Demographic shocks and global factor flows: discussion

In this intriguing paper, Jeffrey Williamson emphasizes that changes in the age distribution of the population (especially the share of young adults, the dependency ratio, and the like) are often much more important than changes in population growth rates in explaining the magnitude and direction of global factor flows. He also stresses that the transition period that follows a demographic change (such as lower fertility or lower mortality) is usually very long: a century or even longer.Demography ; Economic conditions

The Stability and Growth Pact as an Impediment to Privatizing Social Security

The aging of the population shakes the confidence in the economic viability of pay-as-you-go social security systems. We demonstrate how in a political-economy framework the shaken cofidence leads to the downsizing of the social security-system, and to the emergence of supplemental individual retirement programs. Lifting the Stability-Pact type ceiling on fiscal deficits is shown to facilitate the transition from a national to a private pension system, through an endogenously determined shift in the median voter.

Gains from FDI Inflows with Incomplete Information

The paper develops an international macroeconomic model of FDI flows with a unique feature: a hands-on management ability to react in real time to changing economic environments. Anticipating this advantage, foreign direct investors can outbid other investors in a certain industry in which they specialize in the source country. The model can explain both two-way FDI flows among developed countries and one-way FDI flows from developed to developing country. The unique gains from FDI to the host country stem from the increased eciency of domestic investment.

Resisting Migration: The Problems of Wage Rigidity and the Social Burden

Just like any trade activity in well-functioning markets, migration tends to enhance the efficiency of the allocation of resources. With non-distortionary income distribution policy instruments which can compensate losers, migration generates income gains. But the gains tend to be typically rather small. However, when the labor market is malfunctioning and wages are rigid, migration exacerbates imperfections in the market. Consequently, it may lead to losses to the established population which can be quite sizable. Another problem raised by migration is the toll it imposes on the welfare state. Being unable to perfectly exclude migrants from various entitlement programs and public services, the modern welfare state finds it more and more costly to run its various programs. These two economic considerations may help explain why there is strong resistance to migration. Consequently, improvements in functioning of the labor markets (with a possible compensation to wage earners that compete with unskilled migrants) and more selectivity in the scope of and the eligibility for the state entitlement programs may potentially ease, to a large extent, the resistance to migration from the established population.

Aging and the Welfare State: The Role of Young and Old Voting Pivots

An income tax is generally levied on both capital and labor income. The working young bears mostly the burden of the tax on labor income, whereas the retired old, who already acummulated her savings, bears the brunt of the capital income tax. Therefore, there arise two types of conflict in the determination of the income tax: the standard intragenerational conflict between the poor and the rich, and an ntergenerational conflict between the young and the old. The paper studies how aging affects the resolution of these conflicts, and the politico-economic forces that are at play: the changes in the voting pivots and the fiscal leakage from tax payers to transfer recipients.

Vying for Foreign Direct Investment: A EU-type Model of Tax Competition

This paper brings out the special mechanism through which taxes influence bilateral FDI, when investment decisions are two-fold in the presence of fixed setup flows costs. For each pair of source-host countries, there is a set of factors determining whether aggregate FDI flows will occur at all, and a different set of factors determining the volume of FDI flows (provided they occur). We develop a two-country tax competition model which yield an asymmetric Nash-equilibrium with high corporate tax rate and high level of public good provision in the rich source country for FDI outflows and with low corporate tax rate and low level of public good provision in the poor host country for FDI outflows. This is akin to the asymmetry among the EU 15 and EU 10 in the enlarged European Union, as of 2004. We also demonstrate that the notion that the mere international tax differentials are a key factor behind the direction and magnitude of FDI flows, the traditional race to the bottom argument in tax competition are too simple.

Welfare Migration: Is the Net Fiscal Burden a Good Measure of Its Economic Impact on the Welfare of the Native Born Population?

Migration of young workers (as distinct from retirees), even when driven in by the generosity of the welfare state, slows down the trend of increasing dependency ratio. But, even though low-skill migration improves the dependency ratio, it nevertheless burdens the welfare state. Recent studies by Smith and Edmonston (1977), and Sinn et al (2003) comprehensively estimate the fiscal burden that low-skill migration imposes on the fiscal system. However an important message of this paper is that in an infinite-horizon set-up, one cannot fully grasp the implications of migration for the welfare state, just by looking at the net fiscal burden that migrants impose on the fiscal system. In an infinite-horizon, overlapping generations economy, this net burden, could change to net gain to the native born population.

On the Desirability of Taxing Charitable Contributions

We develop a model that allows for public goods and status signaling through charitable contributions. This model provides a unified framework in which contributions are driven both by altruism and status signaling. We use this setup to re-examine the conventional practice of rendering a favorable tax treatment to charitable contributions.optimal taxation, re-distribution, charitable contributions, inequality

Welfare Migration: Is the Net Fiscal Burden a Good Measure of its Economics Impact on the Welfare of the Native-Born Population?

Migration of young workers (as distinct from retirees), even when driven in by the generosity of the welfare state, slows down the trend of increasing dependency ratio. But, even though low-skill migration improves the dependency ratio, it nevertheless burdens the welfare state. Recent studies by Smith and Edmonston (1977), and Sinn et al (2003) comprehensively estimate the fiscal burden that low-skill migration imposes on the fiscal system. However, an important message of this paper is that in an infinite-horizon set-up, one cannot fully grasp the implications of migration for the welfare state just by looking at the net fiscal burden that migrants impose on the fiscal system. In an infinite-horizon, overlapping generations economy, this net burden could change to net gain to the native-born population.migration, welfare state, fiscal burden

International Tax Competition and Gains from Tax Harmonization

In a world economy there are two types of distortions which can be caused by capital income taxation in addition to the standard closed-economy wedge between the consumer-saver marginal intertemporal rate of substitution and the producer-investor marginal productivity of capital: (i)international differences in intertemporal marginal rates of substitution, implying an inefficient allocation of world savings across countries; and (ii) international differences in the marginal productivity of capital, implying an inefficient allocation of world investment across countries. The paper focuses on the structure of taxation for countries which are engaged in tax competition and on potential gains from s tax harmonization. We show that if the competing countries are sufficiently coordinated with the rest of the world then tax competition leads each country to apply the residence principle of taxation and there are no gains from tax harmonization. If, however there is not sufficient coordination,tax competition leads to low capital income taxes and the tax burden falls on the internationally immobile factors. The outcome is nevertheless still efficient relative to the available constrained set of tax instruments.