Download or read book Essays on Financial Macroeconomics and Inequality written by Ignacio Gonzalez and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is composed of three self-contained chapters on the same topic: the impact of financial markets on inequality. The first paper investigates the connection between the increase of equity wealth, the rise stock-market returns, the slowdown of corporate investment and the decline of the labor share in the U.S. economy. I use a version of the standard heterogeneous-agent model to explain the connection of these phenomena and I identify three driving forces. In particular, I show that the fall of the average marginal tax on capital income, the reduction of stock-market costs and a higher inclination towards corporate short-termism explain the decrease of investment and the rise of equity prices. This way, the model predicts an endogenous upsurge of equity Tobin's Q and, importantly, the rise of equity returns. The decline of the labor share occurs in response to investment sluggishness when capital and labor are complements, which requires an elasticity of substitution consistent with the values found in the literature. Given the predictions of the model, the paper solves what Joseph Stiglitz has recently called the Piketty puzzle: why has the wealth-output ratio and capital returns increased, while wages have not. The second paper, which is joint work with Pedro Trivin, extends the previous analysis to a panel of countries. We use a reduced-form framework with wealth in the utility function to obtain an estimable equation and, by using recent panel time-series techniques, we find that the increase in Tobin's Q explain almost 60 per cent of the total decline in the labor share. The third paper makes a theoretical contribution to recent debate on secular stagnation. I use a growth model with imperfect competition to show that the rise of monopoly rents is consistent with several investment and inequality dynamics that have characterized the post-1980 stagnant era.
Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomics and Finance with Search Frictions and Inequality written by Gaston Chaumont and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of two chapters. The first chapter, written jointly with Shouyong Shi, studies a directed search equilibrium with risk-averse workers who can search on the job and accumulate non-contingent assets at an exogenous rate of return and under a borrowing limit. Search outcomes affect earnings and wealth accumulation. In turn, wealth and earnings affect search decisions by changing the optimal tradeoff between the wage and the matching probability. The calibrated model yields sizable inequality in wages and wealth among homogeneous workers. Wealth significantly reduces a worker's transition rates from unemployment to employment and from one job to another. The interaction between search and wealth provides important self-insurance as it reduces the pass-through of earnings inequality into consumption by more than 60%, relative to the model without wealth accumulation. We also study the dynamic welfare effects of changes in the unemployment insurance (UI) benefit. Keeping UI's duration fixed, we find that welfare is maximized with a replacement rate of about 20% instead of the baseline 50%, together with lower taxes on wages to finance the lower expenditures on UI.The second chapter studies the interactions between default risk and the liquidity of the secondary market for sovereign bonds. The secondary market for sovereign bonds is illiquid and the liquidity is endogenous. Such endogenous liquidity has important effects on the credit spread and the probability of default. To study equilibrium implications of such liquidity, I integrate directed search in the secondary market into a macro model of sovereign default. The model generates liquidity endogenously because investors in the secondary market face a trade-off between the transaction costs and the trading probability. This trade-off varies with the aggregate state of the economy, creating a time-varying liquidity premium over the business cycle. I show that trade flows in the secondary market significantly affect the price of sovereign bonds and amplify the effect of default risk on credit spreads. The importance of liquidity in the secondary market increases when the economic conditions of the issuing country worsen. Illiquidity increases with default risk and accounts for a sizable fraction of credit spreads, ranging from 10% to 50%.
Download or read book Inequality and Finance in Macrodynamics written by Bettina Bökemeier and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-26 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This contributed volume combines approaches of the current inequality debate with aspects of finance based on profound macroeconomic model analyses. Research on inequality has had a long tradition in economics. With the financial crisis from 2007, not only output decreased tremendously, but also inequality has risen since then. The book presents selected contributions of a workshop held at Bielefeld University in 2016 and features additional papers written by experts in the field. A mixture of established researchers and young scholars presents both theoretical and empirical frameworks to analyze the subject.
Download or read book Alternative Approaches in Macroeconomics written by Philip Arestis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book honours Professor John McCombie’s retirement by exploring a variety of themes, theories and debates in non-orthodox macroeconomics. With contributions from leading scholars, the book covers diverse ground in economic thought, policy, empirical work and modelling. It demonstrates ongoing presumptions and asks probing questions of topical questions from the increase of income equality to the international variation of productivity investment. This collection will appeal to academics and students with an interest in the history of macroeconomic thinking.
