Two-sector Economy Research Articles

Economic dynamics with renewable resources and pollution

This article considers a two-sector economy with externalities. In particular, the analysis involves an industrial sector whose polluting production activities have negative effects on the regeneration of a natural resource in the other sector. Without convexity or supermodularity, we prove that the economy evolves to increase the net gain of stock (a similar notion to the net gain of investment in Kamihigashi and Roy (2007)), and establish the conditions ensuring the convergence of the economy in the long run.

On the Anatomy of Medical Progress Within an Overlapping Generations Economy

We study medical progress within a two-sector economy of overlapping generations subject to endogenous mortality. Individuals demand health care with a view to lowering mortality over their life-cycle. We characterise the individual optimum and the general equilibrium, and study the impact of a major medical innovation leading to an improvement in the effectiveness of health care. We find that general equilibrium effects dampen strongly the increase in health care usage following medical innovation. Moreover, an increase in savings offsets the negative impact on GDP per capita of a decline in the support ratio. Finally, we show that the reallocation of resources between the final goods and health care sector, following the innovation, plays a crucial role in shaping the general equilibrium impact.

Optimal Resource Allocation in a Two-Sector Economy with an Integral Functional: Theoretical Analysis and Numerical Experiments

We investigate the allocation of resources in a two-sector economic model with a Cobb–Douglas production function for different depreciation rates with an integral functional on a finite time horizon. The problem is reduced to some canonical form by the scaling of phase variables and time. The extremal solution constructed by Pontryagin’s maximum principle is shown to be optimal. For a sufficiently large planning horizon, the optimal control has two or three switch points, contains one singular section, and vanishes on the final section. A transition “calibration” regime is observed between the singular section, where the system moves along a singular ray, and the final section. The maximum-principle boundary-value problem is solved in explicit form and the solution is illustrated with graphs based on numerical calculations.

Anticompetitive traps and voting

In a two-sector economy, we consider the endogenous determination of the level of competition in the imperfectly competitive sector, under democratic, non-manipulated voting. In the context of the Salop’s (1979) circular model, we identify conditions such that in addition to a competitive equilibrium (with most voters choosing the efficient level of competition intensity), an inefficient equilibrium is observed in which a majority of fully rational and informed citizens vote for an inefficiently low level of competition intensity. In particular, we show that under reasonable conditions, a coalition of middle-class entrepreneurs, who vote for a lower level of competition intensity, defeats a “coalition of extremes” formed by high- and low-productivity entrepreneurs and pure consumers, who vote for a higher level of competition intensity. In addition, we show that the higher the degree of similarity among entrepreneurs, the more inefficient the anticompetitive equilibrium.

The Incubated Revolution: Education, Cohort Effects, and the Linguistic Wage Gap in Quebec, 1970 to 2000

The wage gap between higher-earning English-speaking workers and those of the French-speaking majority, that had long characterized Quebec’s labour market, vanished between 1970 and 2000. We unveil a new empirical fact: the closing of the wage gap occurred through the replacement of older generations of workers by younger ones whose earnings were more equal. To explain this, we rely on a two-sector economy model characterized by linguistic barriers and capital mobility. The model not only explains the new fact but is also consistent with the timing of policy changes in the domain of education.

A NOTE ON THE SECTORAL COMPOSITION OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING, PROGRESSIVE TAXATION AND AGGREGATE (IN)STABILITY

This paper analyzes the effect of the sectoral composition of government spending on the stability properties of a two-sector economy with a progressive tax structure. The results suggest that indeterminacy is more likely to occur if the fraction of government spending on consumption goods increases. This study also finds that, under progressive taxation, a sufficiently high public-consumption share is needed to generate indeterminacy. It is shown that, with the benchmark parameterization, a higher fraction of government spending on consumption goods needs to be implemented with a more progressive tax scheme to stabilize the economy. Moreover, it is emphasized that belief-driven economic fluctuations may indeed be a feature of the U.S. economy.

Consumption aspirations in dirty and clean goods and economic growth

This paper builds a two-sector, two-factor environmental model in which agents optimally choose the clean and dirty goods in order to display their social status. In contrast to the conventional notion, we show that greater social aspirations in consumption regardless of either clean or dirty goods have an ambiguous impact on growth, depending on whether the production of conspicuous goods is relatively labor- or capital-intensive, whether the production of conspicuous goods generates more or fewer emissions, and whether labor supply is or is not responsive to social status seeking. By connecting two conflicting aspects of consumer preference involving social aspirations and environmental concerns, our analysis offers a novel explanation for the environmental Kuznets curve and a theoretical support for the empirical possibility of a negative employment-growth relationship and the so-called Green New Deal. Our welfare analysis shows that social comparisons in consumption may increase, rather than decrease, social welfare. The Pigovian tax may only be socially sub-optimal in the two-sector economy because it is unable to completely correct the distortion caused by consumption externalities.

