Download or read book Rational Addiction Peer Externalities and Long Run Effects of Public Policy written by Donald Scott Kenkel and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main purpose of this research is to understand the patterns of consumption of addictive goods, their economic and welfare consequences for society and the long-run effect of tax policy in a dynamic general equilibrium model of rational addiction. In contrast to prior research, we allow individuals to make their consumption decisions simultaneous with savings and labor supply. When addictive goods have a stronger habit formation effect (an addiction effect'), individuals choose to save less due to the anticipated adverse health consequences of addiction (a detrimental health effect'). This is particularly important since total savings pins down future productivity in the economy. We also consider the role of peer influence in the choice of addiction and find that more peer pressure' raises addictive consumption, lowers savings and reduces productivity. In light of the various distortions associated with addiction, we conclude by studying the long-run effects of an excise tax on addictive goods. Our calibration exercises suggest that incorporating capital formation and peer effects in a model of rational addiction are crucial for the design of public policy. In particular, accounting for peer externalities increases the optimal sin tax rate by more than 50 percent.
Download or read book Working Paper Series written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book NBER Reporter written by National Bureau of Economic Research and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Short and Long Run Decompositions of OECD Wage Inequality Changes written by T. Huw Edwards and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper focuses on the causes of increased wage inequality in OECD countries in recent years and its decomposition into the component factors of trade surges in low wage products and technological change that has preoccupied the trade and wages literature. It argues that the length of production run and degree of fixity of factors is crucial in such analyses. In particular, if the observed wage inequality response to price and technology shocks reflects a short-run response in which factors and output have not adjustedfully across industries, then decomposition analysis of the causes of the observed increases in inequality is substantially altered relative to a long-run factors mobile world. This conclusion applies both when one type of labour has mobility costs and in the Ricardo-Viner case where there is an additional, sectorally immobile factor. Furthermore, only small departures from the fully mobile model can greatly change decompositions. This finding is important because most data used in earlier work are interpreted as reflective of a long-run full mobility response, when this may not be the case. Incorrect conclusions as to how trade surges and technology contribute to wage inequality can be easily drawn, if the data are in fact generated by a short-run adjustment process.
Download or read book Redistribution Policy written by Alessandra Casella (economista.) and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the rationale for regional redistribution programs described in the official documents of the European Union, this paper studies a very simple multi-country model built around two regions: a core and a periphery. Technological spill-overs link firms' productivity in each of the two regions, and each country's territory falls partly in the core and partly in the periphery, but the exact shares vary across countries. We find that, in line with the EU view, the efficient regional allocation requires both national and international transfers. If migration is fully free across all borders, then optimal redistribution policy results from countries' uncoordinated policies, obviating the need for a central agency. But if countries have the option of setting even imperfect border barriers, then efficiency is likely to require coordination on both barriers and international transfers (both of which will be set optimally at positive levels). The need for coordination increases as the Union increases in size.
Download or read book Redistribution and Insurance written by Jeffrey R. Brown and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the distributional implications of mandatory longevity insurance when there is mortality heterogeneity in the population. Previous research has demonstrated the significant financial redistribution that occurs under alternative annuity programs in the presence of differential mortality across groups. This paper embeds that analysis into a life cycle framework that allows for an examination of distributional effects on a utility-adjusted basis. It finds that the degree of redistribution that occurs from the introduction of a mandatory annuity program is substantially lower on a utility-adjusted basis than when evaluated on a purely financial basis. In a simple life-cycle model with no bequests, complete annuitization is welfare enhancing even for those individuals with much higher-than-average expected mortality rates, so long as administrative costs are sufficiently low. These findings have implications for policy toward annuitization, particularly as part of a reformed Social Security system.
Download or read book Still Fettered After All These Years written by Barry J. Eichengreen and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last decade has seen an outpouring of scholarship on the economics of the Great Depression. If there is anything approaching a consensus, it is a synthetic view which admits a role both for monetary policy mistakes and for the international monetary and financial system in transmitting those destabilizing impulses to the rest of the world. It explains the speed and extent of the subsequent decline in terms of both banking crises and the collapse of the gold standard, which conspired in placing deflationary pressure to different degrees on different countries. And, it explains the eventual recovery in terms of the abandonment of the gold standard, which facilitated the pursuit of stabilizing monetary policies, but also in terms of the restoration of stability to banking and financial systems, something that occurred at different times in different countries. One way of understanding the veneer of disputation on this consensus is that different elements dominated in different countries. For the United States, there is no denying the role of monetary policy mistakes in the onset of the Depression, whereas for other countries international monetary instability played the most important part.
Download or read book Policy and Choice written by William J. Congdon and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that public finance--the study of the government's role in economics--should incorporate principles from behavior economics and other branches of psychology.
Download or read book Real Exchange Rate Targeting and Macroeconomic Instability written by Martín Uribe and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using an optimizing model of a small open economy, this paper studies the macroeconomic effects of PPP rules whereby the government increases the devaluation rate when the real exchange rate defined as the price of tradables in terms of nontradables is below its long-run level and reduces the devaluation rate when the real exchange rate is above its long-run level. The paper shows that the mere existence of such a rule can generate aggregate fluctuations due to self-fulfilling revisions in expectations. The result is shown to obtain in both flexible- and sticky-price environments.
