Trade, Envy and Growth: International Status Seeking in a Two-Country World

This paper analyzes international status seeking in a two-country model of endogenous growth: utility of agents in developing countries is affected by consumption gaps with the average consumer in advanced economies. By distorting terms of trade, status seeking: (i) may compensate for structural gaps in physical productivity, inducing convergence; (ii) may revert the link between trade and growth; and (iii) induces divergence when interacting with technological catching-up. In particular, envy in conjunction with catching-up predicts switchovers of growth leadership: when the advanced economy is both status- and technology-leader in the short run, convergence in interest rates - e.g. due to R&D spillovers - implies that the initially lagging economy becomes growth-leader in the long run, due to permanent price distortions induced by envy.Endogenous Growth; International Trade; Consumption Externalities; Productivity Di¤erences; Status Seeking; Technology Diffusion

Intergenerational Transfers, Lifetime Welfare and Resource Preservation

This paper studies the welfare properties of distortionary transfers in a life-cycle growth model where natural capital is private property. The main result is that, under credible pre-commitment, each newborn generation prefers positive taxes-subsidies to laissez-faire conditions when the resource share in production is sufficiently high. By increasing the degree of natural preservation, resource-saving policies raise welfare of all generations except that of the first resource owner, who suffers a deadweight loss due to taxation of the initial stock. If the first owner renounces part of his claims over initial endowments, all successive generations support resource-saving policies for purely selfish reasons.Distortionary Taxation, Intergenerational Transfers, Overlapping Generations, Renewable Resources, Sustainability.

Trade, Envy and Growth: International Status Seeking in a Two-Country World

This paper analyzes international status seeking in a two-country model of endogenous growth: utility of agents in developing countries is a¤ected by con- sumption gaps with the average consumer in advanced economies. By distorting terms of trade, status seeking: (i) may compensate for structural gaps in physical productivity, inducing convergence; (ii) may revert the link between trade and growth; and (iii) induces divergence when interacting with technological catching- up. In particular, envy in conjunction with catching-up predicts switchovers of growth leadership: when the advanced economy is both status- and technology- leader in the short run, convergence in interest rates - e.g. due to R&D spillovers - implies that the initially lagging economy becomes growth-leader in the long run, due to permanent price distortions induced by envy.Consumption externalities, international trade, two-country models.

Genuine dissaving and optimal growth

Green accounting theories have shown that negative genuine savings at some point in time imply unsustainability. Consequently, recent studies advocate the use of the genuine savings measure for empirical testing: a negative index implies sustainability be rejected. This criterion is not forward-looking: positive current genuine savings do not rule out ’genuine dissaving’ in the future. This paper derives a one-to-one relationship between the sign of longrun genuine savings and the limiting sustainability condition in the capital-resource model: if the sum of the rates of resource regeneration and augmentation exceeds (falls short of) the discount rate, long-run genuine savings are positive (negative). Testing this limiting condition allows to reveal whether current genuine savings are delivering a false message.Genuine Saving, Green Accounting, Renewable Resources, Sustainable Development, Technological Progress.

Growth, Conventional Production and Tourism Specialisation: Technological Catching-up Versus Terms-of-Trade Effects

This paper extends the ’expanding-varieties’ growth model in a two-countries-two-goods setup, and describes the dynamics of growth rates and terms of trade when the industry-based economy is the innovation leader, while the tourism-based economy is the follower (i.e. increases the number of intermediate inputs by readapting innovations developed abroad). Two types of transitional dynamics may exist: technological catching-up and technological falling-behind. Contrary to the standard result, technological catching-up by the follower is associated with lower growth rates with respect to the leader, whereas terms-of-trade effects guarantee positive growth differentials for the tourism-based economy when the technological gap with the leader increases over time. The underlying principle of ’increased relative demand’ might explain the good economic performance observed in tourism-dependent economies.Endogenous growth, Two-country models, Technology diffusion, Trade specialization

Intergenerational Transfers, Lifetime Welfare and Resource Preservation

This paper analyzes overlapping-generations models where natural capital is owned by selfish agents. Transfers in favor of young agents reduce the rate of depletion and increase output growth. It is shown that intergenerational transfers may be preferred to laissez-faire by an indefinite sequence of generations: if the resource share in production is sufficiently high, the welfare gain induced by preser- vation compensates for the loss due to taxation. This conclusion is reinforced when other assets are available, e.g. man-made capital, claims on monopoly rents, and R&D investment. Transfers raise the welfare of all generations, except that of the first resource owner: if resource endowments are taxed at time zero, all successive generations support resource-saving policies for purely selfish reasons.Distortionary Taxation, Intergenerational Transfers, Overlapping Generations, Renewable Resources, Sustainability, Technological Change

Endogenous Growth, Backstop Technology Adoption and Optimal Jumps

We study a two-phase endogenous growth model in which the adoption of a backstop technology (e.g. solar) yields a sustained supply of essential energy inputs previously obtained from exhaustible resources (e.g. oil). Growth is knowledge-driven and the optimal timing of technology switching is determined by welfare maximization. The optimal path exhibits discrete jumps in endogenous variables: technology switching implies sudden reductions in consumption and output, an increase in the growth rate, and instantaneous adjustments in saving rates. Due to the positive growth e¤ect, it is optimal to implement the new technology when its current consumption bene.ts are substantially lower than those generated by old technologies.Backstop technology, Discrete jumps, Endogenous growth, Exhaustible resources, Optimal Control

Notes on Habit Formation and Socially Optimal Growth

The interaction between habit formation and pollution-type ex- ternalities modifies the social optimum through discount effects and elasticity effects. If the substitution elasticity does not exceed unity, both effects reduce optimal consumption and capital in the long run, and the optimal capital-income tax increases with the relative impor- tance of habits. Similar results hold with high elasticity if the relative importance of habits is sufficiently high.externalities, habit formation, pollution, optimal growth.

Tax Policy and Human Capital Formation with Public Investment in Education

This paper studies the effects of distortionary taxes and public investment in an endogenous growth OLG model with knowledge transmission. Fiscal policy affects growth in two respects: First, work time reacts to variations of prospective tax rates and modifies knowledge formation; second, public spending enhances labour efficiency but also stimulates physical capital through increased savings. It is shown that Ramsey-optimal policies reduce savings due to high tax rates on young generations, and are not necessarily growth-improving with respect to a pure private system. Non-Ramsey policies that shift the burden on adults are always growth-improving due to crowding-in effects: the welfare of all generations is unambiguously higher with respect to a private system, and there generally exists a continuum of non-optimal tax rates under which long-run growth and welfare are higher than with the Ramsey-optimal policy.Endogenous growth, Human capital, Overlapping generations, Tax policy, Public investment.

Human Capital, Resource Constraints and Intergenerational Fairness

This paper studies an endogenous growth model with human capital, exhaustible resources, and overlapping generations. Under laissez-faire, higher study time reduces depletion rates by increasing the share of re- sources that present generations are willing to sell to successors. However, selfish behavior may prevent competitive sustained growth, and implement- ing utilitarian allocations generally induces optimal-and-sustainable paths. It is shown that: (i) raising study time and decreasing resource depletion are always complementary targets in optimal policies; (ii) growth effects are stronger the lower the optimal share of exploited resources; (iii) gener- ational welfare gains from optimal policies are delayed by faster depletion and, contrary to intuition, anticipated by lower social discount rates.Endogenous Growth, Exhaustible Resources, Human Capital, Over- lapping Generations, Intergenerational Fairness, Sustainability