Metroeconomica最新文献

This paper discusses some issues related to the triangle between capital accumulation, distribution, and capacity utilization. First, it explains why utilization is a crucial variable for the various theories of growth and distribution, and, more precisely, with regards to their ability to combine an autonomous role for demand (along Keynesian lines) and an institutionally determined distribution (along classical lines). Second, it responds to some recent criticism by Girardi and Pariboni (2019) and I explain that their interpretation of the model in Nikiforos (2013) is misguided, and that the results of the model can be extended to the case of a monopolist. Third, it provides some concrete examples on why demand is a determinant for the long-run rate of utilization of capital. Finally, it argues that when it comes to the normal rate of utilization it is the expected growth rate of demand that matters, and not the level of demand. This insight provides a more straightforward way to link the adjustment at the micro and the macro level.

This study examines the impact of the expansion of the service sector on labour productivity growth in 10 developed economies, reaching back to the late 1970s. The main research novelty is that it combines both Kaldorian and Baumolian insights to develop a new shift-share decomposition that, consistent with Kaldorian theory, endogenises productivity growth at the industry level with respect to structural change, and, consistent with the Baumolian framework, includes the impact that arises from the cumulative reallocation of nominal output and employment. Our results show that tertiarisation leads to a gradual decrease in productivity growth in most of these economies.

This study provides new empirical evidence on the transformation of the structure of production in the Visegrád (V4) countries—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia—using a multi-regional version of the subsystem approach to global input-output tables. In particular, the paper analyses structural change in these countries, with a focus on the integration of market services in manufacturing. Moreover, using an input-output structural decomposition analysis (SDA), we evaluate the role of some key determinants of employment changes in manufacturing. The results indicate that an increasing amount of intermediate demand comes from producer services. Further, a substantial portion of manufacturing employment is generated by foreign final demand, and the SDA demonstrates that labour intensity and final demand play a determining role in the change in the number of hours worked.

This paper derives the optimal response of the primary budget balance to changes in the public debt as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) in a stochastic model of debt. Under the optimal solution, the surplus reactivity to the debt-GDP ratio is independent of the debt ratio itself, but its size depends on the degree of uncertainty surrounding the impact of fiscal policies. We characterize the properties of the optimal control policy by proposing different metrics that may be used to assess fiscal soundness and as early warning indicators of fiscal imbalances.

This paper constructs a unified framework to evaluate the Marxian transformation models, where the exploitation rate is an endogenous variable determined within value and price of production systems. All different procedures are based on two different value-price invariance equations. These could be chosen among either two aggregate product equations (gross or net output) or three capital invariant equations (total, variable or constant). Different combinations of invariance equations result in most Marxian solutions developed in recent decades. The solution does not imply that one model (prices) is logically prior to the other (values), but that in fact that the joint solution is needed.

The aim of this paper is to elaborate a Sraffian production model with banks, corporations, shareholders and managers to argue that the expansion of the financial sector contributes to the decrease of the wage-share. The model introduces joint production to take into account fixed capital and corporate firms and provides rigorous foundations for the description of an economy characterised by unbalanced growth with the financial sector growing at the highest rates. Besides demonstrating that the analysis generates non-negative solutions for prices and quantities, the paper concludes that, if workers' debt grows faster than the rest of the economy, the wage share diminishes and that the greater the size of the dividends that corporate companies decide to distribute, the larger the reductions in the wage share.

The paper proposes the application of a generalised withholding tax scheme to business-to-business transactions, in order to combat the evasion of income-related taxes levied on self-employed workers and businesses, as an alternative to the standard regime based on self-reporting. The scheme proposed here is comprehensive in scope, since it applies to all B2B transactions involving the self-employed and businesses, and can be regarded as an extension of the withholding tax regimes which are currently applied to specific sectors and/or business categories and self-employed taxpayers in some countries. We argue, even on the basis of a simple conceptual framework, that the benefit of extending such a withholding mechanism to profit taxes is twofold. On the one hand, consisting of an advance payment on the effective profit tax liability, it contributes to curbing tax evasion due to non-payment in a system characterised by a standard self-reporting mechanism. On the other hand, and more importantly, the withholding system—retaining information about each transaction subjected to it—enhances third-party information reporting if the withholding tax is applied to transactions that are otherwise excluded. This paper offers details on operational aspects of the proposed withholding tax mechanism. In particular, a critical issue in implementing the withholding regime lies in the choice of the tax rate, and more specifically in setting a level that is effective in reducing tax evasion without generating excessive tax refunds. This issue is discussed by applying the withholding mechanism to balance sheet microdata of all non-financial Italian companies.

This article aims to refine the Post Keynesian long run financial frontier models under an intermediate run called the ‘implementation period,’ the time horizon to finance and implement long run strategic plans. During this period, the availability of debt finance is crucial to bridge the time gap before future free cash flows validate the investment. Therefore, firms' long run investment plans may be modified or suspended during this time horizon subject to bankers' uncertainty perception and state of confidence, which constrain debt capacity and firms' investment decisions. Uncertainty and the measures to enhance confidence, such as banking convention, mimetic behaviours, and bankers' spontaneous optimism, are critical to determining the financial frontier because they affect the lending amount, tenor, and refinancing potential. The proposed model focussing on bankers' convention and susceptibility explains the volatile nature of the financial frontier, investment instability, downward sloping effective loan supply and credit rationing under new perspectives.

We apply a B-VAR technique to 28 high-income countries and 11 Euro area countries in 1999–2019 to analyze the causal relationships between centralization of capital measured in terms of network control and solvency conditions represented by the difference between GDP growth and interest rate. Results show a relationship that goes in two directions. First of all, divergent solvency conditions lead to an average increase in capital centralization and its greater convergence between countries. In turn, an average increase in capital centralization and its greater convergence produces a convergence of solvency conditions between countries. These outcomes are consistent for both groups of high-income countries and Euro area countries. Finally, in the group of high-income countries, we also note that an average deterioration in solvency conditions leads to a convergence of capital centralization between countries.