Growth and Welfare Effects of Stabilizing Innovation Cycles

We consider a simple model of innovation where equilibrium cycles may arise and show that, whenever actual capital accumulation falls below its balanced growth path, subsidizing innovators by taxing consumers has stabilizing effects, promotes sustained growth and increases welfare. Further, if the steady state is unstable under laissez faire, the introduction of the subsidy can make the steady state stable. Such a policy has beneficial effects as it fosters output growth along the transitional adjustment path, and increases the welfare of current and future generations.Growth, endogenous cycles, stabilization, innovation, subsidy, welfare.

Entry Dynamics, Capacity Utilisation and Productivity in a Dynamic Open Economy.

This paper analyses an open economy Ramsey model with an endogenous labour supply without capital. The technology defines an optimal firm size. Changes to the number of firms is subject to adjustment costs, so that the entry dynamics is determined endogenously. We find that there is a short run transitory productivity dynamic introduced when there is imperfect competition due to changes in capacity utilization. We are able to analyze this in different contexts, including demand and technology shocks, both anticipated and unanticipated.Entry; capacity utilisation; adjustment costs; Ramsey.

Entry Dynamics, Capacity Utilisation and Productivity in a Dynamic Open Economy

This paper analyses an open economy Ramsey model with an endogenous labour supply without capital. The technology defines an optimal firm size. Changes to the number of firms is subject to adjustment costs, so that the entry dynamics is determined endogenously. We find that there is a short run transitory productivity dynamic introduced when there is imperfect competition due to changes in capacity utilization. We are able to analyze this in different contexts, including demand and technology shocks, both anticipated and unanticipated.entry, capacity utilisation, adjustment costs, Ramsey

National Labor Markets, International Factor Mobility and Macroeconomic Instability

We consider a standard two—country environment, where one of the countries has rigid wages and unemployment, and analyze how factor markets’ integration affects the economy with respect to expectationsdriven fluctuations. We demonstrate that by allowing free capital mobility, indeterminacy is exported to the world economy. If further liberalization is permitted, by allowing free movements of labor, the scope for indeterminacy is reduced and open labor markets may produce a stabilizing effect on the global macroeconomy. Whether this also implies higher welfare in the long run depends on differentials in average firm size across countries.Indeterminacy, Factor Movements, Globalization, Efficiency Wages

Wage stickiness, offshoring and unemployment

This note investigates how the effect of offshoring on unemployment is influenced by the wage setting process. We assume staggered wage contracts in an otherwise standard search and matching model. In this setup, the contract wage depends also on expected future conditions. We show that more flexibility in the wage contracting process induces greater offshoring, a decrease in the worker’s job-finding probability and higher worker’s wage within job spells. Notably, less stickiness leads to a fall in the rents that firms can extract by producing domestically

Endogenous Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies

We analyze the effects of simple stylized economic policy rules, or stabilization principles, when fluctuations in economic activity are created endogenously by self_fulfilling volatile expectations. We study a simple monetary competitive model with intertemporally optimizing agents and a government. We only depart from neoclassical orthodoxy by assuming that a cycle or a sunspot equilibrium, not necessarily a steady state, could be the descriptive dynamic rational expectations equilibrium. The government may then well out of welfare concerns want to conduct systematic stabilization policy through transfers, expenditure, and taxation even though this has distortionary effects. We show that the policy rules that stabilize output in a way that is best for welfare involve countercyclical elements in government activity.Endogenous business cycles; Stabilization policy

Unions and Globalisation

We analyze the effects of international integration of product and capital markets (i.e., globalisation) in a world where countries differ in their labour market institutions: one country has a perfectly competitive labour market while the other is unionized. We show that workers should favour autarky in the unionized country, but oppose it in the non unionized country. Vice versa for owners of capital. Aggregate gains from integration, however, are negative. We also show that, under capital mobility an increase in relative bargaining power of unions does not always improve workers' welfare: there is a critical level of bargaining strength above which an increase in union power reduces workers' income in the unionized country.Capital mobility, Unions, Globalisation

Unionized Labor Markets and Globalized Capital Markets

This paper studies the effects of international integration of capital markets in a world where countries differ in their labor market institutions: one country has a perfectly competitive labor market while the other is unionized. We show that workers should favor autarky in the unionized country, but oppose it in the non unionized country and vice versa for owners of capital. Aggregate gains from integration, however, are negative. We also show that, under capital mobility, an increase in relative bargaining power of unions does not always improve workers’ welfare.Capital mobility, Globalization, Unions, Welfare.

Endogenous business cycles and stabilization policies

The paper reports results on the effects of stylized stabilization policies on endogenously created fluctuations. A simple monetary model with intertemporally optimizing agents is considered. Fluctuations in output may occur due to fluctuations in labor supply which are again caused by volatile expectations which are ``self fulfilling'', i.e. correct given the model. It turns out that stabilization policies that are sufficiently countercyclical in the sense that government spending (on transfers or demand) depends sufficiently strongly negatively on GNP-increases can stabilize the economy at a monetary steady state for an arbitrarily low degree of distortion of that steady state. Such stabilization has unambiguously good welfare effects and can be achieved without features such as positive lump sum taxation or negative income taxation as part of the stabilization policy.Endogenous business cycles, stabilization policy

Endogenous Business Cycles and Systematic Stabilization Policy.

We study the effects of stylized fiscal policy rules on the (global) determinacy of rational expectations equilibrium in perfectly competitive monetary model with constant returns to scale and labor as the unique input. Government spending on transfers and/or demand implies a distortion of the mnetary steady state due to the implied income or inflationary taxation. We show that policy rules for which the GNP share of government spending depends sufficiently negatively on increases in GNP can stabilize the economy with respect to endogenous fluctuations for an arbitrarily small level of distortion of the steady state at which stabilization occurs. These policy rules do not involve features such as positive lump sum taxation, negative income taxation, or exact knowledge of the economy's laissez faire steady state.