Download or read book Essays on the Macroeconomics of Inequality written by Zsofia Luca Barany and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis contains three essays on the macroeconomics of inequality. The first chapter analyses the effects of minimum wages on inequality. While there has been intense debate in the empirical literature about the effects of minimum wages on inequality in the US, its general equilibrium effects have been given little attention. In order to quantify the full effects of a decreasing minimum wage on inequality, I build a dynamic general equilibrium model, based on a two-sector growth model where the supply of high-skilled workers and the direction of technical change are endogenous. I find that a permanent reduction in the minimum wage leads to an expansion of low-skilled employment, which increases the incentives to acquire skills, thus changing the composition and size of high-skilled employment. These permanent changes in the supply of labour alter the investment ow into R & D, thereby decreasing the skill-bias of technology. The reduction in the minimum wage has spill-over effects on the entire distribution, affecting upper-tail inequality. Through a calibration exercise, I find that a 30 percent reduction in the real value of the minimum wage, as in the early 1980s, accounts for 15 percent of the subsequent rise in the skill premium, 18.5 percent of the increase in overall inequality, 45 percent of the increase in inequality in the bottom half, and 7 percent of the rise in inequality at the top half of the wage distribution. In the second chapter, I construct a model, where the supply of skills and the skill premium can increase jointly, as occurred in the US over the past few decades. I high- light the importance of the joint determination of the direction of technical change and skill formation. There is a positive feedback between these two variables. Technological progress is driven by profit oriented R & D firms, where profits are increasing in the amount of labour that is able to use these technologies. Therefore, when the supply of high-skilled 3labour increases, technology endogenously becomes more skill-biased. A more skill-biased technology leads to a higher skill premium, which increases the incentives to acquire educa- tion, and the supply of high-skilled labour rises. During the transition to the steady state, both quantities increase simultaneously. I map the dependence of the transition path of the economy on the initial skill supply and relative technology between the high- and the low-skilled sector. I find that, contrary to the previous literature, the skill premium and the skill supply can increase jointly even if the bias of technology is weak. In the third chapter, I relate the degree of progressivity of the income tax scheme to the prevailing income inequality in the society. I find that, consistent with the data, more unequal societies implement more progressive income tax systems. I build a model of political coalition formation, where different income groups have to agree on a tax scheme to finance the public good. I show that, the greater income inequality is, i.e. the further away the rich are from the rest of the population, the less able they are to credibly commit to participating in a coalition. Therefore, as income inequality rises, the rich are increasingly excluded from the design of the income tax scheme. Consequently, the rich bear a larger fraction of the public good, and the tax system becomes more progressive.
Download or read book Studies in International Economics and Finance written by Naoyuki Yoshino and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-30 with total page 671 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This festschrift volume presents discussions on contemporary issues in international economics and finance. It is aimed to serve as a reference material for researchers. There are two broad sections of the book -- International Macroeconomics and International Finance. The chapters in the International Macroeconomics section discuss critical topics like aggregate level macro model for India with a new Keynesian perspective, balance of payments, service sector exports, foreign exchange constraints for import demands, foreign direct investment and knowledge spill over, the relationship between forex rate fluctuation and investment, Institutional quality-trade openness-economic growth nexus, currency crises and debt-deficit relationship in the BRICS countries in the backdrop of COVID-19. Apart from these, various analytical issues related to macroeconomic policies are also covered in this section. The topics discussed includes the nature of forex market interventions, the issue of disinvestment and privatization, changing nature of fiscal policy, the inflation-growth nexus, macroeconomic simulation modelling, measuring core inflation, central bank credibility, monetary policy, inflation targeting, Infrastructure, trade, unemployment and inequality nexus. In the International Finance section, topics such as COVID-19 induced financial crisis, commodity futures volatility, stock market connectivity, volatility persistence, determinants of sovereign bond yields, FII and stock market volatility, cryptocurrency price formation, financialization of Indian commodity market, and a Keynesian view of the financial crisis are discussed. Overall, thirty two chapters in the volume discuss cutting edge research in the areas of the two sections. A tour de force... a lucid guide to some