A Structuralist Model of the Palestinian Economy: Who Bears the Economic Burden of the Israeli Occupation?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article formally examines the economic impact of Israeli movement restrictions on the Palestinian economy, taking into account the distribution of economic burden among Palestinian workers and capitalists. It utilizes a model that postulates restrictions as an external third claimant on income (together with wages and profits). It highlights the importance of a political economy lens that takes social classes into consideration, both in the presented stylized facts and in the formal model. Formally, instead of assuming that capitalists passively bear the full burden of the restrictions on their profitability, the new model assumes that capitalists channel the burden to workers via the nominal wage. It also adjusts the assumption that the savings rate is homogeneous between Palestinian workers and capitalists. The article derives the new specifications for the profit rate, capacity utilization and capital accumulation, and finds that shifting the distributional impact of movement restrictions has a clear impact on the short-run equilibrium levels of capacity utilization and capital accumulation.