Two-country Endogenous Growth Model Research Articles

Tariffs, Growth and Non-Tariff Transport Costs

This paper examines the impact of unilateral tariff increases on the world growth rate using a two-country endogenous growth model when firms are internationally mobile, technical knowledge in research and development is an international public good, and iceberg transport costs are not subject to tariffs. In this paper, we find that a unilateral tariff increase in one country raises or lowers the world growth rate, depending on the degree of elasticity of substitution between any two differentiated goods and the share of firms owned by the country that raised tariffs.

Global corporate income tax competition, knowledge spillover, and growth

Using a two-country model of endogenous growth with international knowledge spillovers, this study analyzes the welfare consequences of global corporate income tax competition. Although the Nash equilibrium tax rate can be excessively high or low according to the degree of spillover, this does not lead to significant welfare losses. The key to this outcome is that corporate income tax competition for growth maximization, which we consider hypothetically, attains the maximum growth rate despite complex externalities and strategic interactions.

Does a larger country set a higher optimal tariff with monopolistic competition and capital accumulation?

In a two-country endogenous growth model with monopolistic competition and capital accumulation, we show that: (i) a country’s optimal tariff is positive; and (ii) a more productive, and hence an economically larger, country sets a lower optimal tariff.

Faraway, so close! International transmission in the medium-term cycle of advanced economies

Large US firms, by diffusing embodied technology through trade in intermediates, appear to drive Europe's output over the medium term. We develop a two-country model of endogenous growth in varieties, cross-country firm heterogeneity and trade to match this evidence. A US TFP slowdown generates a pronounced recession in Europe, while a negative investment-specific shock also imparts a protracted recession in the US since GDP and firm productivity stay below trend beyond a decade. Heterogeneous firms, with endogenously changing productivity cut-offs, and the responses of innovators and adopters determine medium-term adjustment, as import switching processes unfold.

Capital market integration and fiscal sustainability

By constructing a two-country endogenous growth model with a debt-financing government, this paper studies the relationship between the sustainability of public finance and increases in inter-regional factor mobility. To this end, it identifies the minimum tax rate that ensures fiscal sustainability against the backdrop of capital tax competition and studies whether competition for mobile capital lowers or improves fiscal sustainability. The main findings are as follows: (i) when countries are symmetric, increasing capital flows promotes economic growth through the expansion of Romer-type knowledge spillovers, resulting in increased fiscal sustainability in all countries; and (ii) when a marked difference exists between countries, tax competition caused by capital movements might lower fiscal sustainability in a country with abundant capital and large outstanding debt.

Faraway, So Close! Technology Diffusion and Firm Heterogeneity in the Medium Term Cycle of Advanced Economies

Large US firms, by diffusing embodied technology through trade in intermediates, appear to drive Europe’s output over the medium term. We develop a two-country model of endogenous growth in varieties, cross-country firm heterogeneity and trade to match this evidence. A US TFP slowdown generates a pronounced recession in Europe, while a negative investment-specific shock also imparts a protracted recession in the US, since GDP and firm productivity stay below trend beyond a decade. Heterogeneous firms, with endogenously changing productivity cut-offs, and the responses of innovators and adopters determine medium-term adjustment, as import switching processes unfold.

Growth and welfare effects of unilateral trade liberalization with heterogeneous firms and asymmetric countries

How do reallocations across heterogeneous firms induced by unilateral trade liberalization affect long-run growth and welfare? To answer this question, we formulate a two-country model of endogenous growth, heterogeneous firms, and asymmetric countries. The relative wage and number of domestic varieties are endogenously determined. We show that even unilateral trade liberalization can raise the balanced growth rate. Although growth-enhancing trade liberalization is always welfare-enhancing in the symmetric country case, it does not generally ensure higher long-run welfare for at most one country because of asymmetric real wage effects caused by a change in the relative number of varieties.

PRODUCTIVITY GAPS AND TAX POLICIES UNDER ASYMMETRIC TRADE

We build a two-country model of endogenous growth to study the welfare effects of taxes on tradable primary inputs when countries engage in asymmetric trade. We obtain explicit links between persistent gaps in productivity growth and the incentives of resource-exporting (importing) countries to subsidize (tax) domestic resource use. The exporters' incentive to subsidize hinges on slower productivity growth and is disconnected from the importers' incentive to tax resource inflows—i.e., rent extraction. Moreover, faster productivity growth exacerbates the importers' incentive to tax, beyond the rent-extraction motive. In a strategic tax game, the only equilibrium is of Stackelberg type and features, for a wide range of parameter values, positive exporters' subsidies and positive importers' taxes at the same time.

Trade Structure and Growth Effects of Taxation in a Two-Country World

This paper explores the long-run impacts of tax policy in a two-country model of endogenous growth with variable labor supply. We focus on international spillover effects of tax reforms under alternative trade structures. It is shown that if the instantaneous utility function of the representative family in each country is additively separable and if international capital mobility is absent, then a change in taxation in one country does not directly affect capital formation in the other country. Such a conclusion is fundamentally modified if international borrowing and lending are allowed. Due to free financial flows, a change in tax policy in one country directly diffuses to the growth performance of the other country, even though preference structures are assumed to be log-additive forms.

Aid for Trade and Global Growth

Aid for trade increases a recipient's public services, which lower its import and export transport costs. Formulating a two-country endogenous growth model, we obtain two main results. First, a permanent increase in the donor's aid/GDP ratio raises the steady-state growth rate as well as both countries' long-run fractions and cost shares of imported varieties if and only if it lowers the product of transport costs. Second, under a plausible condition, there exists a unique interior growth-maximizing aid/GDP ratio. These results are robust to alternative specifications for congestion and stock-flow nature of public goods.

