Intergenerational and international welfare leakages of a tariff in a small open economy

A dynamic overlapping-generations model of a small open economy with imperfect competition in the goods market is constructed. A tariff increase reduces output and employment and leads to an appreciation of the real exchange rate both in the impact period and in the new steady state. The tariff shock has significant intergenerational distribution effects. Old existing generations gain less than both younger existing generations and future generations. Bond policy neutralizes the intergenerational inequities and allows the computation of first-best and second- best optimal tariff rates. The first-best tariff exploits national market power, but the second-best tariff contains a correction to account for the existence of a potentially suboptimal product subsidy.

Intergenerational and international welfare leakages of a tariff in a small open economy

A dynamic overlapping-generations model of a small open economy with imperfect competition in the goods market is constructed. A tariff increase reduces output and employment and leads to an appreciation of the real exchange rate both in the impact period and in the new steady state. The tariff shock has significant intergenerational distribution effects. Old existing generations gain less than both younger existing generations and future generations. Bond policy neutralizes the intergenerational inequities and allows the computation of first-best and second-best optimal tariff rates. The first-best tariff exploits national market power, but the second-best tariff contains a correction to account for the existence of a potentially suboptimal product subsidy.

Intergenerational and international welfare leakages of a tariff in a small open economy

A dynamic overlapping-generations model of a small open economy with imperfect competition in the goods market is constructed. A tariff increase reduces output and employment and leads to an appreciation of the real exchange rate both in the impact period and in the new steady state. The tariff shock has significant intergenerational distribution effects. Old existing generations gain less than both younger existing generations and future generations. Bond policy neutralizes the intergenerational inequities and allows the computation of first-best and second-best optimal tariff rates. The first-best tariff exploits national market power, but the second-best tariff contains a correction to account for the existence of a potentially suboptimal product subsidy.

Lifetime Labor Supply in a Search Model of Unemployment

This paper investigates the age-dependency of participation andunemployment by integrating job search with intertemporal optimizing behaviorof finitely-lived households. We find that search frictions and tax ratesdistort the decisions of older workers to a much larger extent than that ofyoung workers. This finding provides an explanation of the observed fall ofparticipation rates of elder workers as a result of the post-war increase intax rates and replacement rates. We show that the age pattern of searchunemployment does not match observed unemployment and we propose a new conceptof 'voluntary' unemployment that agrees well with observations.search frictions; labor supply; life cycle; unemployment; retirement.