Journal of Policy Modeling最新文献

Public subsidy, a frequently applied tool of economic development is often provided to the business sector assuming that it promotes investments, employment, and income generation. In this paper a micro economic model based empirical analysis is presented that shows the possible impact of public subsidy on economic growth. The outcomes are derived by investigating the investment decision of the enterprise with and without public subsidy. It is demonstrated that public subsidy may increase social welfare, but under certain circumstances it also may decrease it, partly because authorities deciding about them fail to consider the information on the investment projects that determines the outcome. The empirical analysis of corporate subsidies proves that both cases occur. The number of firms that performed well and presumably had not enough own resources to fund the investment was less than 10% of all subsidized firms. The programs had an overall negative impact on economic growth. We provide recommendations on how methods of evaluations, project selection and monitoring should be modified to achieve better results of subsidy programs.

Immigration has increasingly caused heated debates in many countries. Political populism has often given rise to anti-immigrant attitude among the public. Immigration policy decisions have often been based on perceptions and attitudes rather than evidences, specifically considerations of net benefits to the host country. The main objective of this study is to quantify economic impacts of immigration policy, focusing on economic and welfare consequences of reducing the size of immigrant labor. This is illustrated by using the case of Kuwait. The authorities have recently decided to reduce the size of immigrant population. This study set out with the aim of measuring consequences of reducing immigrant labor. A multi-sectoral and economy-wide model was utilized. The model was specified appropriately to capture most features of a segmented labor market. Simulation experiments were conducted in scenarios related to the existing policy, the proposed policy of reducing the number of immigrants, and mitigations required to minimize adverse impacts of the immigration policy reform. The focus was on macro-economy, sectoral and welfare and income distribution impacts. The results obtained indicated inevitable adverse economic and welfare impacts on natives unless the reduction in immigrant labor was accompanied with productivity enhancing policies.

In this article, we use fixed-effect Poisson regressions (FEPR) with robust standard errors and instrumental variables (IV) to study the economic, social, and institutional determinants of internal conflicts in 58 fragile developing countries from 2004 to 2017. We show that effective institutions (measured by judicial efficiency and governance) and higher incomes could help reduce conflict in fragile countries. In contrast, trade reform does not seem to reduce violence, and education and democratic institutions may fuel conflict in some cases. These results imply that education and trade liberalization do not have the expected effects in fragile countries, which should probably first improve their social, economic, and institutional situation, before reaping the benefits of economic reforms and education. This may also be the case for political reforms, because democratic experience seems to lead to increased violence in some countries in our sample.

The COVID-19 green certificates were introduced in many countries in 2021 to encourage vaccine uptake against the COVID-19 virus in order to reduce the spread of severe infection among the population, ensure the safety of cross-border movements, and facilitate the resumption of social life and economic activities. This study uses a single-group interrupted time series approach to examine the effect of the green certificate announcement on the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in 20 Italian and 18 French regions during the summer of 2021. The estimation results show that the green certificate announcement mitigated regional disparities in vaccine uptake. It persuaded undecided people to have their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, especially in regions lagging in the mass vaccination campaign. It was less effective in those regions where there was already a high level of vaccine protection. The announcement also proved to be an effective political strategy with which to increase the first-dose rates immediately, but not in the long term.

We use a ‘Nash in Nash’ framework within a computable general equilibrium model to determine the welfare maximizing set of bilateral trade agreements for countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Comparing these agreements to an agreement involving all countries/sectors, we find that welfare is always larger in the multilateral agreement. This is because several sectors are often excluded from the bilateral agreements, and not all countries would have a bilateral agreement with others. The sectors that are often excluded from the agreements are agriculture, as these sectors are often deemed ‘sensitive’ in negotiations and are protected by high initial tariffs.

This paper explores the idea of creating a new multilateral financial institution, a World Carbon Bank, to channel aid funds and technical expertise to low and middle-income countries, to aid with the green transition. A focused high-return first project could involve phasing out coal power plants and replacing with green alternatives. Coal accounts for 30% of global emissions. Many coal plants are located outside advanced economies and are relatively new. The costs of swapping them out is significant, and most poorer countries have little incentive or capacity to do so. WCB funds would be outright grants and not loans.

Since 2020, the EU economy has been hit by a number of external shocks that have had a major impact on growth, employment and inflation. As the outlook for the world remains highly uncertain, international conditions are likely to continue to affect the EU’s economic performance until a more stable equilibrium is reached. The question is in which direction and by how much? This article presents three possible scenarios (baseline, adverse, and benign), which provide some impact quantification through the use of the European Commission’s Global Multicountry model, and considers the potential implications of these scenarios on where the EU economy is headed. The final part of the article discusses how the EU, by better reconciling its domestic and foreign agenda, can play a more proactive role in determining international conditions, leading to more favourable equilibria.

We present a new Measure of Aggregate Trade Restrictions (MATR) using data from the IMF’s Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions. MATR is strongly correlated with existing measures of trade restrictiveness but more comprehensive in terms of country and time coverage. Our measure is available for an unbalanced sample of up to 157 countries during 1949–2019. We use our new MATR to re-examine how trade restrictiveness varies with the business cycle. Our results confirm that trade restrictions are typically a-cyclical but there is an important difference across income groups: aggregate trade restrictions are a-cyclical in advanced economies but are counter-cyclical in EMDEs, especially in response to increases in unemployment.