Taxation, infrastructure, and endogenous trade costs in New Economic Geography

This paper presents a New Economic Geography model with distortionary taxation and endogenized trade costs. Tax revenues finance a public good, infrastructure. We show that the introduction of costly public investment in infrastructure increases agglomerative tendencies. With respect to the regions' sizes, in the periphery, the price-index for manufacturing goods decreases, whereas for the core, the price-index is rather high since the distortionary effect of taxes dominates. 'Free riding' - or, in terms of regional policy, externally funded infrastructure investment - is beneficial for the periphery, which can devote all its tax revenue to local demand support, generating a positive home market effect and driving the catch-up process.New Economic Geography; Taxation; Endogenous Trade Costs; Infrastructure; Regional Policy

Fiscal rules in a highly distorted economy

The objective of this paper is to investigate the optimality of EMU fiscal rules from a welfare perspective. We compute welfare-maximizing feedback coefficients for monetary and fiscal rules in a NK-DSGE with a high number of nominal and real distortions, calibrated on the Euro-area data. The framework includes imperfect competition, costly capital accumulation, consumption habits, price and wage stickiness, distortionary taxation on consumption, labor and capital income. Fiscal policy responds, alternatively, to total deficit, total government liabilities, and a linear combination of both targets. We show that the liabilities rule is welfare superior, but it does not provide enough output stabilization if not coupled with a non-zero response of monetary policy to output; optimal feedback coefficient are larger under debt targeting rather than deficit; under the current specification, a SGP-like rule seems highly suboptimal.Fiscal policy rules,welfare analysis, tax distortions, stabilization policies

No Taxation without Infrastructure

This paper presents a New Economic Geography model with distortionary taxation and endogenized transport costs. Tax revenues finance a public good, infrastructure. We show that the introduction of costly public investment in infrastructure leads to more pronounced agglomeration patterns. With respect to the regions sizes, in the periphery, the price-index for manufacturing goods decreases, whereas for the core, the price-index is rather high since the distortionary effect of taxes dominates. Free riding is beneficial for the periphery, which can devote all its tax revenue to local demand support, generating a positive home market effect and driving the catch-up process.New Economic Geography, Taxation, Endogenous Transport Costs, Infrastructure

On the usefulness of government spending in the EU area

We investigate the effects of fiscal policy on private consumption and investment in the European Union. A certain consensus has aroused that fiscal impulses have expansionary Keynesian effects on the economic activity. However, the existing empirical literature has concentrated on few countries, mostly outside the EU. We check the validity of this result for the EU area, by using annual data and a panel vector auto-regression approach (PVAR). Our results show that increases in public spending lead to positive and significant effects on private consumption and private investment. According to our baseline estimate, a 1% increase in public spending produces a 0.36% on impact rise in private consumption, and a 0.79% impact rise in private investment. The effects are substantial, and die out slowly (faster in the case of private consumption). A further disaggregation between wage and non-wage components reveals different effects. As for the impact on private consumption, our results show that public salaries have a relatively stronger stimulating role, a result which is probably due to the importance of the public sector especially in continental Europe. On the other hand, the positive impact on private investment is mainly due to the non-wage component of government consumption.Fiscal policy, private consumption, panel vector autoregression.

Productivity and per capita GDP growth: the role of the forgotten factors

Average hourly productivity has often been used to draw conclusions on long run per capita GDP growth, based on the assumption of full utilization of labour resources. In this paper, we argue that a failure to recognize the potentially significant wedges among the two variables – even in the long run - can be misleading. By applying both time series and panel cointegration techniques on data on 19 OECD countries, we fail to reject the hypothesis of absence of a long run common stochastic trend among the two variables in the period 1980-2005. Furthermore, we apply a simple decomposition of GDP growth into five variables, included some related to the supply-side and demographics, so to verify the single contributions to income growth and variance over our period of interest. We conclude that variables that have been so far absent in the growth literature have indeed a non-negligible role in explaining the dynamics of long run per capita GDP growth. In particular, these “forgotten factors” (that we identify with the employment and the activity rates and a demographic ratio) matter more in better performing economies, where we also highlight that productivity has been less important in determining GDP growth than in relatively bad performers.Growth accounting; productivity; panel cointegration; demographics.

When is Austerity Ineffective?

This paper offers a formal analysis of the relationship between changes in government primary balance and debt-to-GDP ratio. it establishes the conditions under which a fiscal consolidation increases - instead of decreasing - the stock of government liabilities relative to aggregate output. A crucial role is played by the relationship between the elasticities of average cost of debt and nominal output to primary balance: while the former depends on debt maturity and risk premia dynamics, the latter relates to the well-known controversy on the size of government spending multipliers. The paper shows an application to the ongoing fiscal consolidation process in the Eurozone

Private and Public Consumption and Counter-Ciclical Fiscal Policy

In this paper we set up a NK-DSGE model in which the consumer derives utility from a consumption basket made of public and private consumption, there is monopolistic competiton in the intermediate good sector, Calvo-Yun price setting, endogenous labour supply and Taylor rule for monetary policy. We analyse the effects of a counterciclical fiscal policy rule and how varying the degree of counterciclicality affects the determinacy of the rational expectations equilbrium and the ability to respond to technological and government spending shocks. A broad conclusion is that desiderability of pro/counter ciclical stance of fiscal policy cannot accurately be drawn without taking into account the quality of the public expenditure and the way it interacts with private consumption

Private and public consumption and counter-cyclical fiscal policy

This paper bulds a closed-economy NK-DSGE model with no capital, in which consumers value both private and public consumption and fiscal policy is determined by a feedback rule responding to output gap. We analyse how different degrees of substitutatibility/complementarity between private and public consumption and a pro/counter-cyclical stance of fiscal policy affect equilbrium determinacy and the response of the economy to a wide range of shocks. Results show that determinacy is ensured by counter-cyclical fiscal policy under complementarity; increasing substitutability also pro-cyclical stance becomes stable. Differences can be observed also in response to shocks.

To Adjust or not to Adjust after a Cost-Push Shock? A Simple Duopoly Model with (and without) Resilience

We characterize the equilibrium in a homogeneous good Cournot duopoly in which firms have the choice to react to a cost-push shock by paying a lump-sum adjustment cost in order to offset the initial rise in marginal cost. Our results show that the size of the shock and the size of the adjustment cost jointly determine the nature and the number of the equilibria generated in the game. In particular, if the adjustment cost is high enough, at least one firm decides not to adjust at the pure strategy equilibrium, and such a partial adjustment by the industry can be socially efficient as well. Some implications of this partial equilibrium analysis about an industry' resilience are outlined

Fiscal shocks, public debt, and long-term interest rate dynamics

Public Finances worldwide have been severely hit by the 2008-2009 Great Recession, stimulating the debate on the consequences of growing fiscal imbalances. Building on Paesani et al. (2006), this paper focuses on the USA, Germany and Italy over the 1983-2009 period and studies the effects of fiscal shocks and government debt accumulation on long-term interest rates, both nationally and across borders. Based on a atheoretical framework, the empirical analysis disentangles permanent and transitory components of interest rates dynamics finding that sustained debt accumulation leads, at least temporarily, to higher long-term interest rates. The is particularly true for the Italian case. There is also evidence of significant cross-country linkages, mainly between Italy and the USA.Public debt; long-term interest rates; cointegration; common trends.