Managing the technological development structure: Risk and “interest portfolio”

The paper identifies the tools for managing the technological development structure determined by the availability of new and old technologies, investment in technological update or increasing efficiency of technologies. The management tools under review are risk and the structure of interest rates influencing investment in advanced and outdated technologies. The research subject is the emergence of the latest technology creating a new resource and diverting the existing resources from current technologies. This aspect affects the structure of investment. At that, the emerging risks and interest rate can have a significant impact on the distribution of financial resources. The methodological basis is structural analysis, theoretical models describing various conditions for the emergence and interaction of technologies, modes, sectors, econometric assessments and measurements. The research method is creation of econometric models of two-sector economy and statistical risk assessment. The paper formulates the condition for economic growth based on various modes of structural dynamics of technologies. Changes in risk, profitability and technical advancement of economy are provided in a sectoral context. The author presents a diagram of the ratio of technological development rates in the two-sector model of the economy, which incorporates the manufacturing and transactional-material sector, as well as forms an “interest rate portfolio”, i.e. the ratio of interest rates on sectoral lending affecting the redistribution of resources for new technologies. Our findings indicate that advanced technological development requires additional credit to be created and processing risk to be reduced by changing the structure of interest rates.

Free mobility of capital and Labor force in a two-country model: The dynamic game for growth

In this paper, we consider a two-country and two-sector economy, where firms can choose to be innovative or not innovative, and workers to be skilled or unskilled. Using a dynamic game, we argue that exploiting the comparative advantages a country has in producing goods that use the most abundant factor of production, free mobility of capital and labor is beneficial for economic growth. However, if a country has a comparative advantage in a sector that uses intensely unskilled labor (which is the case of several underdeveloped economies), a poverty trap may arise. For this reason we argue that national Governments must ensure the technological development to improve competitiveness and therefore a social optimal use of the comparative advantages.

Growth and Long-Run Sustainability

From any state of economic and environmental assets, the maximin value defines the highest level of utility that can be sustained forever. Along any development path, the maximin value evolves over time according to investment decisions. If the current level of utility is lower than this value, there is room for growth of both the utility level and the maximin value. For any resource allocation mechanism (ram) and economic dynamics, growth is limited by the long-run level of the maximin value, which is an endogenous dynamic sustainability constraint. If utility reaches this limit, sustainability imposes growth to stop, and the adoption of maximin decisions instead of the current ram. We illustrate this pattern in two canonical models, the simple fishery and a two-sector economy with a nonrenewable resource. We discuss what our results imply for the assessment of sustainability in the short- and the long-run in non-optimal economies.

Analysis of Consumption on the Goods and Services Market in the Cybernetic Model of Selected Country

The paper analyses the consumption on the goods and services market in the cybernetic model of Czechia. The theoretical basis is given by the consumption function in the short-term, the macroeconomic multiplier of the two-sector economy and the cybernetic model with the goods and services market. All the above-mentioned theory is applied to the real conditions of the selected country, which is the Czech Republic.

Use values and exchange values in Marx’s extended reproduction schemes

Marx-Engels’ numerical illustrations of the extended reproduction suggest that a two-sector economy reaches a balanced growth path, from the second period onwards. We explain this surprising result and show that for technical reasons, disproportions between sectors can prevent the system from reproducing itself. But, in Marx’s reproduction schemes, such a crisis is not only due to purely technical factors and one must wonder what role is played by the relative price in the reproduction of the system. The answer is given by comparing two models having a similar structure but quite different rules for the determination of the relative price. In Marx’s model, the price is given by the labour values and thus, it is exogenously fixed. We contrast Marx’s analysis with an endogenous price model in which the price depends on the conditions of the accumulation of capital. The Appendices point out the complete accordance of Engels’ corrections with Marx’s model and Marx’s unfruitful quest for a balanced growth path as a tool for the analysis of crises.

Wealth Taxes and Inequality

We analyze the optimal combination of wealth and labor tax rates in a model where wealth-to-income ratios and wealth inequality are rising endogenously due to unbalanced technological improvement in a two-sector economy. We consider rich and poor households, financial and housing wealth, and find that a realistic optimal steady state tax structure includes some taxation of labor, zero taxation of financial wealth, a housing wealth tax on rich households and a housing wealth subsidy on poor households. These findings are robust with respect to variations in the housing demand elasticity.

Cycles Generated by the Consumer Durables Sector

We conjecture that in highly developed economies business cycles show positive feedback mechanism in which the households amplify the crises by refraining to replace old durable goods to new ones. On the one hand, families do not suffer much if they stop buying new consumer durables, such as automobiles, the example we use in this paper, because it is perfectly rational for them to continue to drive their "old" vehicle for quite a while without much welfare loss. On the other hand, families drawing salary from the given sector do suffer from the decline of the demand and if the crisis is deep and the sector has strong influence on the entire economy, all households are effected at the end of the day. In the framework of a two-sector economy agent-based model, we illustrate our thesis with the fluctuations in US car sales in the period 2006-2014. Subsequently we use an agent-based simulation and show that our conjectures do hold if applied to real-life statistical data.

