Simple Endogenous Growth Model Research Articles

Fiscal Transfers and Distributive Conflict in a Simple Endogenous Growth Model with Unemployment

Abstract In the simplified formal treatment proposed in this paper, a decrease in a policy parameter - the ratio of total tax revenues to GDP - can monotonically increase long-term growth rate and may lead to a higher employment level. This notwithstanding, the paper shows that the redistributive implications of such a decrease may induce the wage earners to oppose it. As a consequence, policy-makers reflecting social preferences may undertake redistributive transfers generating persistent unemployment and lowering growth even if commitment technologies allowing them to follow preannounced tax policies were feasible.

Foreign Aid, Political Instability, and Economic Growth

Relying on a simple endogenous growth model, this paper highlights a political instability effect as a potential explanation for why foreign aid is frequently ineffective with respect to economic performance. In the present framework, the role of the state is to fund institutions allowing for ongoing technology adoption and hence long-run growth. However, providing a self-interested government with additional resources to fill a possible i?½financing gapi?½ may not result in better institutions. More money in the hands of the regime fuels conflict over the distribution of the funds - and decreases the incumbent regimei?½s time horizon in office. With a shorter time horizon, it is less attractive to finance good institutions whose returns mainly accrue in the future. Panel data evidence points indeed to a sizable causal effect of foreign aid on political instability in the 1980s and 1990s.

Dynamic fiscal policies and unemployment in a simple endogenous growth model

This paper analyzes the growth and employment effects of dynamic fiscal policies in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth and imperfect labour markets. With balanced-budget policies, the modelled closed economy grows at a constant rate which is higher, the lower are the labour tax rate and the unemployment rate. Constant-flow budget policies are not feasible, while government Ponzi games are feasible only if economic agents have implausibly high savings rates. Furthermore, while constant-stock fiscal policies are sustainable, an increase in the debt-to-capital ratio is accompanied by higher taxes, a rise in unemployment and lower economic growth.

Inequality and growth in the presence of competition for status

We investigate a simple endogenous growth model where agents care about their social status. As greater equality tends to provide greater incentives to differentiate oneself, redistribution may increase wasteful competitive consumption and lead to lower growth.

Growth and fluctuations: The role of public dividends and public spending

In this paper, we consider a discrete-time version of the endogenous growth model developed by Barro [Barro, R.J., 1990. Government spending in a simple model of endogenous growth. Journal of Political Economy 98, 103–125], but augmented in order to envisage a public participation in the production of private goods. Public dividends are invested in order to provide a public good; in turn, the public good plays a role of indispensable production externality and, eventually, of growth engine. For what concerns the production of private goods, we find that an optimal policy is always based on a positive participation of the government as shareholder; also, when growth is slow, a public intervention or large substitution effects stabilize the economy. A right mix of short-run services and long-run infrastructures is suggested in slow economies to rule out expectation-driven fluctuations. Infrastructures are mainly recommended in presence of moderate income effects, while services are recommended in presence of strong income effects.

Growth, Inequality, and Integration: A Political Economy Analysis

The issue of political integration between two countries (more generally two political constituencies) for economic reasons is studied within the context of a simple endogenous growth model with a productive public good financed by taxation. We consider two countries that initially differ in terms of average endowment, size, and inequality. Because taxation affects the distribution of income both within and between countries, we are able to show how integration impacts it over the entire time horizon. The decision to integrate or not is made by the two national median voters. We establish the net gain for any individual in any country derived from integration and offer a simple decomposition of this gain. It is then proven that even though integration generates aggregate gains for both countries through an endogenous growth mechanism related to size, it may be in the interest of either median voter not to vote for integration given the transformation in the inequality schedule it implies. Surprisingly, even the poorer median voter may vote against integration. Turning to the process of union building, we prove that, once it is decided, integration is irreversible. Countries may initially decide against integration yet be willing to reverse this decision in a subsequent period.

