Long Run Policy Analysis and Long Run Growth

The wide cross-country disparity in rates of economic growth is the most puzzling feature of the development process. This paper describes a class of models in which this type of heterogeneity in growth experiences can arise as a result of cross-country differences in government policy. These differences in policy regimes can also create incentives for labor migration from slow growing to fast growing countries. In the class of models that we study growth is endogenous but the technology exhibits constant returns to scale and there is a steady state path that accords with Kaldor's stylized facts of economic development. The key to making growth endogenous in the absence of increasing returns is the presence of a "core" of capital goods that can be produced without the direct or indirect contribution of factors that cannot be accumulated, such as land.

Marginal income tax rates and economic growth in developing countries

One of the central predictions of growth theory, old and new, is that income taxes have a negative effect on the pace of economic expansion. Little empirical work has been done on the topic because of the difficulty of measuring the relevant marginal tax rates. Easterly and Rebelo experiment with a method for computing average marginal income tax rates that combines information on statutory rates with the amount of tax revenue collected and with data on income distribution. Their method relies heavily on the assumption that the marginal tax schedule has a logistic form. Their method stands a better chance of measuring the relevant average marginal tax rate than the widely used alternative of assuming (implicitly or explicitly) that the income tax is proportional. The possibility of estimating marginal income tax rates suggests two lines of research: a study of the properties of models with nonlinear income taxes and a search for adequate empirical strategies for testing those models with cross-country data.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Inequality,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Governance Indicators

Behavioral Theories of the Business Cycle

We explore the business cycle implications of expectation shocks and of two well-known psychological biases, optimism and overconfidence. The expectations of optimistic agents are biased toward good outcomes, while overconfident agents overestimate the precision of the signals that they receive. Both expectation shocks and overconfidence can increase business-cycle volatility, while preserving the model's properties in terms of comovement, and relative volatilities. In contrast, optimism is not a useful source of volatility in our model.business cycle, optimism, overconfidence, volatility

News and Business Cycles in Open Economies

Aggregate and sectoral comovement are central features of business cycle data. Therefore, the ability to generate comovement is a natural litmus test for macroeconomic models. But it is a test that most existing models fail. In this paper we propose a unified model that generates both aggregate and sectoral comovement in response to contemporaneous shocks and news shocks about fundamentals. The fundamentals that we consider are aggregate and sectoral TFP shocks as well as investment-specific technical change. The model has three key elements: variable capital utilization, adjustment costs to investment, and a new form of preferences that allow us to parameterize the strength of short-run wealth effects on the labor supply.

News and Business Cycles in Open Economies

It is well known that the neoclassical model does not generate comovement among macroeconomic aggregates in response to news about future total factor productivity. We show that this problem is generally more severe in open economy versions of the neoclassical model. We present an open economy model that generates comovement both in response to sudden stops and to news about future productivity and investment-specific technical change. We find that comovement is easier to generate in the presence of weak short-run wealth effects on the labor supply, adjustment costs to labor, and/or investment, and whenever the real interest rate faced by the economy rises with the level of net foreign debt.business cycles, neoclassical model, future total factor productivity, open economy

Behavioral Theories of the Business Cycle

We explore the business cycle implications of expectation shocks and of two well-known psychological biases, optimism and overconfidence. The expectations of optimistic agents are biased toward good outcomes, while overconfident agents overestimate the precision of the signals that they receive. Both expectation shocks and overconfidence can increase business-cycle volatility, while preserving the model's properties in terms of comovement, and relative volatilities. In contrast, optimism is not a useful source of volatility in our model.

Can News About the Future Drive the Business Cycle?

Aggregate and sectoral comovement are central features of business cycle data. Therefore, the ability to generate comovement is a natural litmus test for macroeconomic models. But it is a test that most existing models fail. In this paper we propose a unified model that generates both aggregate and sectoral comovement in response to contemporaneous shocks and news shocks about fundamentals. The fundamentals that we consider are aggregate and sectoral TFP shocks as well as investment-specific technical change. The model has three key elements: variable capital utilization, adjustment costs to investment, and a new form of preferences that allow us to parameterize the strength of short-run wealth effects on the labor supply.

Public Policy and Economic Growth: Developing Neoclassical Implications

Why do the countries of the world display considerable disparity in long term growth rates? This paper examines the hypothesis that the answer lies in differences in national public policies which affect the incentives that individuals have to accumulate capital in both its physical and human forms. Our analysis shows that these incentive effects can induce large difference in long run growth rates. Since many of the key tax rates are difficult to measure, our procedure is an indirect one We work within a calibrated, two sector endogenous growth model, which has its origins in the microeconomic literature on human capital formation. We show that national taxation can substantially affect long run growth rates. In particular, for small open economies with substantial capital mobility, national taxation can readily lead to "development traps" (in which countries stagnate or regress) or to "growth miracles" (in which countries shift from little growth to rapid expansion) This influence of taxation on the rate of economic growth has important welfare implications: in basic endogenous growth models, the welfare cost of a 10 % increase in the rate of income tax can be 40 times larger than in the basic neoclassical model.