Taxes, Federal Grants, Local Public Spending, and Growth

In a dynamic model with both private and local public capital accumulation, this paper examines how federal and local income taxes, local consumption tax, and federal matching grants for local public consumption and local public investment affect the long-run equilibrium Eqequilibria. of private consumption, private capital accumulation, local public consumption, and local public capital stock.

The spirit of capitalism and savings behavior

This paper presents a capitalist-spirit model of savings by including wealth in the intertemporal utility function. While this model includes the life-cycle model and bequest model as two special cases, it sheds light on why wealth holding has tended to increase with age, why decumulation of wealth after retirement has not happened, and why households with and without children have not shown significant differences in their savings behavior. The capitalist-spirit approach is especially useful for understanding savings by the rich and savings across countries and over time.Savings puzzle, Capitalist spirit, Wealth accumulation

Short-run analysis of fiscal policy and the current account in a finite horizon model

This paper utilizes a technique developed by Judd to quantify the short-run effects of fiscal policies and income shocks on the current account in a small open economy. It is found that: (1) a future increase in government spending improves the short-run current account; (2) a future tax increase worsens the short-run current account; (3) a present increase in the government spending worsens the short-run current account dollar by dollar, while a present increase in the income improves the current account dollar by dollar; (4) when government budget is balanced in the long run, a tax cut accompanied by an equal government spending cut in the future always leads to a deterioration in the short-run current account.

A dynamic model of capital and arms accumulation

How does competitive arms accumulation affect investment and capital accumulation? In a dynamic optimization framework including both investment and military spending, we find that, when the utility function is separable between consumption and the weapon stocks, an unanticipated rise in current military threat reduces current investment and an anticipated rise in future military threat stimulates current investment. But when the utility function is nonseparable between consumption and the weapon stocks, a current military threat may not decrease the short-run investment. In the long run, capital accumulation is independent of the military conflicts among countries regardless of the form of the utility function.Capital accumulation, Military spending, Economic growth, Arms race