of the diverse and complex issues in International Macroeconomics and Finance. This collection of scholarly works is a fitting tribute to respected Prof. Bandi Kamaiah and his enviable academic contributions. - Prof. Y V Reddy, Former Governor, Reserve Bank of India This volume comprising thoughtful essays by our leading scholars on some of important policy issues that India is facing is indeed a rich tribute to Professor Bandi Kamaiah . This book will greatly benefit the academic community as well as our policy makers. - Prof. Vijay Kelkar, Chairman, 13th Finance Commission of India; Chairman, India Development Foundation, Mumbai, India Noted economists from India and abroad gather to apply the rigorous searchlight that Professor Bandi Kamaiah used so effectively in his career. Major current topics in macroeconomics and international finance are effectively explored in the volume. - Prof. Ashima Goyal, Emeritus Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India; and Member, Monetary Policy Committee of Reserve Bank of India This volume of 32 papers in macroeconomics, international economics, and international finance is intended as a tribute to the eminent econometrician , Prof B Kamaiah. Post-graduate students and researchers will find much valuable literature in the volume, which is a fitting tribute to Prof Kamaiah. The editors and authors deserve rich compliments. - Prof. K L Krishna, Former Director, Delhi School of Economics, New Delhi, India I am so happy to hear that Dr. Kamaiah's colleagues and ex-students are bringing out a special volume of articles in his honor. Nothing can be more appropriate. Dr. Kamaiah, being a man of tremendous publications, deserves this tribute. I wish all the luck and success to the new book. - Prof. Kishore Kulkarni, Distinguished Professor of Economics, Metropolitan State University of Denver, USA
Download or read book Essays in Economics written by James Tobin and published by . This book was released on 1987-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These 28 essays, covering Tobin's work in macroeconomics from the early 1940s to 1970 are grouped into three parts - macroeconomic theory, economic growth, and money and finance. In a period marked by revisionism in economic theory and retrenchment in the public goals of economic policy, Tobin remains committed to the standard he has upheld throughout his professional life. He is an eclectic Keynesian in theory whose socioeconomic concern is to reduce poverty, inequality, and discrimination through the maintenance of full employment and economic growth and through such policies as the negative income tax and other income transfers. These 28 essays, covering Tobin's work in macroeconomics from the early 1940s to 1970 are grouped into three parts - macroeconomic theory, economic growth, and money and finance. Essays in Economics: Volume 3, Theory and Policy was published by The MIT Press in 1982. Back in print.
Download or read book Essays on the Macroeconomic Effects of Inequality written by Guzmán González-Torres Fernández and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation explores the aggregate allocational effects of different forms of economic inequality. Its three chapters study how an uneven distribution of production factors and financial resources, coupled with different forms of bureaucratic hurdles to the development of business ideas, financial constraints, or credit shocks, can affect the distribution and productivity of firms, the composition of the demand for goods and services, or the creation of valuable worker-firm matches in an economy. Even though it becomes clear throughout the dissertation that eliminating as many frictions in the firm-creation process, putting in place different redistribution policies, and alleviating financial frictions in an economy all have great effects on the aggregate economy that were not completely understood in previous theories, the welfare effects of such policies remain a subject for study in future work.
Download or read book Essays on Saving Bequests Altruism and Life cycle Planning written by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-06-22 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays, coauthored with other distinguished economists, offers new perspectives on saving, intergenerational economic ties, retirement planning, and the distribution of wealth. The book links life-cycle microeconomic behavior to important macroeconomic outcomes, including the roughly 50 percent postwar decline in America's rate of saving and its increasing wealth inequality. The book traces these outcomes to the government's five-decade-long policy of transferring, in the form of annuities, ever larger sums from young savers to old spenders. The book presents new theoretical and empirical analyses of altruism that rule out the possibility that private intergenerational transfers have offset those by the government.While rational life-cycle behavior can explain broad economic outcomes, the book also shows that a significant minority of households fail to make coherent life-cycle saving and insurance decisions. These mistakes are compounded by reliance on conventional financial planning tools, which the book compares with Economic Security Planner (ESPlanner), a new life-cycle financial planning software program. The application of ESPlanner to U.S. data indicates that most Americans approaching retirement age are saving at much lower rates than they should be, given potential major cuts in Social Security benefits.
