fiscal policy on foreign governments (fiscal free-riding). The second reason follows from the governments’ tendency to raise debt by lowering taxes or increasing expenditures, and then to leave it to their successors (fiscal short-termism). An enforcement mechanism relying on governments’ collusion works if the fiscal constraints are not calibrated for curing fiscal short-termism but only for preventing fiscal free-riding.Fiscal policy, Policy coordination, Capital formation, Free-riding, Short-termism.

Home production, labor taxation and trade account

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