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This study considers a market economy where firms produce goods from labor and capital and households supply labor, rear children, save in capital, promote their members' health and longevity by health care and derive utility from their consumption and children, without caring of their adult offspring. There is a risk that population growth and capital accumulation trigger a lethal environmental disaster. Optimal policy is solved by a game where the government is the leader and the representative household the follower. The solution yields precautionary taxes on both capital income and health care. ; Peer reviewed

This document sets up a unionized general oligopolistic equilibrium model of countries, where capital is footloose and governments maximize utilitarian welfare. When capital owners have weak influence on public policy, there is unemployment and the governments compete for jobs, causing a distortion with suboptimal wages. Then globalization -- as characterized by a decrease in impediments to international investment -- increases the wage elasticity of capital flight, decreasing wages and increasing employment. This benefits the capital owners and the unemployed workers getting a job, but harms the other workers. International coordination of public policy alleviates these consequences of globalization. ; Peer reviewed

This paper examines an economic union where oligopolistic firms produce by skilled and unskilled labor and do in-house R&D by skilled labor. The planner of the union accepts new members to the union, regulates the labor market through a minimum wage for unskilled labor and supports firms by taxation. Firms and workers lobby the planner for prospective policy. It is shown that in the political equilibrium small unions regulate the labor market but do not support firms, while large unions deregulate the labor market and support firms.

This paper examines an economy with a large number of industries, each producing a different good. Technological change follows a Poisson process where firms improve their productivity through investment in R&D. The less there are firms in the economy or the more they can coordinate their actions, the higher their profits. Labor is used in production or R&D. All workers are unionized and their wages depend on relative union bargaining power. If this power is high enough, then there is involuntary unemployment. Both workers and firms lobby the central planner of the economy which affects firms' and unions' market power. The main findings of the paper can be summarized the follows. The central planner can increase its welfare either (a) by increasing the level of income or (b) by speeding up economic growth. If (a) is more effective than (b), then the central planner eliminates union power altogether to have full employment. On the other hand, if (b) is more effective than (a), then the central planner supports labor unions to promote cost-escaping R&D.

We examine a common market which expands by integrating new regions. Capitalists are strategically interdependent through the goods market and they improve their productivity through R&D. Production and R&D employ unionized workers. The purpose of integration is to maximize a weighed average of workers' and capitalists' utilities. The main findings are as follows. Integration benefits capitalists more than workers. If labour unions are strong enough, then the common market can expand indefinitely. Otherwise, there is an upper limit for integration. This is the higher, the higher producer market power or the stronger the capitalists' political influence.

This document examines foreign direct investment (FDI) when multinationals and labour unions bargain over labour contracts and lobby the self-interested government for taxation and labour market regulation. We demonstrate that right-to-manage bargaining predicts higher returns for FDI than does non-unionization or efficient bargaining. This advantage is further magnified in the presence of credible wage contracts. When the labour market is nonunionized, or there is a bargain over employment, the ruling elite reaps the surplus of FDI through taxation or regulation. In the absence of credible contracts, unions have incentives to claim a bigger share of the revenue of FDI.