Download or read book Essays in economics written by J. Tobin and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a period marked by revisionism in economic theory and retrenchment in the public goals of economic policy, Tobin remains committed to the standard he has upheld throughout his professional life. He is an eclectic Keynesian in theory whose socioeconomic concern is to reduce poverty, inequality, and discrimination through the maintenance of full employment and economic growth and through such policies as the negative income tax and other income transfers.These 28 essays, covering Tobinïs work in macroeconomics from the early 1940s to 1970 are grouped into three parts - macroeconomic theory, economic growth, and money and finance.James Tobin is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale.
Download or read book Essays in Economics written by James Tobin and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 1987-04 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These 28 essays, covering Tobin's work in macroeconomics from the early 1940s to 1970 are grouped into three parts - macroeconomic theory, economic growth, and money and finance. In a period marked by revisionism in economic theory and retrenchment in the public goals of economic policy, Tobin remains committed to the standard he has upheld throughout his professional life. He is an "eclectic Keynesian" in theory whose socioeconomic concern is to reduce poverty, inequality, and discrimination through the maintenance of full employment and economic growth and through such policies as the negative income tax and other income transfers. These 28 essays, covering Tobin's work in macroeconomics from the early 1940s to 1970 are grouped into three parts - macroeconomic theory, economic growth, and money and finance. Essays in Economics: Volume 3, Theory and Policy was published by The MIT Press in 1982. Back in print.
Download or read book Essays on Financial Markets and Macroeconomics written by Alessandra Bonfiglioli and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays on Inequality and Macroeconomics written by Daniel E. Ortega and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in economics written by J. Tobin and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a period marked by revisionism in economic theory and retrenchment in the public goals of economic policy, Tobin remains committed to the standard he has upheld throughout his professional life. He is an eclectic Keynesian in theory whose socioeconomic concern is to reduce poverty, inequality, and discrimination through the maintenance of full employment and economic growth and through such policies as the negative income tax and other income transfers.These 28 essays, covering Tobinïs work in macroeconomics from the early 1940s to 1970 are grouped into three parts - macroeconomic theory, economic growth, and money and finance. James Tobin is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale. Essays in Economics: Volume 3, Theory and Policy was published by The MIT Press in 1982.
Download or read book Essays on Macro development and Inequality written by Alessandra Peter and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My dissertation explores various topics in macroeconomics related to the level of aggregate income in different countries and how (un-)equally it is distributed across people within a country. More specifically, I focus on firms: who owns them, how they are financed, and how their production processes connect them to other sectors of the economy. In the first chapter, I study how financial markets affect the distribution of wealth across households through their effect on ownership structures of firms. I show that, within Europe, there are countries in which firms are broadly owned and financed by large parts of the population. In these countries, business risk is more widely spread across people, and wealth is less concentrated in the hands of just a few households. The remaining two chapters are concerned with the specific challenges facing firms in developing countries. I study the interaction of different sectors of the economy and what the nature of interlinkages implies for the size of firms and aggregate productivity. These are first-order issues when thinking about policies to close the gap in output and productivity between developing and developed countries. In the first chapter, `Owning Up: Closely Held Firms and Wealth Inequality', I study how frictions in debt and equity markets affect wealth inequality in Eurozone countries. Using micro data on households and firms, I document that in more unequal countries, there are more privately held firms, and ownership of publicly traded firms is more concentrated. I develop a dynamic general equilibrium model in which entrepreneurs have the option to run a private firm and issue debt, or go public and also issue outside equity. Both forms of external finance are subject to country-specific frictions. With more access to debt, entrepreneurs can run larger firms and are wealthier. Similar to debt, outside equity allows entrepreneurs to increase investment in their firm, but it also reduces their risk exposure, which lowers savings and wealth holdings. When parameters are chosen to match the facts I document on firm ownership and financing, the model successfully predicts differences in wealth concentration across countries. The second chapter, `The Aggregate Importance of Intermediate Input Substitutability', is co-authored with Stanford PhD graduate Cian Ruane. In this chapter we ask whether economic development policies should target specific sectors of the economy or follow a `big push' approach of advancing all sectors together. The relative success of these strategies is determined by how easily firms can substitute between intermediate inputs sourced from different sectors of the economy: a low degree of substitutability increases the costs from `bottleneck' sectors and the need for `big push' policies. We estimate long-run elasticities of substitution between intermediate inputs used by Indian manufacturing plants. We use detailed data on plant-level intermediate input expenditures, and exploit reductions in import tariffs as plausibly