05/02803 Polluting non-renewable resources, innovation and growth: welfare and environmental policy

We analyze the impact of the pollution generated by the use of non-renewable resources on the standard results of growth models. In this context, we obtain a Hotelling rule which is not a pure efficiency condition any longer. Subsequently, we show that some of the optimal paths' standard properties change: in particular, an increase in the households' psychological discount rate leads to a slower extraction of the resource. Moreover, we present a simple endogenous growth model that allows us to study the effects of an environmental policy aimed at correcting the distortion introduced at the equilibrium. We show that the tax level does not matter, and that a decreasing tax on the resource use yields the optimum.

Trade, services, and wage inequality

We develop a simple endogenous growth model with two countries, North that innovates, and South. As in Dinopoulos and Segerstrom (1999), trade liberalization raises wage inequality through stimulating R&D activity. However, the consequences of North-South trade become ambiguous when a service sector protected against international competition is included in the model. The key result is that, if the weight of service in final consumption is large enough, then trade could result in a reduction of wage inequality.

Superneutrality, indeterminacy and endogenous growth

In this paper, we explore the possibility of having money as a source of indeterminacy in endogenous growth models. We adopt the simple Ak model of endogenous growth to be the main analytical vehicle whose balanced growth paths do not display local indeterminacy. Money is introduced via either a general cash-in-advance (CIA) constraint or a pecuniary transactions costs (PTC) technology. It is shown that local indeterminacy of the dynamics is due to the presence of an intertemporal substitution effect on capital accumulation that works against and dominates the conventional inflation effect of Tobin [1965, Money and economical growth. Econometrica 33(4), Part 2, 671]. If money is growth-rate superneutral, then the intertemporal substitution effect is absent so that local indeterminacy cannot occur. Finally, the strength of the intertemporal substitution effect depends positively on the intertemporal elasticity of substitution in consumption.

Is There a Lack of Public Capital in the European Union?

This paper investigates whether there is a lack of public capital in European Union countries. The analysis builds on a new database providing internationally comparable capital stock estimates for 22 OECD countries, among these 14 EU countries, for the period 1960-2001. A simple model of endogenous growth is used in order to highlight the inherently nonlinear relationship between public capital and economic growth and in order to derive a measure of the growth-maximizing public capital stock. Against this background the empirical analysis provides estimates of the growth-maximizing level of public capital for EU countries. The empirical results suggest that there currently is no lack of public capital in most 'old' EU countries.

Economic growth and global warming: A model of multiple equilibria and thresholds

We presume a simple endogenous growth model where global warming affects economic growth and analyze the dynamics of the competitive economy and of the social optimum. Our regulatory instrument is an emission tax rate. We demonstrate that for certain values of the emission tax ratio the competitive economy exhibits multiple equilibria and a threshold may exist that separates the domains of attraction for the growth paths. There exist paths to high growth rates and low temperature and low growth rates and high temperature. For the planner's problem the long-run equilibrium is unique unless the damage of global warming is very small.

Availability of Higher Education and Long-Term Economic Growth

This paper examines the economic growth effects of limited availability of higher education in a simple endogenous growth model with overlapping generations. With limited availability, the scarcity of human capital keeps its price high and distributes a larger share of the aggregate output to young households. Under certain conditions, it leads to greater aggregate savings in each period, thereby enabling the economy to grow faster than without any limitation. In such cases, an excessive expansion in the availability causes a temporary boom followed by a serious deficiency in investible funds, resulting in a substantial slowdown in economic growth.

Excludable and Non-Excludable Public Inputs: Consequences for Economic Growth

Many public goods are characterized by rivalry and/or excludability. This paper introduces both non-excludable and excludable public inputs into a simple endogenous growth model. We derive the equilibrium growth rate and design the optimal tax and user-cost structure. Our results emphasize the role of congestion in determining this optimal financing structure and the consequences this has in turn for the government’s budget. The latter consists of fee and tax revenues that are used to finance the entire public production input and that may or may not suffice to finance the entire public input, depending upon the degree of congestion. We extend the model to allow for monopoly pricing of the user fee by the government. Most of the analysis is conducted for general production functions consistent with endogenous growth, although the case of CES technology is also considered.