As Bad as it Gets: How Climate Damage Functions Affect Growth and the Social Cost of Carbon

The paper analyzes the effects of varying climate impacts on the social cost of carbon and economic growth. We use polynomial damage functions in a model of an endogenously growing two-sector economy. The framework includes nonrenewable natural resources which cause greenhouse gas emissions; pollution stock harms capital and reduces economic growth. We find a big effect of the selected damage function on the social cost of carbon and a significant impact on the growth rate. In our calibration a quartic damage function raises the social cost of carbon by more than a factor of ten compared to the linear function. In the social optimum the growth rate remains positive even when the damage function is highly convex. We test the robustness of the results by adding pollution decay, lowering the elasticity of intertemporal substitution, and addressing uncertainty, which does not alter our results. We find that high marginal climate damages require stringent climate policies but do not preclude positive economic growth despite convexity, provided that policies are designed in an efficient manner.

Endogenous Ranking in the Two-Sector Urn-Ball Matching Process

This paper contributes to the debate concerning micro-foundations of matching functions in frictional labor markets. The focus is on a particular matching regime, i.e., the so-called urn-ball process. It is shown that in a twosector economy, even in the presence of heterogeneous workers, the assumption of applicants-ranking may be misleading. Instead, the choice concerning the adoption of either ranking or no-ranking behavior is endogenous and it is affected by both the tightness of the two sectors and the composition of the labor force in terms of skills. Moreover it is proved that exogenous shocks may change the form of the matching function. This result casts additional doubts on the assumption of exogenous matching function often made in empirical works aimed at assessing the effectiveness of policy measures.

Влияние структуры спроса и размера рынка на безработицу, неравенство доходов и общественное благосостояние

Using the General Equilibrium Model of the two-sector economy, the impact of consumer demand on the structure of employment, income inequality and the welfare of society is studied. It is assumed that the traditional sector is characterized by perfect competition, and single-product firms compete monopolistically in the high-tech sector and set wages as a result of negotiations with employees. In the model, labor is mobile within sectors, but not between sectors. It is shown that rise of the market`s size, the income tax rate and consumer spending on high-tech goods increases the level of unemployment in the economy. Unemployment remains at the equilibrium due to the imperfection of the labor market. Welfare shows a U-shaped dependence on consumer spending on high-tech goods. It is increasing as a fuinction of the market size and decreasing at the tax rate. In addition, with the increase in the elastisity of substitution between differentiated goods the difference between sectors declines, wages inequality disappears, the attractiveness of the high-tech sector shrinks, as far as the supply at the labor market and the unemployment level. The welfare of society is also declining. As a result, the recovery of social equality is due to the welfare of the society.

Skill-biased technological change and wage inequality in developing countries

This paper theoretically examines how skill-biased technological change influences the skilled-unskilled wage inequality in developing countries. In the basic model, we find that in a two-sector economy with full employment, an increase in the magnitude of skill-biased technological change will expand the skilled-unskilled wage inequality if the labor's distributive share in the skilled sector is large enough relative to that in the unskilled sector. When we extend the basic model by taking different characteristics into consideration, we find that an increase in the magnitude of skill-biased technological change will conditionally in a way similar to that in the basic model or unconditionally widen the wage inequality.

The Dixit–Stiglitz economy with a ‘small group’ of firms: A simple and robust equilibrium markup formula

In a general version of Dixit–Stiglitz two-sector economy, we present three variants of the concept of oligopolistic equilibrium in price-quantity pairs (d’Aspremont and Dos Santos Ferreira, 2016) integrating income feedback effects in three different ways. For the first two variants (Ford effects ignored or restricted to profits), a single and simple equilibrium markup formula is derived involving, for each firm, a conduct parameter indicating its degree of competitive toughness. Different specifications of these conduct parameters lead to different oligopolistic equilibria in prices and/or in quantities. In particular in the standard Dixit–Stiglitz economy, we show, that the first order conditions of a symmetric oligopolistic price equilibrium correspond to a unique degree of competitive toughness in the general markup formula, This degree is decreasing (and the markup increasing) as more feedback effects are taken into account by firms. On the contrary, for the third variant, introducing full Ford effects leads to lower markups and higher competitive toughness in the standard Dixit–Stiglitz economy and under conditions ensuring the equilibrium markup to remain in tne right interval,

As Bad as it Gets: How Climate Damage Functions Affect Growth and the Social Cost of Carbon

The paper analyzes the effects of varying climate impacts on the social cost of carbon and economic growth. We use polynomial damage functions in a model of an endogenously growing two-sector economy. The framework includes nonrenewable natural resources which cause greenhouse gas emissions; pollution stock harms capital and reduces economic growth. We find a big effect of the selected damage function on the social cost of carbon and a significant impact on the growth rate. In our calibration a quartic damage function raises the social cost of carbon by more than a factor of ten compared to the linear function. In the social optimum the growth rate remains positive even when the damage function is highly convex. We test the robustness of the results by adding pollution decay and lowering the elasticity of intertemporal substitution which does not alter our results. We find that high marginal climate damages require stringent climate policies but do not preclude positive economic growth despite convexity, provided that policies are designed in an efficient manner.