Manchester School最新文献

We compare the effects of price and quantity competition in an industry with complementary inputs, outsourcing and a vertically integrated firm where vertical integration occurs between a final goods producer and a subset of input suppliers. The profit of the integrated firm and the industry profit are higher under Bertrand competition, the profit of the non-integrated firm is higher under Bertrand competition for high product differentiation, and consumer surplus and welfare are higher under Bertrand competition for low product differentiation. Further, no market foreclosure can be the preferred choice of the vertically integrated firm for any degree of product differentiation.

We study the co-evolution of mental health with the most prominent risk factors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic for the Dutch working population. We exploit data from the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences panel from before the pandemic and five questionnaires in its first year. We find mental health decreased sharply with the onset of the first lockdown but recovered quickly, reaching levels comparable to those a year earlier. Labor market uncertainty, perceived infection risk, and loneliness are all associated with worsening mental health. Moreover, parents of children younger than 12 experience a significant drop in mental health.

The reallocation of resources between sectors is classically regarded as the engine of long-term growth. The different technological opportunities and the inherent levels of productivity that characterise each sector explain why changes in sectoral composition trigger development processes. Conversely, in the short run, productivity growth is associated with differentiation processes among firms operating in the same industry. The recent debate on the decline in Italian productivity has mainly focussed on short-term interpretations. Using a new dataset on the largest Italian companies between the 1970s and the 2010s period, the paper examines the role of structural change in determining productivity changes.

Worktime has been falling slowly though real wages have risen dramatically. We show that in a general equilibrium model with CES utility and production functions, worktime falls with real wages if and only if the elasticity of substitution between consumption and leisure is less than that between capital and labour, but always rises with labour's income share and concerns with relative income. While a falling labour share may not reduce worktime due to market inflexibility, stronger income comparison increases inefficient overwork. Hence, more flexibility, higher income taxes and a basic income are needed to reduce working hours and raise social welfare.

This study analyzes the interactions between population dynamics with differential fertility the intergenerational mobility and economic development. Population dynamics with differential fertility exerts the following two effects on the economy: (i) the change in the population size of the entire economy influences the mobility through changing in the composition of workers and (ii) the decreasing/increasing transfer per child influences the mobility. A sufficient increase in the population growth increases the population size and leads to a significant decline in the transfers per child; this phenomenon contributes toward the cyclical behavior of mobility and income inequality. On the other hand, when a population growth decreases, the mobility monotonically approaches toward steady state. These results are consistent with some empirical evidence. Hence, this study demonstrates that the population dynamics with differential fertility leads to a difference in transitional dynamics of intergenerational mobility and the process of economic development.

This paper analyzes the impact of “spirit of capitalism” on stationary welfare and stability properties of a one-sector Ramsey economy, where the demand of money is motivated by a cash-in-advance constraint on consumption expenditures. Preferences are defined over consumption and capital stock. There is a monetary authority that follows either a money growth pegging rule or an interest rate pegging rule. When a money growth pegging rule is introduced, a unique steady state emerges. A slight desire for status is a sufficient condition for an increase in the money growth rate to exert a local stabilizing effect and to improve stationary welfare. When an interest rate pegging rule is introduced, two steady states may emerge: a “liquidity trap” and an “interior” steady state. Both steady states are locally determinate. Moreover, we show that a slight desire for status is also a sufficient condition to ensure that the stationary welfare at “interior” steady state is higher than the one of the “liquidity trap”. It follows that an increase in the policy rate is, then, an efficient way to exit the “liquidity trap” steady state. Under similar conditions, a higher policy rate increases the stationary welfare at the “interior” steady state.

This study finds that in an international mixed oligopoly at free entry equilibrium, social welfare under import tariff cum privatization is higher than output subsidy cum privatization, and the dual subsidy-tariff policy cum privatization degenerates into a single tariff policy cum privatization. The reason is that an output subsidy or the dual subsidy-tariff policy will incentivize domestic private firms to enter the free-entry equilibrium. Thus, the number of domestic firms with free entry is excessive, and social welfare deteriorates. A privatization policy is pivotal in the long run and is still more effective than a single subsidy policy.

This paper develops a Schumpeterian growth model with considering consumption and leisure externalities. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of patent protection policy on growth and inequality, as well as the interaction between policy effect and externalities. According to the log form utility function specification, this means that the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is unity. The following are the key findings of this paper. Patent protection policy encourages innovation and increases employment in the R&D industry, which enhances economic growth while increasing income inequality. In regard to externalities, an increase in the degree of consumption (leisure) externalities results in a higher (lower) growth rate and more (smaller) income inequality. When consumption (leisure) externality is greater intensity, the growth effect of patent protection policy becomes stronger (weaker), while its influence on expanding income inequality lessens (enhances). Finally, both the Pareto optimal patent protection policy and the optimal patent policy under the maximization of social welfare positively correlate with consumption externalities, but negatively correlate with leisure externalities.

This paper studies to what extent the transfer of US managerial technologies to Europe after World War II contributed to closing the gap with US businesses. Between 1952 and 1958, the US government sponsored the Productivity Program, which promoted management training trips for European managers at US firms. Through the analysis of reports compiled by UK, France, Germany, and Italian participating firms, I first document that these companies claimed between 5% and 10% yearly productivity increase thanks to the program. The fact that European businesses were not forced to adopt the American management model, but could adapt it to their firm needs and existing business practices was a key aspect of the program's success. Second, using data on US and Italian participating firms' performance I show that Italian firms grew on average 7.8 percent faster than that of US companies in the 10 years after the start of the program. Moreover, the distribution of productivity of Italian and US firms became more similar over years, confirming a performance convergence between these companies.

In this paper, we investigate house price shocks on the macroeconomic variables (financial market, inflation, and real sector) of the G7 economies. We use the GVAR to capture the spillover effects from the U.S. housing market and oil prices on these economies from 1991M3–2022M10. We identify the U.S. house price shock using the Structural Generalized Impulse Response Function, house supply and demand variables, and regional divergence. We find that the domestic stock markets and industrial production are the most sensitive to house price shocks. We further compare the importance of house and oil prices on domestic fluctuations. The estimates reinforce the previous findings: U.S. house prices are responsible for a quarter of the domestic volatility of the stock markets and industrial production. In the other macroeconomic segments, the effects of house prices are present, but in lower values. Our results show that house prices provoke more domestic fluctuations than oil prices. Finally, we also found that short and long-term credit markets, as well as stock markets, transmit the house price shock to industrial production. Consequently, we provide potential channels to comprehend the spillover effect of U.S. house prices on international markets.