Download or read book Financial Globalization and Emerging Markets written by Philippe J. Martin and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We analyze the impact of financial globalization on asset prices, investment and the possibility of crashes driven by self-fulfilling expectations in emerging markets. In a two-country model with one emerging market (intermediate income level) and one industrialized country (high income level), we show that liberalization of capital flows increases asset prices, investment and income in the emerging market. However, for intermediate levels of international financial transaction costs, we find that pessimistic expectations can be self-fulfilling, leading to a financial crash. The crash is accompanied by capital flight, a drop in income and investment below the financial autarky level and more market incompleteness. We show that emerging markets are more prone to financial crashes simply because they have a lower income level and not because of the existence of market failures (moral hazard or credit constraints), bad monetary policies or exchange rate regimes.
Download or read book Agglomeration Integration and Tax Harmonization written by Richard E. Baldwin and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We show that agglomeration forces can reverse standard international-tax-competition results. Closer integration may result first in a race to the top' and then a race to the bottom, a result that is consistent with recent empirical work showing that the tax gap between rich and poor nations follows a bell-shaped path (Devereux, Griffith and Klemm 2002). Moreover, split-the-difference tax harmonization can make both nations worse off. This may help explain why tax harmonisation which is Pareto improving in the standard model is so difficult in the real world. The key theoretical insight is that agglomeration forces create quasi-rents that can be taxed without inducing delocation. This suggests that the tax game is something subtler than a race to the bottom. Advanced 'core' nations may act like limit-pricing monopolists toward less advanced 'periphery' countries. Since agglomeration rents are a bell-shaped function of the level of integration, the equilibrium tax gap in our tax game is also bell shaped.
Download or read book Does Medicare Benefit the Poor written by Jay Bhattacharya and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previous research has found that Medicare benefits flow primarily to the most economically advantaged groups and that the financial returns to Medicare are consequently higher for the rich than for the poor. Taking a different approach, we find very different results. According to the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, the poorest groups receive the most benefits at any given age. In fact, the advantage of the poor in benefit receipt is so great that it easily overcomes their higher death rates. This leads to the result that the financial returns to Medicare are actually much higher for poorer groups in the population and that Medicare is a highly progressive public program. These new results appear to owe themselves to our measurement of socioeconomic status at the individual level, in contrast to the aggregated measures used by previous research.
Download or read book Do We Really Know that the WTO Increases Trade written by Andrew Rose and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper estimates the effect on international trade of multilateral trade agreements: the World Trade Organization (WTO), its predecessor the Generalized Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) extended from rich countries to developing countries. I use a standard gravity' model of bilateral merchandise trade and a large panel data set covering over fifty years and 175 countries. An extensive search reveals little evidence that countries joining or belonging to the GATT/WTO have different trade patterns than outsiders. The GSP does seem to have a strong effect, and is associated with an approximate doubling of trade.
Download or read book Handbook of Behavioral Economics Foundations and Applications 1 written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 749 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Handbook of Behavioral Economics: Foundations and Applications presents the concepts and tools of behavioral economics. Its authors are all economists who share a belief that the objective of behavioral economics is to enrich, rather than to destroy or replace, standard economics. They provide authoritative perspectives on the value to economic inquiry of insights gained from psychology. Specific chapters in this first volume cover reference-dependent preferences, asset markets, household finance, corporate finance, public economics, industrial organization, and structural behavioural economics. This Handbook provides authoritative summaries by experts in respective subfields regarding where behavioral economics has been; what it has so far accomplished; and its promise for the future. This taking-stock is just what Behavioral Economics needs at this stage of its so-far successful career. - Helps academic and non-academic economists understand recent, rapid changes in theoretical and empirical advances within behavioral economics - Designed for economists already convinced of the benefits of behavioral economics and mainstream economists who feel threatened by new developments in behavioral economics - Written for those who wish to become quickly acquainted with behavioral economics
Download or read book Margin Calls Trading Costs and Asset Prices in Emerging Markets written by Enrique G. Mendoza and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A central feature of emerging markets crises is the Sudden Stop' phenomenon characterized by large reversals of capital inflows and current accounts, deep recessions, and collapses in asset prices. This paper proposes an open-economy asset-pricing model with financial frictions that yields predictions in line with these observations. Margin requirements and information costs distort asset trading between a small open economy and foreign securities firms. If the economy's debt-equity ratio is low, standard productivity shocks cause normal recessions with smooth current-account adjustments. If the ratio is high, the same productivity shocks trigger margin calls forcing domestic agents to firesell equity to foreign traders who are slow to adjust their portfolios. This sets off a Fisherian asset-price deflation and subsequent rounds of margin calls. A current account reversal and a collapse in consumption occur if the fire-sale of assets cannot prevent a sharp increase in net foreign asset holdings.
Download or read book The Great Exchange Rate Debate After Argentina written by Sebastian Edwards and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper I discuss in what way, if any, the collapse of Argentina's experience with a currency board has affected the policy debate on the appropriate exchange rate regime in emerging and transition countries. More specifically, I deal with three issues: (1) I discuss some important aspects of the Argentine experience. (2) I provide a comparative evaluation of economic performance under strict dollarization. And (3), I analyze emerging countries' experiences with flexible exchange rates, including the issue of fear of floating.'
Download or read book Exchange Rates and Casualties During the First World War written by George J. Hall and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