A two-country dynamic Heckscher–Ohlin model with physical and human capital accumulation

We study a two-country endogenous growth model in which the long-run growth is propelled by the accumulation of physical and human capital. We show that in the integrated world economy, there exists a unique and locally saddlepoint stable balanced growth equilibrium. We also show that the incorporation of adjustment costs in the process of human capital accumulation leads to a lower long-run growth rate. We then show that, in the 2-country world economy with international trade, balanced growth is possible. Finally, we present a dynamic Heckscher–Ohlin theorem concerning the pattern of international trade.

Trade Liberalization, Competition and Growth

Increasing evidence supports that international trade enhances innovation and productivity growth through an increase in competition. This paper develops a two-country endogenous growth model, with firm specific R&D and a continuum of oligopolistic sectors under Cournot competition to provide a theoretical support to this claim. Since countries are assumed to produce the same set of varieties, trade openness makes markets more competitive, reducing prices and increasing quantities. Since firms undertake cost reducing innovations, the increase in production pushes firms to innovate more. Compared to other oligopolistic competition models, we find a larger pro-competitive effect of trade on innovation under this framework, and this effect is increasing the larger the elasticity of substitution between products.

International Status Seeking, Trade, and Growth Leadership

This paper formalizes international status seeking in a two-country model of endogenous growth: utility of agents in developing countries is affected by consumption gaps with advanced economies. By distorting intertemporal choices, envy tends to revert growth differentials in favor of the developing country when traded goods are substitutes. Notably, asymmetric preferences with endogenous status desire generate (i) convergence in growth rates in the presence of structural gaps, and (ii) convergence in income levels, if productivity differences are absorbed by technology diffusion. This process is driven by declining terms of trade and faster capital accumulation of the status seeker. A calibration exercise shows that the model predictions are consistent with the stylized facts that characterized the growth performance of East Asian economies.

A two-country dynamic model of international trade and endogenous growth: Multiple balanced growth paths and stability

We formulate a two-country endogenous growth model, which explain joint determination of long-run trade patterns and world growth rates. After providing the existence and local stability of the continuum of balanced growth paths, we show that main standard trade propositions hold under some modifications and that, subject to certain conditions concerning social and private rankings of factory intensities between production sectors, the higher is the growth rate, the smaller is the volume of international trade among balanced growth paths in the continuum.

National minimum wages, capital mobility, and global economic growth

The paper considers a two-country endogenous growth model with capital mobility and national minimum wages. It identifies conditions on the technology and national preferences that determine whether national minimum wages are a stimulus or an obstacle to economic growth.

A dynamic model of optimal investment in research and development with international knowledge spillovers

We consider a two-country endogenous growth model where an economic follower absorbs part of the knowledge generated in a leading country. To solve a suitably defined infinite horizon dynamic optimization problem an appropriate version of the Pontryagin maximum principle is developed. The properties of optimal controls and the corresponding optimal trajectories are characterized by the qualitative analysis of the solutions of the Hamiltonian system arising through the implementation of the Pontryagin maximum principle.

A dynamical model of optimal investment in R&D

We provide steps towards a welfare analysis of a two-country endogenous growth model where a relatively small follower absorbs part of the knowledge generated in the leading country. To solve a suitably defined dynamic optimization problem, an appropriate version of the Pontryagin maximum principle is developed. The properties of optimal controls and the corresponding optimal trajectories are characterized by the qualitative analysis of the solutions of the Hamiltonian system arising through the implementation of the Pontryagin maximum principle. We find that for a quite small follower, optimization produces the same asymptotic rate of innovation as the market. However, relative knowledge stocks and levels of productivity differ in general. Thus, policy intervention has no effect on growth rates but may affect these relative levels. The results are different for not so small follower economies.

Foreign direct investment and growth under economic integration

This paper studies foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth in a two-country endogenous growth model. Starting with a core-periphery steady state in the world, the model shows that economic integration gives rise to FDI, leads to an expansion of R&D activity in the industrial core, and increases the world growth rate. In that process, the peripheral country enjoys a rise in the level of living standards. The model suggests that the often-observed positive correlation between inward FDI and economic growth does not necessarily imply any causal relationship—both of them respond endogenously to economic integration.

A two-country model of endogenous growth

We study the competitive equilibria of a two-country endogenous growth model in which the source of growth is the linearity of technology in reproducible inputs. We begin by showing that in a model with no externalities there is a unique equilibrium; however, there are multiple ways in which the social planner can allocate production plans across countries. We then introduce an externality to human capital and we show that the model has multiple equilibria that can be Pareto ranked. In many of these equilibria there are perfectly foreseen discrete reallocations of capital from one country to another, accompanied by discrete jumps in growth rates.

Loss of technological leadership of rentier economies: a two-country endogenous growth model

History shows that rich countries may lose their productivity advantage by changing to a rentier economy with large investments abroad. In our two-country two-sector model with firm-specific knowledge and perfect international capital markets, the initially most productive country is being overtaken by the initially backward country. The two countries share the same structural parameters but have different initial knowledge stocks. The larger the initial productivity gap is, the larger is the leader’s productivity loss, which implies path-dependency. The existence of a non-tradables sector drives the result. The leading economy gradually accumulates net foreign assets. Interest receipts are spent on imports and non-tradables. Labor is shifted from tradables production and research to non-tradables.