exogenous shocks to domestic intermediate input prices. We find a long-run plant-level elasticity of substitution of 4.3, a much higher level of substitutability than existing short-run estimates or the Cobb-Douglas benchmark. To quantify the aggregate importance of intermediate input substitution, we embed our elasticities in a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms, calibrated to plant- and sector-level data for the Indian economy. We find that the aggregate gains from a 50% productivity increase in any one Indian manufacturing sector are on average 47% larger with our estimated elasticities. Our counterfactual exercises highlight the importance of intermediate input substitution in amplifying policy reforms targeting individual sectors. The third chapter, `Distribution Costs and the Size of Indian Manufacturing Establishments', is also co-authored with Cian Ruane. We explore how productivity improvements in the distribution sectors of the Indian economy, such as transportation or wholesale trade, impact firms in the manufacturing sector. The sale of manufacturing goods involves costs of distribution such as shipping, insurance and commissions. Using micro-data from India's Annual Survey of Industries, we document that larger plants spend a larger share of their sales on distribution. We ask to what degree these distribution costs act as a constraint on larger firms and can explain the high employment share in small plants. To explore this mechanism, we develop a simple general equilibrium model in which heterogeneous firms face fixed and variable costs of distributing their products to customers. Firms selling higher quality products sell to more distant customers and incur higher distribution expenses. We carry out some preliminary quantitative exercises to explore how much TFP increases in the distribution sector affect aggregate consumption and the firm size distribution.
Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomics with Financial Frictions written by Matthew Knowles and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This dissertation consists of three essays concerning the macroeconomic implications of financial market frictions that limit the ability of firms to obtain external finance. Each of the three chapters employs a theoretical macroeconomic model, combined with some empirical analysis, to study unanswered questions in the literature related to the importance of these financial market frictions for the wider economy. The three chapters consider, in turn, the effect of banking crises on investment, output and employment, the implications of financial market frictions for optimal capital taxation, and the effect of banking deregulation on the distribution of income. The first chapter studies the long slumps in output and employment following banking crises. In a panel of OECD and emerging economies, I find that recessions are associated with larger initial drops in investment and more persistent drops in output if they occur simultaneously with banking crises. Furthermore, the banking crises that are followed by more persistent output slumps are associated with particularly large initial drops in investment. I show that these patterns can arise in a model where a financial shock temporarily increases the costs of external finance for investing entrepreneurs. This leads to a drop in investment and a persistent slump in output. Critical to the model is the distinction between different types of capital with different depreciation rates. Intangible capital and equipment have high depreciation rates, leading these stocks to drop substantially when investment falls after a financial shock. If wages display some rigidity, this induces a slump in output and employment that persists for roughly a decade, through the contribution of the decline in equipment and intangibles to declining production and labor demand. I find that this mechanism can account for almost a third of the persistent drop in output and employment in the US Great Recession (2007-2014). In the model, TFP and government spending shocks lead to relatively smaller declines in investment and less persistent drops in output; so the model is also consistent with the more transitory output drops seen after non-financial recessions, where such shocks may have been more important. The second chapter, based on work co-written with Corina Boar, considers the implications of financial market frictions for optimal linear capital taxation, in a setting where the government is concerned with redistribution. By including financial frictions, we emphasize the effect of a new channel affecting the equity-efficiency trade-off of redistribution: taxes affect the allocative efficiency of capital and, ultimately, total factor productivity. We find that high tax rates can be optimal, provided that they are applied to wealth, rather than risky capital. Under plausible parameter values, we find that the optimal tax on risky capital is lower than that on wealth, and roughly in line with current U.S. levels. This suggests welfare gains from taxing wealth at a higher rate than risky capital. The third chapter, based on work co-written with Corina Boar and Yicheng Wang, studies the effect of banking deregulation in the US on the distribution of income, from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. We focus on the effect of the removal of interstate banking and branching restrictions over the 1970-1994 period. We present a theoretical model based on Greenwood and Jovanovic (1990) to illustrate the channels through which this deregulation may affect the income distribution. In the model, income inequality rises after banking deregulation for some values of the parameters--because deregulation decreases the cost of borrowing, which primarily benefits wealthy firm-owners. We empirically estimate the effect of interstate banking and branching deregulation on income inequality by exploiting variations in the timing of deregulation across states. We find that the removal of banking restrictions increased the Gini coefficient by 6 percent in the long run."--Pages ix-xi.
Download or read book Essays in Macroeconomics and Household Finance written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