Multiplicité d'équilibres, dynamique transitionnelle et bien-être dans le modèle de croissance AK

Cet article analyse la dynamique et les proprietes de bien-etre d’un modele de croissance endogene ak avec externalites intersectorielles de capital. Lorsque les externalites sont suffisamment prononcees, le modele admet une infinite de trajectoires d’equilibre convergeant vers le sentier de croissance equilibree. La resolution du modele en temps continu permet de caracteriser de maniere analytique la dynamique transitionnelle engendree par les differentes trajectoires de croissance, et de comparer les niveaux de bien-etre associes a chacune.

Polluting non-renewable resources, innovation and growth: welfare and environmental policy

We analyze the impact of the pollution generated by the use of non-renewable resources on the standard results of growth models. In this context, we obtain a Hotelling rule which is not a pure efficiency condition any longer. Subsequently, we show that some of the optimal paths’ standard properties change: in particular, an increase in the households’ psychological discount rate leads to a slower extraction of the resource. Moreover, we present a simple endogenous growth model that allows us to study the effects of an environmental policy aimed at correcting the distortion introduced at the equilibrium. We show that the tax level does not matter, and that a decreasing tax on the resource use yields the optimum.

AVAILABILITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND LONG-TERM ECONOMIC GROWTH

In the present paper, we examine the economic growth effects of a limited availability of higher education in a simple endogenous growth model with overlapping generations. It is shown that this limited availability might promote economic growth by increasing aggregate savings. If the supply of human capital is restricted, its price remains high and a large share of aggregate output is distributed to young households, which need to save for their old age. When this growth-enhancing effect is strong enough, an excessive increase in availability leads to a shortage of investable funds, which substantially reduces economic growth.

Why not Africa? -- Growth and Welfare Effects of Secure Property Rights

This paper presents the long-run equilibrium and developmentdynamics in the neoclassical growth model and a simple modelof endogenous growth when property rights are absent. Theresults are compared to the outcome in a corresponding modelwith secure property rights. The main findings are that thereexists a considerable gain in level and growth of consumptionfrom establishing secure property rights, that economicperformance without property rights worsens with an increasingnumber of competing social groups, and that the existence orabsence of property rights explains conditional convergence.

The Evolution of the Financial Contract in Economic Development

This paper presents an analysis of the joint determination of real and financial development. The analysis is based on a simple endogenous growth model in which a borrower's risk type is private information. Our innovation is to determine jointly the equilibrium loan contract and the economy's growth path. We show that at a low level of development an economy is likely to experience a large incidence of credit rationing. As capital accumulates, credit rationing may fall as a result of the emergence of a new contract regime in which agents mitigate information friction by making use of available information. This change in behaviour results in a higher capital accumulation path and a higher steady‐state capital stock.

Inflation, financial development, and economic growth

A simple endogenous growth model is developed to illustrate the important role played by inflation in determining the effects of financial development on economic growth. In the model, money is needed for loan transactions and the operations of financial markets are subject to informational imperfections. Results demonstrate that if a government's spending share is relatively large, then multiple equilibria arise under which financial development, measured by a decrease in the monitoring cost, is shown to raise inflation and reduce economic growth for countries with relatively high initial inflation rates. Only when initial inflation rates are relatively low will financial development reduce inflation and promote growth. Effects of an expansion policy in which the government raises its spending share on equilibrium inflation and economic growth are also examined.

Escaping Lock-in: The Scope for a Transition Towards Sustainable Growth?

In this paper we develop a simple endogenous growth model with two competing production technologies and learning spillover effects between firms that use the same technology. Investments are directed to the technology with highest current and expected returns. Since current investments increase future returns through learning, the economy will usually lock in, that is specialise in one of the two technologies. In case the economy has selected a relative polluting technology, sustainable growth requires a transition towards the clean technology. We analyse the scope for (environmental) policies that induce such a transition. expectations