International Journal of Economic Theory最新文献

This paper investigates privatization policy in mixed oligopoly when partial privatization changes a technological difference between semi-public and private firms. It shows that when the degree of privatization is partial, privatization is insufficient. Furthermore, privatization is more likely to be insufficient as the market becomes more competitive. If the cost efficiency gain is captured by decreasing the degree of privatization, privatization is insufficient regardless of whether entry by private firms is restricted or free.

This paper examines the effects of China's population control policy on its economic transitions and long-run equilibrium theoretically and quantitatively. The model-predicted technological progress is assumed to be driven by population size and education level. With population control, the total number of children decreases; however, the average education level increases. Since the overall effect on technological progress is ambiguous, we performed a quantitative analysis of the model. The results demonstrate that population, technological progress, and income per capita move in endogenous cycles. The impact of China's population control policy depends on the timing of its implementation.

This paper analyzes how pollution control in the recipient developing country affects the flow of multinational capital owned by multinational firms in the source developed country. We find that when pollution control in a developing country becomes stricter, then the amount of multinational capital flowing into the developing country will certainly or conditionally decrease. Through further welfare analysis, we hope to provide some policy suggestions that will allow the government to guarantee the welfare of the labor force while it implements stricter pollution control.

This study investigates the impacts of labor market distortion on wage inequality by considering the modernization of small-scale agriculture. Owing to small-scale operations, agriculture requires an intermediate sector—an agricultural producer service sector—to facilitate the introduction of nonagricultural intermediate inputs and promote modernization. The basic model assumes perfect competition in the service sector and shows that if the elasticity of substitution between labor and services is sufficiently large (small), mitigating distortion widens (reduces) wage inequality between skilled and rural unskilled labor. In the extended model, we introduce a service sector with monopolistic competition and the main results of the basic model almost hold.

In this paper, we study the problem of a fair redistribution of resources among agents of an exchange economy and how certain limitations imposed on coalition formation may impact the set of allocations judged fair. The study is conducted in atomless economies as well as in the so-called mixed markets.

In this paper, I build a capital accumulation model in which labor has to be alternatively employed in the production of goods or in the recruitment of workers. Within this setting, I show that (i) the intensive measure of capital may converge towards its stationary value in a non-monotonic manner, (ii) Pareto-optimal allocations can also be achieved in a decentralized environment in which the wage is indexed to labor market tightness, and (iii) the consistency of the wage that implements efficient allocations with the competitiveness of the market for goods relies on vanishing values of the discount rate.

Does trade liberalization aggravate tax avoidance? We build a three-country model of tax competition consisting of two nonhaven countries and one tax haven in which goods are traded between the nonhavens and firms may shift profits to the tax haven. When the nonhavens cooperate, the reduction in trade costs does not change the degree of tax avoidance. In contrast, when the nonhavens do not cooperate, the equilibrium tax rates become higher, resulting in more tax avoidance. Furthermore, trade liberalization strengthens the tax competition between nonhavens, which further increases the tax-avoidance activities.

The theory of wage fund as the basic source of financial capital or credit is incorporated into a dynamic Ricardian trade model consisting of three classes of agents: the workers, the capitalist, and the producers of goods. We derive the modified golden rule based on a significantly different mechanism from the standard optimal growth framework. We show that, although international trade in a static setting in the wage fund framework has asymmetric distributional effects on the agents' welfare, those asymmetric impacts are nullified in the dynamic setting. In fact, trade liberalization is Pareto improving along the balanced growth path.

This paper analyzes the location choices of firms in the Hotelling model, in which one firm has consumer data and can practice price discrimination, while the other firm without data can only set uniform price. The equilibrium results show medium differentiation. The location choices of firms can alleviate the inhibition of data asymmetry on competition and increase consumer surplus. And we consider the consumers' transportation costs as an exponential function of distance. When this exponent increases, horizontal differentiation increases, but market prices fall, benefiting consumers.